Immediately after its founding by Hồ Chí Minh in September 1945, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) faced challenges from rival Vietnamese political organizations and from a France determined to rebuild her empire after the humiliations of WWII. Hồ, with strategic genius, courageous maneuver, and good fortune, was able to delay full-scale war with France for sixteen months in the northern half of the country. This was enough time for his Communist Party, under the cover of its Vietminh front organization, to neutralize domestic rivals and install the rough framework of an independent state. That fledgling state became a weapon of war when the DRV and France finally came to blows in Hanoi during December of 1946, marking the official beginning of the First Indochina War. With few economic resources at their disposal, Hồ and his comrades needed to mobilize an enormous and free contribution in manpower and rice from DRV-controlled regions. Extracting that contribution during the war’s early days was primarily a matter of patriotic exhortation. By the early 1950s, however, the infusion of weapons from the United States, the Soviet Union, and China had turned the Indochina conflict into a “total war.” Hunger, exhaustion, and violence, along with the conflict’s growing political complexity, challenged the DRV leaders’ mobilization efforts, forcing patriotic appeals to be supplemented with coercion and terror. This trend reached its revolutionary climax in late 1952 when Hồ, under strong pressure from Stalin and Mao, agreed to carry out radical land reform in DRV-controlled areas of northern Vietnam. The regime’s 1954 victory over the French at Điện Biên Phủ, the return of peace, and the division of the country into North and South did not slow this process of socialist transformation. Over the next six years (1954–1960), the DRV’s Communist leaders raced through land reform and agricultural collectivization with a relentless sense of urgency. Mass Mobilization in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945–1960 explores the way the exigencies of war, the dreams of Marxist-Leninist ideology, and the pressures of the Cold War environment combined with pride and patriotism to drive totalitarian state formation in northern Vietnam.

Through a paired comparison of two moments of mass mobilization, in Ukraine and Argentina, focusing on the role of different actors involved, this text maps out a multi-layered sequence of events leading up to mass mobilization. Moments of mass mobilization astound us. As a sea of protesters fills the streets, observers scramble to understand this extraordinary political act by 'ordinary' citizens. This study presents a paired comparison of two 'moments' of mass mobilization, in Ukraine and Argentina. The two cases are compared and analyzed on a cross-temporal and an inter-regional basis, thereby offering two critical cases in response to assumptions that the processes and patterns of mobilization, and democratization politics more broadly, are region specific. This study challenges political science's focus on elites and structural factors in the study of political participation during democratization.

How do weak activists organize under repression? This book theorizes a dynamic of contention called mobilizing without the masses.

This thesis analyzes the question whether violent or nonviolent protest is more threating for the survival of authoritarian regimes. Based on previous literature, I argue that protest in general and violent protest in countries with low state capacity should make regime collapse more likely. Furthermore, I take the repressive nature of autocratic regimes into account and argue that violent repression against peaceful protesters makes regime collapse more likely, while regimes employing violence against violent protest become more stable. I employ Cox Proportional Hazard Models and Conditional Gap Time Models to analyze the effect of protest and repression on the survival of authoritarian regimes and find support for my theory that protest makes regimes more prone to collapse in general, and that countries with low state capacity are more vulnerable to violent protest. I cannot find support for the hypothesis that violent repression against peaceful protest destabilizes a country, but I find that regimes using coercive measures against violent protest become more stable. However, this is only true when violent protest causes harm and death to others people.

This book describes the turbulent political history of Afghanistan from the communist upheaval of the 1970s through to the aftermath of the events of 11 September 2001. It reviews the importance of the region to external powers and explains why warfare and instability have been endemic. The author analyses in detail the birth of the Taliban and the bloody rise to power of fanatic Islamists, including Osama bin Laden, in the power vacuum following the withdrawal of US aid. Looking forward, Nojumi explores the ongoing quest for a third political movement in Afghanistan - an alternative to radical communists or fanatical Islamists and suggests the support that will be neccessary from the international community in order for such a movement to survive.

This comparative study of two republics - Guyana in South America, and Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean - examines the conditions which determine regime survival in less developed countries. Political survival can very often depend on a leader's willingness to serve the interests of a small, but politically strategic minority. In both Guyana and Trinidad, post-independence leaders made politically expedient decisions resulting in a series of political and economic crises.

This comparative study of two republics - Guyana in South America, and Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean - examines the conditions which determine regime survival in less developed countries. Given the structure of political and economic organization typical of these countries, and of the web of international relations of which they are a part, political survival can very often depend on a leader's willingness to serve the interests of a small, but politically strategic minority. In both Guyana and Trinidad post-independence leaders made politically expedient decisions that foreclosed policy choices consistent with the satisfaction of collective needs. As a result both countries experienced a series of political and economic crises. This in-depth comparative study of Guyana and Trinidad will be of interest to all scholars, students and policy-makers concerned with aspects of political and economic development in the Third World.

The advent of social media combined with unfettered access to inexpensive mobile electronic devices has dramatically increased information sharing throughout populations worldwide. Journalists ascribed terms such as "The Facebook Effect" and "The Twitter Revolution" to recent uprisings in the Middle East, crediting social media as a catalyst to those social movements. Factions demanding change utilized social media to assist in mobilizing activist crowds within their own countries and to garner support on the international stage. The degree to which social media facilitated these movements varied in each country, but the fact that social media played a role in the uprisings is indisputable. This monograph proposes that since people will continue to use social media to help influence future social movements, the US Army needs to better understand, anticipate, and exploit the potential threat presented by social media and mass mobilization in future operating environments. In some cases, intelligence analysts can predict or anticipate effects based on simple pattern analysis or other predictive models. In other instances, this may prove impossible. The US Army may find that using principles of complexity theory can provide the most continuously useful guide to gain insights into how factions intent on social unrest use social media to help organize their movements and advance towards a common goal. Planners can understand potential threats using characteristics of self-organization, anticipate using emergent properties, and exploit the properties of networks inherent in complex adaptive systems. Using complex systems thinking, the Army may be able to develop unique operational approaches to cope with these problems in an increasingly complex environment. Acronyms * Introduction * Background * Understand, Anticipate, Exploit Using Principles of Complexity Theory * Defining Terms * Relevance of Social Media and the Army's Future Operating Environment * Increased urbanization will require the US Army to operate in cities * Social media trends * Intersection of trends: battleswarm and possible future warfare * Overview of Egyptian uprisings in 2011 * Common Properties of Complex Systems Provide a Basis for Analysis * Identify the Simple Components before Analyzing the Interactions * Nonlinear Interactions Create Something Superior to the Individual Components * Lack of Central Control Allows for Decentralized Organization * Emergent Behaviors Lead to Evolution of the System * Summary of Common Properties of Complex Systems * Understanding how Mass Mobilization and Social Media Interact through Characteristics of Self-Organization * Clustering Helps Protect Individuals * Flocking and Schooling Assists in Moving Towards a Common Objective * Task Allocation Alters to React to Changing Conditions * Decision-Making through Quorum Sensing * Summary of Characteristics of Self-Organization * Anticipate Using Characteristics of Emergence in a Complex Adaptive System * Information processing through Local Sampling and Statistics * Hierarchical Organizations Promote Survival * Dynamics Determine How the System Changes its Patterns * Systems Adapt through Evolution and Learning * Summary of Emergence in Complex Adaptive Systems * Exploit the Common Properties of Networks * Small World Properties Reveal that Paths in Networks are Shorter than Expected * Long-Tailed Degree Distribution Can Give Insight into Social Network * Clustering and Community Structure Indicate How Quickly Information Travels * Networks May be Vulnerable to Targeted Hub Attacks * Cascading Failure May Collapse the Entire Network * Summary of Network Properties * Conclusion * Bibliography

Rwanda and Bosnia both experienced mass violence in the early 1990s. Less than ten years later, Rwandans surprisingly elected the world's highest level of women to parliament. In Bosnia, women launched thousands of community organizations that became spaces for informal political participation. The political mobilization of women in both countries complicates the popular image of women as merely the victims and spoils of war. Through a close examination of these cases, Marie E. Berry unpacks the puzzling relationship between war and women's political mobilization. Drawing from over 260 interviews with women in both countries, she argues that war can reconfigure gendered power relations by precipitating demographic, economic, and cultural shifts. In the aftermath, however, many of the gains women made were set back. This book offers an entirely new view of women and war and includes concrete suggestions for policy makers, development organizations, and activists supporting women's rights.