How do changes of leadership impact the exercise of political authority and activism surrounding these transition periods? Through a model of sequential responses among governments and activists, I assess their respective strategies and tactics of cooperation and conflict during these critical periods. Existing research on leadership succession focuses heavily on elite politicking, paying little attention to societal dynamics during periods of succession. In contrast, my project focuses on the interactive relationship between governments and activists throughout the process of succession. This paper is part of a larger dissertation project in which I analyze the political effects of two types of succession: stable transfers of power upon death of the incumbent (“regular”) and successions caused by bottom-up pressure (“irregular”). This paper focuses on the former through a comparative study of successions in Jordan (1999), Syria (2000). These neighboring states underwent regular successions within a year of one another. However, they are significantly different in governing structures and practices, as well as social compositions, making them ripe for comparative study. I hypothesize that one leader’s exit and another’s advent, even in “regular successions,” is more than an immediate change of faces. Succession is a dynamic process that carries great potential for changes in politics and governance, as well as changes in public perceptions of governing authority and leadership. I answer the research question through event analysis. Using automated and manual coding of news reports to produce political event data, I statistically assess levels of interaction between government and activists, as well as the continuities and changes in their respective strategies and tactics, during the succession periods. This first-cut quantitative analysis is supplemented by case studies of each episode of succession to provide a detailed reconstruction of the patterns of interaction between the governments and challengers.