Mass protests that led to regime change had their heyday between 1980 and 2011: what happened?

0 November 15, 2026 07:42

The effects of mass mobilisation have changed dramatically over time.

People are taking to the streets across the world. In 2025, mass mobilisation occurred in countries such as Morocco, Tanzania and Turkey. In Madagascar, protests resulted in president Andry Rajoelina fleeing the country in October. More recently, protesters have filled the streets from France and Italy to Senegal and Kenya.

By mass mobilisation, we mean sustained, organised campaigns of protests that involve more than 1,000 people, aimed at changing a country’s political regime or removing the government or leader.

Mass mobilisation has historically been seen as a viable path to democracy. Ferdinand Marcos left Manila in 1986 after weeks of popular protests. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989 after months of demonstrations in East Germany. South Africa’s apartheid regime yielded to domestic and international pressure in the 1990s.

The examples are many, and mass movements have been a driving force to democratic change in authoritarian regimes.

Yet the historical record is less clear-cut. We are researchers who study protest and democratisation. In a recent study, together with colleagues Kristian Skrede Gleditsch (University of Essex) and Gudmund Hermansen (University of Oslo), we examine how mass mobilisation influenced the likelihood of democratic transitions between 1900 and 2019.

We find that the well-documented relationship between mass mobilisation and democratisation largely belongs to a historical golden age, stretching from the early 1980s until roughly the Arab Spring in 2011. During this period, mass mobilisation was strongly associated with both democratisation and regime change.

Before and after this golden age, however, we find no detectable relationship between mass mobilisation and democratic change. The two periods are nevertheless not identical. Before 1980, mass mobilisation made rulers more likely to fall. But the regimes that fell were not systematically replaced by democracies. In other words, mobilisation could topple a regime, but not necessarily bring about democratic change. One example is Ethiopia’s 1974 revolution. Mass protests and strikes contributed to the overthrow of Haile Selassie, only for the monarchy to be replaced by a military dictatorship rather than democracy.

Today, the pattern is different. From the Arab Spring through 2019, mass mobilisation is no longer systematically associated with regime collapse. Authoritarian regimes have managed to remain in power despite extensive mobilisation. Major waves of protest have challenged incumbent regimes without bringing them down. Authoritarian leaders increasingly appear capable of riding out even large-scale popular mobilisation. Examples include Belarus, Iran and Togo,

At the same time, we are witnessing exceptionally high levels of popular mobilisation. The fact that it no longer has the same democratising effect helps explain how a wave of protest can coincide with the current authoritarian wave.

Understanding why mass mobilisation on democratisation has become less effective is one of the most important questions for understanding the development of democracy in our time.

Why has mass mobilisation become less effective?

The short answer is that we do not know for certain.

To examine how the effectiveness of mass mobilisation has changed over time, we combined data on protest campaigns demanding democratic change to classify countries as democracies or autocracies in each year. We focused only on autocracies, examining whether mass mobilisation increased the likelihood of a transition to democracy. Unlike previous studies, we used statistical models that allowed the effect of mass mobilisation to vary over time, rather than assuming it remained constant.

We also tested whether our findings depended on a few influential cases. More than 20 campaigns that were followed by democratic transitions during the golden age would have had to end without democratisation to substantially flatten the peak. Similarly, around 10 unsuccessful campaigns after 2010 would have needed to result in democratic transitions to substantially reduce the observed decline.

The overall pattern also held when we excluded individual regions from the analysis.

We find little support for several suggested explanations. Trends in campaign size, the diversity of participants, coordinated leadership, state repression, and where protests take place do not coincide with the rise and fall in protest effectiveness.

However, our measures are relatively crude, so we cannot rule out that these factors played a role. But they are unlikely to explain the broader pattern on their own. What we can show is that the power of mass mobilisation to bring about democratic change has shifted dramatically over time. What we cannot say with certainty is why its golden age began, or why it came to an end.

Some scholars have suggested that today’s movements may have become overly dependent on social media and large demonstrations, whereas effective resistance requires deeper organisation, a wider range of tactics, and long-term relationship-building. Our data do not capture these factors well enough to provide a decisive test of that argument.

At the same time, authoritarian regimes may have become better at responding to challenges from the street. New information technologies make it easier to monitor opposition movements and identify key individuals. This facilitates what researchers call smart repression: more targeted and subtle forms of coercion.

The international climate may also have contributed to this shift. The golden age coincided with the end of the cold war and stronger international pressure for democratic reform. But since the Arab Spring, western countries have increasingly chosen stability and security cooperation over democratic reform.

At the same time, authoritarian regimes have gained access to alternative sources of support. Contemporary autocracies operate through international networks that provide one another with money, technology, propaganda and diplomatic backing. They may strengthen regimes’ capacity to withstand mass mobilisation.

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Our study doesn’t conclusively test these explanations. Together, however, they suggest that the rise and fall in the effectiveness of mass mobilisation is unlikely to be explained by any single factor.

Perhaps the pendulum has begun to swing back?

Nor can we say with certainty what effect mass mobilisation has on democratisation today.

Our analysis ends in 2019. We do not know whether the weak relationship we observe at the end of the period has persisted, or whether the pendulum has started to swing back. Historically, the impact of mass mobilisation has moved in cycles. It was by no means obvious in the 1970s that the world was on the verge of a golden age of democratic mobilisation.

Since 2019, moreover, we have seen several important victories for mass mobilisation. In Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina was forced from power following extensive student protests. In Serbia, nearly two years of student-led protests culminated in an electoral victory that ended Aleksandar Vučić’s long hold on power. In South Korea, popular mobilisation helped stop President Yoon Suk Yeol’s attempt to sideline democracy. And in Poland and Hungary, broad democratic mobilisation has formed part of a wider resistance to governments that ultimately lost power through elections.

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In Senegal, mass protests in 2024 helped thwart President Macky Sall’s attempt to remain in power beyond his constitutional mandate. In Malawi, mass protests against electoral irregularities, alongside judicial intervention, paved the way for an opposition victory in the 2020 rerun election.

Democratic courage is therefore clearly not in short supply.

Researchers may try to understand what is required, but it is above all those who continue to organise, demonstrate and demand democratic rights and freedom for everyone who can ensure that it happens.
Ida Rudolfsen receives funding from the Research Council of Norway. Marianne Dahl receives funding from Research Council of Norway

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