What Makes a Movement Work? A Comparative Analysis of Grassroots Uprisings from Latin America to Iran (2025–2026)

نویسنده: رضا عاشوری

Abstract This paper examines why some grassroots movements succeed while others fail, comparing documented cases across Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Five factors — organizational infrastructure, coalition breadth, economic disruption, strategic sequencing, and elite defection — consistently distinguish durable successes from suppressed uprisings. The framework is applied to Iran's seven protest cycles (1979–2026). Keywords: civil resistance, social movements, organizational capacity, elite defection Why This Question Matters When ordinary people pour into the streets, the world asks one question: will it work? Sometimes the answer is yes. Apartheid fell in South Africa. The Berlin Wall came down. Marcos fled the Philippines. Sometimes the answer is no, or not yet. Hong Kong’s pro-democracy wave was crushed. Egypt’s Tahrir Square moment produced a harsher autocracy. People in Iran have organized at least seven major protest cycles since 1979 — including the largest and deadliest uprising in the country’s modern history, ongoing since late 2025 — and the Islamic Republic remains in place. Understanding why some movements succeed and others do not is not merely academic. T…

Civil resistance · elite defection · organizational capacity · social movements

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