How do social movements emerge and endure under authoritarian rule?

In addressing this question, recent scholarship has shifted away from a focus on broad social-structural explanations to more granular, “relational” accounts that emphasize how periodic outbursts of social resistance build up activist networks and fuel popular anger, eventually rising to the level of challenging regimes. While highly valuable in tracing the trajectory of social movements, this work is less successful in accounting for why some groups and not others mobilize in moments of increasing political repression and economic deprivation. To address this, my book manuscript, “From Hegemony to Mobilization: Activism under Authoritarianism in Neoliberal Jordan”, offers an innovative approach that combines social-structural analysis with a detailed exploration of the emergence and trajectories of labor and popular protest movements in contemporary Jordan. Drawing on the political theory of Antonio Gramsci—with its focus on hegemony, power, and theories of working-class identity formation—it demonstrates how authoritarian coalitions can unexpectedly become vulnerable to challenges from historically included groups that suddenly find themselves marginalized. It is based on over 12 months of fieldwork, including in-depth interviews, archival sources and primary data, and case study and comparative methods.

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From Hegemony to Mobilization makes two main claims: (1) that marginalized “insider” social groups—those who were previously included in hegenomic authoritarian coalitions—are uniquely positioned to engage in social mobilization, even in highly repressive political contexts; and (2) that the mobilization of insiders can shape the trajectories of subsequent activism in profound ways. I demonstrate this by tracing how, in the run-up to the 2011 “Arab Uprisings”, public sector workers in Jordan leveraged the contradiction between the state’s historical commitments to them and their present suffering under neoliberal austerity, to compel regime recognition of their grievances and generate broader social solidarity. Jordan serves as an important case study for understanding the dynamics of labor and popular mobilization because transgressive activism emerged despite labor’s historical weakness and the regime’s prior success funneling popular dissent into non-threatening channels. To unravel the puzzle of how mobilization emerged under such constraints, this book offers a theoretical framework that draws together otherwise disparate insights from social movement theory, authoritarian studies, labor studies, and political geography to make novel contributions to enduring debates in comparative politics concerning the role of structure and agency in mass movements.

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This research is supported by a 2018-19 Fulbright U.S. Student Research Grant. It has also been supported by a 2017-18 Sarasohn Dissertation Fellowship as well as funding from the Graduate School and Office of the Vice President for Research at Wayne State University.