Holger Albrecht
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 309231 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Holger Albrecht |
| PRENOMES | Holger |
| SOBRENOME | Albrecht |
| ASSINATURA | ALBRECHT H |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Alabama |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3487-397X |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 30 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 448 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 27 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 3 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2004 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 11 |
The Social Contract and Collective Action
How do grievances turn into collective action? This article examines how citizens' expectations in social contracts lead them to embark on street protests. It draws on original, nationally representative telephone surveys in Tunisia and Lebanon and unpacks popular preferences about the states' obligations to deliver social service provision, protection, and political participation. We measure empirically whether participation in protest can be ex…
Costly Commitments in Authoritarian Regime Formation
This article theorizes costly commitments in autocracies. Populist leaders who ascend to power through anti-establishment appeals confront a strategic dilemma between consolidating winning coalitions and maintaining the loyalty of their selectorate. Rooted in rhetoric that delegitimizes political parties, such leaders face constraints to regime institutionalization as their popular base remains resistant to formal party structures. Costly commitm…
Oppositional legacy parties during democratic transitions
Veteran politics
What are the driving forces behind the establishment of retired officer associations outside of the corporate military apparatus? This article presents novel insights into such autonomous retired military officer associations and makes a foundational contribution on a severely understudied topic in security studies. Drawing on qualitative field research in Tunisia, the article unpacks the emergence of retired military officer associations in that…
States or social networks? Popular attitudes amid health crises in the Middle East and North Africa
The article draws on nationally representative telephone surveys in Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon to unpack popular beliefs about who can best handle the social and economic consequences from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. It therefore offers insights into state–society relations under stress and contributes to the debate on whether or not the state should play a key role in social protection. Findings reveal intriguing differences between countries…
The social contract in Egypt, Lebanon and Tunisia
This article investigates the demand side of social contracts. It asks what people expect from their governments. Drawing on original, nationally representative surveys in Egypt, Tunisia and Lebanon, it explores popular preferences for the three possible government deliverables in social contracts: provision of social and economic services, protection from physical harm and political participation . Findings reveal that citizens expect government…
Saints and Warriors
This article explores how rebel groups come into being and how they sustain their activities. Its core premise is that the strategies used in rebel recruitment are crucial for such organisations. Knowing how rebel groups attract members will tell us why they are strong and, by extension, who is getting the upper hand in violent domestic conflicts. Drawing on empirical findings from the Syrian civil war, the article unpacks strategic choices in re…
Role Model or Role Expansion? Popular Perceptions of the Military in Tunisia
This article introduces a theory on military role expansion in emerging democracies and poses a broad question: who wants the military to adopt which role in society and politics? Drawing on an original, nationally representative survey conducted in Tunisia, the article explores people’s preferences for the military to remain a security provider or serve in government and contribute to policing protests. Findings reveal that public support for mi…
Who fakes support for the military? Experimental evidence from Tunisia
Surveys around the world report exceptionally high levels of support for the military. This is particularly relevant for countries in transition from authoritarian rule to democracy, where militaries can play a vital role for democratic consolidation or autocratic backsliding. Given the sensitive nature of the issue, we suspect that figures indicating strong support for the military are at least partly driven by sensitivity bias. We explore this …
Popular support for military intervention and anti-establishment alternatives in Tunisia
Popular attitudes in support of authoritarian alternatives and weak party systems constitute important threats to democratic consolidation and the stability of new democracies. This article explores popular alienation from established political actors in Tunisia. Under what conditions do citizens support alternatives to the elites in power and the institutional infrastructure of a new democracy? Drawing on an original, nationally representative s…
Coup Agency and Prospects for Democracy
This research note introduces new global data on military coups. Conventional aggregate data so far have conflated two distinct types of coups. Military interventions by leading officers are coups “from above,” characterized by political power struggles within authoritarian elite coalitions where officers move against civilian elites, executive incumbents, and their loyal security personnel. By contrast, power grabs by officers from the lower and…
Revolutions and the Military
This article presents a systematic analysis of military coups following popular mass uprisings in nondemocratic regimes, conceptualized as endgame coups. Drawing on our original, medium- n data set of revolutionary situations, we find that such endgame coups form a distinct type of military intervention in politics. Compared to regular coups, episodes of popular mass contestation prompt conservative interventions in politics of the military's lea…
Revolutionary mass uprisings in authoritarian regimes
This article explores the conditions under which revolutionary mass uprisings are likely to occur. We offer a probabilistic explanation of the social and political conditions that make people rise against autocrats. The article presents a medium-n dataset of 79 revolutionary mass uprisings in 165 autocracies since 1945. Since revolutions are rare events, a combination of factors must come together to trigger them. Drawing on the extant literature…
Diversionary Peace
What is the impact of international peacekeeping missions for civil-military relations at home? This article unpacks the conditions that produce positive effects of peacekeeping participation on the domestic politics of an authoritarian regime. Drawing on field research, I discuss four mechanisms that link foreign policy making to domestic civil-military relations in Ben Ali’s Tunisia. First, the deployment of troops for peacekeeping abroad prese…
Military Insubordination in Popular Mass Uprisings
IN RESPONSE TO POPULAR MASS UPRISINGS amid the Arab Spring, scholarship on regime change witnessed a surge in studies emphasizing the role of armies.1 A grand narrative emerged in this research program that saw the people rise against the region’s autocrats, while military support—or rejection—of incumbents determined the immediate outcome of revolutionary mass mobilization. Most of these explanations look at “the” military as a corporate apparat…
How to Keep Officers in the Barracks
What are the most efficient strategies to prevent military coups d'état? The answer depends on coup agency, that is, who attempts to overthrow the regime: elite officers or lower-ranking combat officers. Elite officers and lower-ranking combat officers have different incentives, opportunities, and capacities when it comes to perpetrating coups. Using original data on coup agency, public spending, and officer salaries in the Middle East and North …
Going on the Run
Under which circumstances do soldiers and officers desert in a violent domestic conflict? This article studies individual military insubordination in the Syrian civil war, drawing on interviews with deserters from the Syrian army now based in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon. A plausibility probe of existing explanations reveals that desertion opportunities originating in conflict events and the presence of safe-havens fail to explain individual deser…
Exit, Resistance, Loyalty
A few years into the most recent wave of popular uprisings—the Arab Spring—studying regime trajectories in countries such as Syria, Egypt, and Yemen still seems like shooting at a moving target. Yet what has not escaped notice is the central role military actors have played during these uprisings. We describe how soldiers have three options when ordered to suppress mass unrest. They mayexitthe regime by remaining in the barracks or going into exi…
From Disaffection to Desertion
Scholarship on intrastate conflict and civil-military relations has largely ignored individual desertions during civil war. We show that high-risk behavior, such as desertion, is best thought of as coordinated action between individual decision-makers and their strong network ties. Soldiers hold preexisting opinions on whether high-risk action is worthwhile, but it is their networks that persuade them to act. Specifically, it is the content of st…
The Myth of Coup-proofing
This article argues that coup-proofing does not necessarily reduce the general propensity among military officers to stage coups d'état against authoritarian incumbents. Sophisticated coup-proofing terminates coup cascades and buys incumbent rulers time in office, but general coup risk remains high even if they maintain power for long periods of time. The article uses a new data set on coups in the Middle East and North Africa covering the period…
Does Coup-Proofing Work? Political–Military Relations in Authoritarian Regimes amid the Arab Uprisings
The popular mass uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) call into question the assumption, widespread prior to the “Arab Spring”, that militaries in these countries were subservient to civilianized and consolidated authoritarian regime incumbents. In most countries militaries have stepped in to suppress uprisings, replace incumbents, or cause civil wars. The analysis of political-military relations explains the immediate outcome of …
Back on Horseback
Though there are many expectations regarding the interim character of the current political order, the future of Egyptian democracy remains highly uncertain. A closer look at the take-over of power by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) is imperative to an understanding of a political system at a decisive crossroads, but also of the path-dependent implications of the military’s engagement in politics. We project that, irrespective of t…
Contentious Politics in the Middle East
Scholarship examining the governments in the Middle East and North Africa rarely focuses on opposition movements, since those countries tend to be ruled by a centralized, often authoritarian government. However, even in an oppressive state, there are civil society and oppositional forces at work. The chapters in this book reveal how such forces emerge and are manifested in nondemocratic states across the region. In most cases, the chapters offer …
Autoritarismus Reloaded
Politischer Islam im Vorderen Orient
Waiting for Godot
When will Middle Eastern countries democratize?" is the normative question that guided the literature on regime change in the Arab world during the 1990s. Since significant political changes but no systemic transitions have occurred, this question needs reformulation: what accounts for the persistence of Arab authoritarianism? Escaping thus from the teleological tunnel permits the identification of two major developments. The first is an oscillat…
Exit, Resistance, Loyalty
A few years into the most recent wave of popular uprisings—the Arab Spring—studying regime trajectories in countries such as Syria, Egypt, and Yemen still seems like shooting at a moving target. Yet what has not escaped notice is the central role military actors have played during these uprisings. We describe how soldiers have three options when ordered to suppress mass unrest. They mayexitthe regime by remaining in the barracks or going into exi…
How can opposition support authoritarianism? Lessons from Egypt
While many observers of politics in the Arab world hold that the emergence of political opposition would be a harbinger of democratization, this article argues that opposition can contribute to the stability and resilience of authoritarian regimes. Based on an empirical analysis of contemporary Egyptian politics, it is shown that, despite the repressive nature of the Egyptian state, political opposition has emerged in various societal contexts: p…
From Disaffection to Desertion
Scholarship on intrastate conflict and civil-military relations has largely ignored individual desertions during civil war. We show that high-risk behavior, such as desertion, is best thought of as coordinated action between individual decision-makers and their strong network ties. Soldiers hold preexisting opinions on whether high-risk action is worthwhile, but it is their networks that persuade them to act. Specifically, it is the content of st…
Coup Agency and Prospects for Democracy
This research note introduces new global data on military coups. Conventional aggregate data so far have conflated two distinct types of coups. Military interventions by leading officers are coups “from above,” characterized by political power struggles within authoritarian elite coalitions where officers move against civilian elites, executive incumbents, and their loyal security personnel. By contrast, power grabs by officers from the lower and…
Back on Horseback
Though there are many expectations regarding the interim character of the current political order, the future of Egyptian democracy remains highly uncertain. A closer look at the take-over of power by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) is imperative to an understanding of a political system at a decisive crossroads, but also of the path-dependent implications of the military’s engagement in politics. We project that, irrespective of t…
Revolutions and the Military
This article presents a systematic analysis of military coups following popular mass uprisings in nondemocratic regimes, conceptualized as endgame coups. Drawing on our original, medium- n data set of revolutionary situations, we find that such endgame coups form a distinct type of military intervention in politics. Compared to regular coups, episodes of popular mass contestation prompt conservative interventions in politics of the military's lea…
How to Keep Officers in the Barracks
What are the most efficient strategies to prevent military coups d'état? The answer depends on coup agency, that is, who attempts to overthrow the regime: elite officers or lower-ranking combat officers. Elite officers and lower-ranking combat officers have different incentives, opportunities, and capacities when it comes to perpetrating coups. Using original data on coup agency, public spending, and officer salaries in the Middle East and North …
Autocrats and Islamists
This article examines how authoritarian elites manage the quest for political participation of moderate Islamist groups in view of securing regime persistence. Through a comparative analysis of the logics of two cases—the Moroccan Movement of Unity and Reform (MUR) and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood—it aims to understand the key factors accounting for differences in form and evolution of the respective containment strategies. The MUR was formall…
Does Coup-Proofing Work? Political–Military Relations in Authoritarian Regimes amid the Arab Uprisings
The popular mass uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) call into question the assumption, widespread prior to the “Arab Spring”, that militaries in these countries were subservient to civilianized and consolidated authoritarian regime incumbents. In most countries militaries have stepped in to suppress uprisings, replace incumbents, or cause civil wars. The analysis of political-military relations explains the immediate outcome of …
The Myth of Coup-proofing
This article argues that coup-proofing does not necessarily reduce the general propensity among military officers to stage coups d'état against authoritarian incumbents. Sophisticated coup-proofing terminates coup cascades and buys incumbent rulers time in office, but general coup risk remains high even if they maintain power for long periods of time. The article uses a new data set on coups in the Middle East and North Africa covering the period…
Popular support for military intervention and anti-establishment alternatives in Tunisia
Popular attitudes in support of authoritarian alternatives and weak party systems constitute important threats to democratic consolidation and the stability of new democracies. This article explores popular alienation from established political actors in Tunisia. Under what conditions do citizens support alternatives to the elites in power and the institutional infrastructure of a new democracy? Drawing on an original, nationally representative s…
Role Model or Role Expansion? Popular Perceptions of the Military in Tunisia
This article introduces a theory on military role expansion in emerging democracies and poses a broad question: who wants the military to adopt which role in society and politics? Drawing on an original, nationally representative survey conducted in Tunisia, the article explores people’s preferences for the military to remain a security provider or serve in government and contribute to policing protests. Findings reveal that public support for mi…
Diversionary Peace
What is the impact of international peacekeeping missions for civil-military relations at home? This article unpacks the conditions that produce positive effects of peacekeeping participation on the domestic politics of an authoritarian regime. Drawing on field research, I discuss four mechanisms that link foreign policy making to domestic civil-military relations in Ben Ali’s Tunisia. First, the deployment of troops for peacekeeping abroad prese…
Who fakes support for the military? Experimental evidence from Tunisia
Surveys around the world report exceptionally high levels of support for the military. This is particularly relevant for countries in transition from authoritarian rule to democracy, where militaries can play a vital role for democratic consolidation or autocratic backsliding. Given the sensitive nature of the issue, we suspect that figures indicating strong support for the military are at least partly driven by sensitivity bias. We explore this …
Revolutionary mass uprisings in authoritarian regimes
This article explores the conditions under which revolutionary mass uprisings are likely to occur. We offer a probabilistic explanation of the social and political conditions that make people rise against autocrats. The article presents a medium-n dataset of 79 revolutionary mass uprisings in 165 autocracies since 1945. Since revolutions are rare events, a combination of factors must come together to trigger them. Drawing on the extant literature…
Going on the Run
Under which circumstances do soldiers and officers desert in a violent domestic conflict? This article studies individual military insubordination in the Syrian civil war, drawing on interviews with deserters from the Syrian army now based in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon. A plausibility probe of existing explanations reveals that desertion opportunities originating in conflict events and the presence of safe-havens fail to explain individual deser…
Military Insubordination in Popular Mass Uprisings
IN RESPONSE TO POPULAR MASS UPRISINGS amid the Arab Spring, scholarship on regime change witnessed a surge in studies emphasizing the role of armies.1 A grand narrative emerged in this research program that saw the people rise against the region’s autocrats, while military support—or rejection—of incumbents determined the immediate outcome of revolutionary mass mobilization. Most of these explanations look at “the” military as a corporate apparat…
Waiting for Godot
When will Middle Eastern countries democratize?" is the normative question that guided the literature on regime change in the Arab world during the 1990s. Since significant political changes but no systemic transitions have occurred, this question needs reformulation: what accounts for the persistence of Arab authoritarianism? Escaping thus from the teleological tunnel permits the identification of two major developments. The first is an oscillat…
How can opposition support authoritarianism? Lessons from Egypt
While many observers of politics in the Arab world hold that the emergence of political opposition would be a harbinger of democratization, this article argues that opposition can contribute to the stability and resilience of authoritarian regimes. Based on an empirical analysis of contemporary Egyptian politics, it is shown that, despite the repressive nature of the Egyptian state, political opposition has emerged in various societal contexts: p…
Autocrats and Islamists
This article examines how authoritarian elites manage the quest for political participation of moderate Islamist groups in view of securing regime persistence. Through a comparative analysis of the logics of two cases—the Moroccan Movement of Unity and Reform (MUR) and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood—it aims to understand the key factors accounting for differences in form and evolution of the respective containment strategies. The MUR was formall…
Der Vordere Orient
Politischer Islam im Vorderen Orient
Political Participation in the Middle East
Contentious Politics in the Middle East
Scholarship examining the governments in the Middle East and North Africa rarely focuses on opposition movements, since those countries tend to be ruled by a centralized, often authoritarian government. However, even in an oppressive state, there are civil society and oppositional forces at work. The chapters in this book reveal how such forces emerge and are manifested in nondemocratic states across the region. In most cases, the chapters offer …
Autoritarismus Reloaded
Back on Horseback
Though there are many expectations regarding the interim character of the current political order, the future of Egyptian democracy remains highly uncertain. A closer look at the take-over of power by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) is imperative to an understanding of a political system at a decisive crossroads, but also of the path-dependent implications of the military’s engagement in politics. We project that, irrespective of t…
Does Coup-Proofing Work? Political–Military Relations in Authoritarian Regimes amid the Arab Uprisings
The popular mass uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) call into question the assumption, widespread prior to the “Arab Spring”, that militaries in these countries were subservient to civilianized and consolidated authoritarian regime incumbents. In most countries militaries have stepped in to suppress uprisings, replace incumbents, or cause civil wars. The analysis of political-military relations explains the immediate outcome of …
The Myth of Coup-proofing
This article argues that coup-proofing does not necessarily reduce the general propensity among military officers to stage coups d'état against authoritarian incumbents. Sophisticated coup-proofing terminates coup cascades and buys incumbent rulers time in office, but general coup risk remains high even if they maintain power for long periods of time. The article uses a new data set on coups in the Middle East and North Africa covering the period…
Exit, Resistance, Loyalty
A few years into the most recent wave of popular uprisings—the Arab Spring—studying regime trajectories in countries such as Syria, Egypt, and Yemen still seems like shooting at a moving target. Yet what has not escaped notice is the central role military actors have played during these uprisings. We describe how soldiers have three options when ordered to suppress mass unrest. They mayexitthe regime by remaining in the barracks or going into exi…
From Disaffection to Desertion
Scholarship on intrastate conflict and civil-military relations has largely ignored individual desertions during civil war. We show that high-risk behavior, such as desertion, is best thought of as coordinated action between individual decision-makers and their strong network ties. Soldiers hold preexisting opinions on whether high-risk action is worthwhile, but it is their networks that persuade them to act. Specifically, it is the content of st…
How to Keep Officers in the Barracks
What are the most efficient strategies to prevent military coups d'état? The answer depends on coup agency, that is, who attempts to overthrow the regime: elite officers or lower-ranking combat officers. Elite officers and lower-ranking combat officers have different incentives, opportunities, and capacities when it comes to perpetrating coups. Using original data on coup agency, public spending, and officer salaries in the Middle East and North …
Going on the Run
Under which circumstances do soldiers and officers desert in a violent domestic conflict? This article studies individual military insubordination in the Syrian civil war, drawing on interviews with deserters from the Syrian army now based in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon. A plausibility probe of existing explanations reveals that desertion opportunities originating in conflict events and the presence of safe-havens fail to explain individual deser…
Military Insubordination in Popular Mass Uprisings
IN RESPONSE TO POPULAR MASS UPRISINGS amid the Arab Spring, scholarship on regime change witnessed a surge in studies emphasizing the role of armies.1 A grand narrative emerged in this research program that saw the people rise against the region’s autocrats, while military support—or rejection—of incumbents determined the immediate outcome of revolutionary mass mobilization. Most of these explanations look at “the” military as a corporate apparat…
Revolutionary mass uprisings in authoritarian regimes
This article explores the conditions under which revolutionary mass uprisings are likely to occur. We offer a probabilistic explanation of the social and political conditions that make people rise against autocrats. The article presents a medium-n dataset of 79 revolutionary mass uprisings in 165 autocracies since 1945. Since revolutions are rare events, a combination of factors must come together to trigger them. Drawing on the extant literature…
Diversionary Peace
What is the impact of international peacekeeping missions for civil-military relations at home? This article unpacks the conditions that produce positive effects of peacekeeping participation on the domestic politics of an authoritarian regime. Drawing on field research, I discuss four mechanisms that link foreign policy making to domestic civil-military relations in Ben Ali’s Tunisia. First, the deployment of troops for peacekeeping abroad prese…
Popular support for military intervention and anti-establishment alternatives in Tunisia
Popular attitudes in support of authoritarian alternatives and weak party systems constitute important threats to democratic consolidation and the stability of new democracies. This article explores popular alienation from established political actors in Tunisia. Under what conditions do citizens support alternatives to the elites in power and the institutional infrastructure of a new democracy? Drawing on an original, nationally representative s…
Coup Agency and Prospects for Democracy
This research note introduces new global data on military coups. Conventional aggregate data so far have conflated two distinct types of coups. Military interventions by leading officers are coups “from above,” characterized by political power struggles within authoritarian elite coalitions where officers move against civilian elites, executive incumbents, and their loyal security personnel. By contrast, power grabs by officers from the lower and…
Revolutions and the Military
This article presents a systematic analysis of military coups following popular mass uprisings in nondemocratic regimes, conceptualized as endgame coups. Drawing on our original, medium- n data set of revolutionary situations, we find that such endgame coups form a distinct type of military intervention in politics. Compared to regular coups, episodes of popular mass contestation prompt conservative interventions in politics of the military's lea…
Saints and Warriors
This article explores how rebel groups come into being and how they sustain their activities. Its core premise is that the strategies used in rebel recruitment are crucial for such organisations. Knowing how rebel groups attract members will tell us why they are strong and, by extension, who is getting the upper hand in violent domestic conflicts. Drawing on empirical findings from the Syrian civil war, the article unpacks strategic choices in re…
Role Model or Role Expansion? Popular Perceptions of the Military in Tunisia
This article introduces a theory on military role expansion in emerging democracies and poses a broad question: who wants the military to adopt which role in society and politics? Drawing on an original, nationally representative survey conducted in Tunisia, the article explores people’s preferences for the military to remain a security provider or serve in government and contribute to policing protests. Findings reveal that public support for mi…
Who fakes support for the military? Experimental evidence from Tunisia
Surveys around the world report exceptionally high levels of support for the military. This is particularly relevant for countries in transition from authoritarian rule to democracy, where militaries can play a vital role for democratic consolidation or autocratic backsliding. Given the sensitive nature of the issue, we suspect that figures indicating strong support for the military are at least partly driven by sensitivity bias. We explore this …
The social contract in Egypt, Lebanon and Tunisia
This article investigates the demand side of social contracts. It asks what people expect from their governments. Drawing on original, nationally representative surveys in Egypt, Tunisia and Lebanon, it explores popular preferences for the three possible government deliverables in social contracts: provision of social and economic services, protection from physical harm and political participation . Findings reveal that citizens expect government…
Political science (23 obras) · Politics (23 obras) · Law (22 obras) · Political Conflict and Governance (20 obras) · Sociology (20 obras) · Political economy (19 obras) · Democracy (17 obras) · Law (17 obras) · Authoritarianism (15 obras) · Economics (13 obras)