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- Title
DID THE INTERNET BREAK THE POLITICAL MACHINE? MOLDOVA'S 2009 "TWITTER REVOLUTION THAT WASN'T".
- Authors
HALE, HENRY E.
- Abstract
Moldova's April 2009 mass unrest and the subsequent ouster of Vladimir Voronin's Communist Party have become widely known as the country's "Twitter Revolution," which in turn is often cited as an example of the Internet promoting revolution and democratization in a hybrid regime, a political system combining elements of democracy and authoritarianism. A close analysis of these events, however, shows that social media played a secondary role at best. Instead, Moldova's revolution is best understood as the product of a succession crisis that happened to hit the regime as the country was entering a sharp economic decline linked to the global financial crisis. The findings emphasize the risk of overestimating the Internet's effects on regime change if researchers neglect the hard work of carefully tracing the actual processes by which nondemocratic regimes are ousted.
- Subjects
POLITICAL machines; MOLDOVAN politics &; government; POLITICAL organizations; DEMOCRATIZATION; SOCIAL media
- Publication
Demokratizatsiya, 2013, Vol 21, Issue 4, p481
- ISSN
1074-6846
- Publication type
Article