Jean-Baptiste Gallopin was awarded the Fox Fellowship and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Dissertation Fellowship. The Fox Fellowship will provide support for an exchange at the Freie Universitat in Berlin, where Jean-Baptiste will do archival, comparative work on the behavior of the East German security forces during the fateful demonstrations in Leipzig in the fall of 1989. The Harry Frank Guggenheim Dissertation Fellowship, which supports work on violence and aggression, will provide Jean-Baptiste support to complete his dissertation.
Jean-Baptiste’s dissertation, entitled “Dynamics of Historical Change in the Tunisian Revolution,” investigates how collective action dynamics affect the trajectories of countries experiencing regime change. In particular, the dissertation seeks to explain Tunisia’s democratization by drawing from a detailed analysis of crucial moments when political actors restrained themselves and de-escalated potentially violent situations. The dissertation develops systematic propositions on theoretical debates about the loyalty of armed forces, bargaining, social conflict, contentious mobilization, and revolutions.