While conventional wisdom argues that mass popular uprisings in authoritarian or hybrid regimes usually do not lead to veritable democratization, their aftermath is rarely a clear-cut return to the status quo ante or a decisive move to a new system of government, but rather a longer transitional period that is both politically ambiguous and in flux. Revolutionary moments provoke a range of impacts on institutional, relational, and normative-symbolic dynamics that allow for different outcomes—democratic gains and authoritarian reassembly—to occur simultaneously. Assessing the relationship between mass popular uprising and democratization thus requires taking a more nuanced, longitudinal approach that registers smaller-scale changes on a continuum of democracy-autocracy.
Rennick et al. (Fri,) studied this question.