The New Republicanisms: The Misinterpreted Ideologies of Democracy Movements in Authoritarian Africa in their Persuasion, Mobilisation and Support

NEWREPUBLIC is about the democracy movements which struggle against authoritarian regimes, especially in Africa. It focuses on the ideas of these movements. Past research has read their ideas as pro-democratic, but this oversimplifies. My recent exploratory research argues that at least some of these movements express visions of democracy which resemble those of small-r republican political theory; they emphasise themes of domination and power. However, this research, and its implications, have gone untested and unverified. In NEWREPUBLIC, I will lead a postdoctoral and two doctoral researchers. We will develop and apply innovative, reliable and replicable methodologies which will test those implications. First, we will develop a content analysis to distinguish between republican, liberal and illiberal ideas. The doctoral researchers will apply this methodology to movement leaders’ speech transcripts in three countries: Cameroon, Tanzania and Uganda. I expect to demonstrate with rigour that there is a set of republican democracy movements which is wider than recognised hitherto. Second, the postdoctoral researcher and I will develop questions designed to distinguish between republican, liberal and illiberal attitudes and place them in surveys in the same three countries. I expect to show that republican attitudes are common. This will reveal that these movements’ ideologies are reflected in public opinion. Third, through survey experiments, I expect to find that: (1) republican messages delegitimise authoritarian regimes more than liberal ones do; and (2) that if republican messages foreground violent regime domination, they also inadvertently deter protest participation. These findings will have urgent implications for how democracy movements shape their messages. I will impart these findings to those movements in two policy seminars as part of the impact plan. In sum, I will radically change how these movements and the ideas at their core are understood.