“Disturbing the Dictator: Peaceful Protest under Authoritarianism,” Crisis in Autocratic Regimes, eds. Johannes Gerschewski and Christoph H. Stefes (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2018), pp. 43–74. Disturbing the Dictator: Peaceful Protest under Authoritarianism Andreas Schedler Which is the role of peaceful mass protest in the generation of authoritarian regime crises? Comparative scholars tend to concord that the “predominant political conflict in dictatorships” does not unfold between rulers and masses, but “among regime insiders” (Svolik 2012, pp. 5, emphasis removed). The primary threats to the political survival of authoritarian rulers are “horizontal”; they arise from within the ruling coalition. “Vertical” challenges from below, by ordinary citizens, rarely succeed in toppling dictators. 1 Students of comparative authoritarianism also tend to agree on one basic fact that accounts at least in part for the relative irrelevance of popular protest in the downfall of non-democratic regimes: the exceptional nature of anti-authoritarian mass challenges. While the horizontal “competition among rival factions” (Geddes 1999, pp. 121) is endemic under dictatorship, vertical challenges to authoritarian rule are supposed to be rare occurrences. Authoritarian regimes strive to either preempt or repress them and are usually successful in doing so. In equilibrium, they generate popular quiescence. Due to repression, contentment, uncertainty about the preferences of others, or problems of collective action, most of the time most citizens comply with the behavioral demands of the regime (see e.g. Chen 2012, L. 168, Kurzman 2004, Stein 2007, pp. 3). Inversely, citizen protest is supposed to flourish under democracy. Subdued under dictatorship, “contention greatly increases with democratization” (Tarrow and Tilly 2009, pp. 448). The “same processes that promote democratization also promote social movements [and] democratization itself also promotes social movements directly (ibidem, pp. 449).