The question of loyalty in autocratic regimes has drawn a sustained scholarly interest, especially with the resilience of many of these regimes over most of world history and over the past few decades in particular. Autocratic leaders need to secure the support of their militaries to survive in office and to minimize the risk of a coup. Among the commonly employed mechanisms in this regard is the extension of extra-budgetary financial rewards, including ‘Military-Owned Businesses (MOBs).’ Nevertheless, under the increasingly significant threat of an uprising from below, military defection remains the key for the success of the revolution. The question then becomes: under what conditions would a military defect from an autocratic ruling alliance? Although many answers have been proposed to solve this puzzle, an increasing number of cases are proving them insufficient. Alternatively, this project presents one novel answer to this question, which is: militaries are “defection-proofed” in the face of mass uprisings when they develop financial dependency on the regime. By contrast, when the management of the extra-budgetary resource for the military, i.e. MOBs, becomes the exclusive domain of the military and independent from the regime, the military is expected to defect. This proposed hypothesis represents a contribution to the democratization literature, both its installation, i.e. underlining a ‘pro-democracy’ capacity of the military in removing the dictator, as well as its consolidation, i.e. handling the legacy of the autocratic regime after the transition. This hypothesis is tested comparatively against the cases of mass protests in China (1989), Indonesia (1998), Thailand (2006), Iran (2009), and Egypt (2011). This comparative analysis represents another contribution of this study, bringing together a diverse array of cases unexpected to have much in common. Analysis draws on a mix of both primary resources collected from the field along with secondary materials. The comparisons are made considering the type of civil-military relations in each case, the size and type of financial rewards controlled by the military, and their effect, if any, on its decision to repress or defect based on the interaction between the military and the dictator.

The diploma thesis examines why did the non-systemic opposition in Russia between 2011 and 2016 fail to reach any significant success. Even though during 2011 and 2012 Russia witnessed mass anti- government protests the non-systemic opposition was not able to enforce any relevant change in the regime, obtain representation in the state institutions or induce larger public dissatisfaction with the regime. The study analyses problematic internal features of the non-systemic opposition (lack of public support, coalition potential, election programs and campaigns, party financing) and external repressive means of the Vladimir Putin's regime against the opposition (legislation, direct confrontation, judicial trials, elections and means of rigging). The thesis offers a complex insight into the functioning of the non-systemic opposition in Russia in the observed period and accentuates the authoritarian character of the Russian regime. Based on the evaluation of the key variables the study concludes that the repressive policies of the regime cardinally affected the weakness and fragmentation of the non-systemic opposition which moreover was not able to overcome the internal conflicts and gain broader public support.

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