Paper short abstract:

How do elites respond to autocrats´ protest management tactics? Leveraging a survey experiment administered to Ugandan elites, we find that regime insiders are most likely to support the use of violence and accusatory rhetoric, regardless of the protest’s cause. Outsiders divide depending on cause.

Paper long abstract:

Mass protests can threaten autocratic regimes by signaling an incumbent´s declining legitimacy and potential weakness. While incumbents typically respond in ways intended to shore up support to maintain themselves in power, it remains unknown how other elites — regime insiders and opposition outsiders — respond to an incumbent’s co-optation versus repression efforts. Extending prior related scholarship on authoritarianism, we argue that opposition outsiders are often unable to capitalize politically on mass protests because they are often divided in how to appropriately respond to unrest, whether due to economic or political conditions. Regime insiders, by contrast, consistently rally behind the incumbent response, regardless of the use of violence. To examine how elites respond to an incumbent’s protest management, we randomly expose Uganda’s elite class of top-level bureaucrats, business leaders, members of parliament, and civil society leaders to news radio segments depicting protest scenes in an African capital. In these news segments, we experimentally manipulate both the reason for the protests (electoral fraud versus cost-of-living hikes) and the incumbent´s response (repression, co-optation, and accusatory rhetoric). We find that regime insiders, proxied by party affiliation, are most likely to support the use of violence and accusatory rhetoric, regardless of the protest’s cause. This contrasts with opposition outsiders, who generally favor the use of dialogue to resolve protests. This group, however, divides on the support for incumbent repression depending on the protest’s cause. These findings have implications for how we understand the role that elites play in the maintenance of Africa’s autocratic regimes.