When Civil Society Switches Modality: Text-as-Data Early Warnings for the Type and Direction of Regime Transformations

Bernhard (2020) identifies four modalities of civil society that cut across simple “more is better” assumptions about civic activity and regime change. Most datasets, however, can’t capture in near-real-time whether civil society is acting as an insurgent democratizer, a stabilizing institutional partner, uncivil spoiler, or authoritarian firewall. This project operationalizes these modalities with text-as-data and network features derived from NGO reports, media, and social platforms—e.g., frames of inclusion/exclusion, ties to coercive state organs, moral boundary drawing, and coordination structures. We then link time-varying modality measures to the ERT dataset (Maerz et al. 2023) to test whether specific modality “switches” forecast distinct episode types and outcomes (e.g., uncivil + firewall predicts autocratic regression without full breakdown; insurgent → institutionalized predicts successful liberalization). We would validate with analytic narratives (Greif et al. 2000) in postcommunist and Latin American cases (Bernhard, Mundim, and O’Neill 2023) to demonstrate mechanism plausibility. The contribution is a scalable, predictive bridge between rich qualitative typologies and episode-based regime change measurement—moving beyond the norm that “more civil society” uniformly supports democratization and offering an empirical early-warning tool for donors and domestic reformers.

References:

1. What do we know about civil society and regime change thirty years after 1989?. M. Bernhard (2020).
2. Episodes of regime transformation. Seraphine F. Maerz, Amanda B. Edgell, M. Wilson, S. Hellmeier, Staffan I. Lindberg (2023). Journal of Peace Research.
3. Analytic Narratives by Bates, Greif, Levi, Rosenthal, and Weingast: A Review and Response Rational Choice History: A Case of Excessive Ambition. A. Greif, M. Levi, Jean‐Laurent Rosenthal, J. Elster, J. Elster (2000). American Political Science Review.
4. Latin America and Comparative Politics. M. Bernhard, Karla Mundim, Daniel I. O’neill (2023). Perspectives on Politics.