This paper explains the unexpected trajectory of The Liberation National Social Group (LNSG), a political group that emerged onto the Jordanian public scene as part of the nationalist movement in 2007. Comprised of some of the most experienced activists in the country by 2011, the group’s development during the Arab Spring era soared to even new heights in terms of successful protest actions, building their social networks throughout the Kingdom, and challenging the ruling regime’s power and legitimacy. Equipped with protest experience, strong allies, and networks among other activist groups in the Kingdom, and the necessary technical expertise to organize and develop a platform for social change, LNSG seemed well-positioned to reach its goal of establishing a political party even with a controversial platform that directly criticized and challenged the King within a repressive, authoritarian regime context. Yet, LNSG was dismantled in less than a year. What explains this outcome? Departing from scholarship and public discourse that suggests such social movement outcomes in authoritarian contexts are a result of regime repression tactics, I argue that this is only part of the story. From interviews with former members and allies of LNSG, this research shows how other factors related to the group’s resources and local socioeconomic positions within the Kingdom are related and intertwined with the regime’s repression tactics. Accounting for these local class hierarchies is critical to understand how social movement groups like LNSG are able to mobilize and win the hearts of the public, and to also more fully account for the mechanisms that create fluctuations in their momentum and deterioration over time.

As the Arab Spring’s second ongoing wave shows, innumerable activists across the Middle East continue to mobilize for change. Yet mass mobilization has not always generated a mass movement – that is, an organized collective actor with defined leadership, a cohesive identity, routinized coordination, and indigenous structures of survival. In Morocco, Jordan, and Iraq, multitudes of spontaneous and overlapping protests struggled to engender a durable coalition and national movement. Activists partly formalized their strategies through movement-building in Lebanon and Algeria; but only in Sudan did a cross-cutting movement and coalitional leadership representing popular demands fully crystallize. Why this disconnect between youth-led mobilization and movement-building? Traditional answers from contentious politics theorizing, such as repression and opportunity structures, mistakenly assume that mass movements logically emerge once activists surpass a critical threshold of resistance. Critical work by Schwedler and others rightfully highlight how protest events operate with their own strategic dynamic at the micro-level, but this also leaves untouched the wider explanatory question of why only some protest events result in movement formation. This paper fills this gap with an innovative answer gleaned from theoretical synthesis and comparative analysis of three representative cases (Jordan, Lebanon, Sudan). Insights from fieldwork, including immersion in youth activist networks, combined with multilingual documentary evidence, suggest that three conditions explain the puzzle of mobilization without movement: 1) geopolitical interference, 2) civic density, and 3) cognitive heuristics. The more that are present, the less likely coherent movements can coalesce. First, international support enables embattled regimes to disrupt or repress uprisings in local settings before they spread or adapt across national spaces. That Sudan was the most geopolitically isolated country is no coincidence, as its rulers had least access to Western and Gulf reservoirs of economic and military assistance. Second, at the institutional level, when civil society groups are not only unified but imbricate themselves into youth-led protests early on, the roots of robust coalitions are laid down. For historical reasons, however, some Arab civil societies tend to feature highly fragmented and or compartmentalized institutions, leaving protest entrepreneurs in a precarious position. Finally, activist vanguards must overcome cognitive biases related to availability and recency, both of which overemphasize the success of horizontal, informal, and leaderless insurrections in toppling dictatorships during 2011-12. That strategy traded durability for agility, privileging spontaneity over long-term organization. Adapting towards movement-building thus may require “unlearning” this particular lesson from the Arab Spring.

When Palestinians went on hunger strike in 2017 against worsening conditions in Israeli prisons, Irish activists (and, more specifically, Republican prisoners in Northern Ireland) were one of the largest contingents of international supporters. This link was not unprecedented; though Irish-Palestinian solidarity has maintained a political presence since the mid-1970s, its publicity was elevated in 1981 when Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails were among the first internationals to express solidarity with the Republican prisoners on hunger strike in Northern Ireland. Considering the deep settler colonial histories of both Ireland and Palestine as well as their connection as subjects of British colonial rule, this sense of solidarity is no surprise. However, Irish-Palestinian solidarity is often framed as simply an understanding of similar experience, when in fact its foundation runs much deeper. Rooted in the literature on transnationalism, solidarity, and social movements, this paper argues that Irish-Palestinian solidarity goes beyond support based on shared experiences to a deeper level of transnational solidarity built upon extensive understanding by both parties of global power structures of settler colonialism. With a specific focus on the Irish hunger strikes of 1981 and the Palestinian hunger strikes of 2017, it develops this argument in three main parts. First, it seeks to understand the historical roots of Irish-Palestinian solidarity and the ways in which local and shared histories provide a basis for solidarity. Second, it seeks to highlight how Irish and Palestinian hunger strikers understand the linkages between their struggles, moving beyond an idea of shared experience to that of united (or, one) struggle. Third, it looks to the future in order to understand how Irish-Palestinian solidarity — and transnational solidarity more broadly — can contribute to our collective liberation. The theoretical underpinnings of this paper are informed by theories of solidarity by Featherstone (2012), Kelliher (2018), Brecher et al (2000), Sundberg (2007), and Routledge and Cumbers (2009); theories of transnationalism by Keck and Sikkink (1998), Allen (2018), Salem (2018), and Louvet (2016); and social movement theory through the framework put forth by Tilly (1999), Tarrow (1998), and Beinin and Vairel (2013). This dissertation will situate itself within the literature on transnational solidarity, intervening via an understudied but deeply relevant case. It will construct this case by analyzing primary sources, including but not limited to prisoner solidarity statements, prison writings, street art, and interviews with prisoners.

Vital and often complementary roles are attributed to political parties and social movements for democratic representation. However, the interaction of these two important actors is still understudied. While there are attempts to understand the relationship between the two based on the framework of contentious politics approach (McAdam and Tarrow 2010) and the institutionalization of the movements (Kitschelt 2006), there is still a lack of studies concerning the adoption of forms of collective action from the contentious into the institutionalized realm. The aim of this paper is to understand the relationship between political parties and social movements, more specifically the use of social movement tactics by the parties. Why do parties adopt social movement tactics? When do they so? What kind of organizational resources they rely on to engage in street protests? Answering these questions with regards to the parties’ decisions to protest would help us to advance our understanding of how institutionalized and non-institutionalized politics interact, and to bridge the gap between social movement studies and research on political parties, elections and party competition. The paper is going to focus on the case of Turkey. While Turkey has not been a ‘movement society’ (Meyer and Tarrow 2008), it is possible to observe a surge after the Gezi Park protests in 2013 which started against the abolishment of a park in Istanbul, and soon converted into mass anti-government protests also with the, unwelcomed, participation of some of the opposition parties. It is going to be argued that the use of streets as a venue has changed especially after the failed coup attempt in July 2016, after which the president Erdogan called people to the streets to defend the nation against the plotters. Following couple of weeks has witnessed the ‘Watch for Democracy’ gatherings called upon by the governing party. Another significant interaction was the case of three-week long ‘March for Justice’ in Turkey organized in 2017 by the Republican People’s Party. Started by the leader of the opposition, the March for Justice, a march from Ankara to Istanbul, lasted about three weeks with the participation of thousands and ended with a rally in Istanbul, with the participation of various groups. The paper is going to employ an archival newspaper/news agency research, Anadolu Ajansi for the Watch for Democracy rallies and Cumhuriyet for the March for Justice, and semi-structured in-depth interviews with the organizers and the participants of the gatherings if possible.

Global Jihad and Movements of Rage This paper makes two original arguments. First, I argue that global jihad is best understood as four distinct iterations, or ‘waves,’ since the 1980s, each with its own distinct causes and ideological formulations. The first wave of global jihad began in the 1980s and focused on the liberation of Muslim Lands through a Jihadi International; the second, on the expulsion of an American ‘far enemy’ from the Middle East; the third on the eradication of apostasy through state-building; and the fourth on networked and stochastic violence through individual ‘personal jihad.’ Second, I situate the phenomenon of global jihad in the universe of violent social movements, arguing that it is best understood as a variant form of a movement of rage. Movements of rage employ nihilistic violence and millenarian, anti-Enlightenment ideologies in pursuit of political goals, which include the eradication of cultural contamination. In order to argue for the explanatory power of a movement of rage approach, I compare global jihad to various other forms of violent social movements, including fascism, Leninism, national liberation, ‘cosmic war,’ and ‘new terrorism.’ The paper is based on original Arabic documents and other sources generated during five months of fieldwork abroad in 2019. It is part of a book project to be published by Stanford University Press in September 2020.

Literature produced concerning social mobilization oftentimes wavers between two tensions: either it is too agency-laden, missing the necessary account of historical and social contexts, or it is too deterministic, missing an understanding of the generative capacities of mass movements in the constitution of new political subjects and frames. While both methodologies offer useful conceptual tools for understanding the development and productive potential of social mobilization, the peculiar case of the Kassioun Current in Syria reveals the extant shortcomings in the agency-laden/deterministic dichotomy and, thusly, indicates the possible mistreatment of other curious cases, too. The Kassioun Current, which split from the Syrian Communist Party (Bakdash) in 2000, offers us an interesting entry-point into the exceptions of political organizing under authoritarian rule in Syria. While Kassioun was unlicensed and, thus, de facto illegal, it was still extended the space to pursue political work at a time when Damascus Spring organizations were brutally repressed (2000-2005). With the emergence of the 2011 Uprising, Kassioun experienced a transformation in its political program and, with it, the rise of internal contradictions. While the organization was legally registered and incorporated into the regime’s structure in 2012, many of its members who disagreed with the organization’s political line in regards to the 2011 popular movement left its ranks. Under the organic leadership of older Marxists like Sal?mah Kaylah, the radical youth of Kassioun established a mass organization called Revolutionary Syrian Youth and faced death or detainment as they organized protests, provided relief to affected areas and internally displaced civilians, and produced a newspaper called Yasari (Leftist). My paper will aim to (1) situate the Kassioun Current within the historical field of political organization in Syria, (2) reveal the antagonisms among the Syrian Left within the socio-historical context of Syria prior to and following 2011, and (3) understand the conditions of possibility for new forms of broad leftist political organization under a “crisis of authority” i.e. the crisis of the state during the 2011 Syrian Uprising.