| dc.description.abstract | Cabinet reshuffles happen on a regular basis, but can they be affected by civil uprisings? Protest movement's impact on autocratic regimes has been a subject of interest for political science scholars for decades. Ordinary people's ability to influence politics in authoritarian regimes is often measured through the ousting of regime leaders. We do however know less about changes that take place on a smaller scale in the aftermaths of protests. This thesis aims at filling this gap, by using evidence from the Middle East and North Africa to investigate protest movements’ impact on cabinet reshuffles. Combining protest campaign data with data on cabinet compositions and autocratic regimes for the timeframe of 1966 to 2013 allows me to examine how protest movements impact the frequency of ministerial swaps in autocracies. Recent research suggests that diverse protest movements are more influential than those movements that are not. By using OLS regressions, I find evidence suggesting that the share of cabinet swaps increase following protest movements. This thesis provides evidence that the influence of protest movements increases in cases where the movements have been diverse. Moreover, the impact of diversity within movements seems to be even stronger when they are diverse along religious lines. Contrary to my expectations, protest movements' effect does not seem to vary notably between electoral and closed autocracies. Finding out how protest movements influence cabinet compositions is important to understand more about power sharing dynamics and responses to uprisings in autocratic regimes. Protests do not always directly lead to regime change, but many smaller changes within a regime can add up and create greater, political transitions. Changing the structure of the ministry and the composition of the elites can be crucial for autocratic survival or demise. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first study conducted on the effect protest movements have on cabinet compositions in autocratic regimes. Hence, this thesis contributes to the literature by investigating (diverse) protest movements’ effect on a cabinet level, as well as strategies of authoritarian power-sharing following uprisings. | eng |