Alumni
Sajjad Hussain
Contact
Office: SOC 012
Email: sajjad@usf.edu
Links
Bio
As a PhD candidate, I have taught various courses, including Introduction to International Relations, South Asian Area Studies, and Introduction to Comparative Politics. My research focuses on social movements, democracy, and authoritarianism in South Asia. In my dissertation, I analyze the role of social movements in authoritarian regimes. In particular, I argue that the movements turn into more effective mobilizations for the restoration of democracy during the consolidated phases of authoritarianism. Employing comparative historical analysis, I examine four movements in Pakistan that span multiple decades. Here I show how a regime’s stability, primarily when its durability permits substitution of coercion for governing with organization, shifts the opportunities for the challengers with an increase in size and scope of mobilization. Unlike the initial phase, when the regime is consolidating and is repressing collective action in a ruthless manner, the consolidated phase is a period in which the movements make the most of opportunities available for successfully transitioning to democracy.