Way, Lucan. " The Real Causes of the Color Revolution". Journal of Democracy, Vol.19, No.3 (2008): 55-69.

Way, Lucan. " The Real Causes of the Color Revolution". Journal of Democracy, Vol.19, No.3 (2008): 55-69.

• The wave of revolutions which toppled post-Communist dictators in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union from the collapse of the Mečiar administration in Slovakia to the Tulip Revolution in the Kyrgyz Republic, commonly termed the 'color revolutions' are a site of scholarly interest, but most study focus on this phenomenon as a 'wave' spreading between countries, not focusing on structural factors within countries. This paper seeks to examine those structural factors (56).
• Many of these 'domino effect' predictions are based on the experience of regime collapse in the late 1980s and early 1990s, where regimes fell within weeks of one another and in direct response to those events. By contrast the color revolutions were separated by years and occurred during regular election cycles, not spontaneously in response to outside events or a 'wave' of dissent (57).
• While it is likely that each revolutionary or opposition group in the color revolutions emulated some of the tactics used in earlier groups and that there was an ideological influence, there are also good reasons in each individual case for the choice of timing and tactics beyond emulation. These case-specific factors are more important (58).
• Many of the supposed characteristics of these revolutions are also misrepresentations for fabrications, such as there youth-focus, non-violence, and democratic support. On the contrary many of the revolution depended heavily on violence, put older figures into power, and did little to advance democracy in that country (58).
• Several commonly cited factors leading to the collapse of post-communist regimes have been the capacity of the opposition to mobilize, and the strategies of leadership adopted by the opposition. Neither of these factors successfully explains differentiations in post communist states, as unsuccessful protests have used the same strategies and successful movements, such as the Rose Revolution, often did not occur with mass opposition mobilization (59).
• The author proposes that the two factors which do have the strongest explanatory effect on the vulnerability of a regime to a color revolution are: the strength of that country's ties with the West, and the strength of the structure of the incumbent party (60).
• "Post-communist autocrats have been more likely to hold onto power when their countries have weaker ties to the West and when they have access to at least one of the following sources of authoritarian organizational power: a single, highly institutionalized ruling party; a strong coercive apparatus that has won a major violent conflict; or state discretionary control over the economy, through either de jure state control or the capture of major mineral wealth, such as oil or gas" (60).
• While ties with the West do have a great effect on the vulnerability of an authoritarian regime -- international pressure is more intense, the West is more interested in the result, and more pro-West civil society organizations can be mobilized -- the effects of Western connections are also more impactful the stronger they are; in the Kyrgyz Republic, without any really strong ties to the West, institutions supported by Western states had almost no effect during the Tulip Revolution (60).
• The use of democratic transition as a precondition for EU membership has also been a major factor for avoiding authoritarian retrenchment there, as potential autocrats were unable to fully ignore democratic processes. This also explains why direct proximity to the EU was a major factor in promoting democracy, as states farther afield would not be considered for membership, regardless of democratic credentials (60-61). 
• In those cases where the influence of the West on democratic outcomes is insignificant, the factor leading to authoritarian collapse is the weakness of the autocratic state, not the strength of the opposition. Generally, a strong state can oppose a strong opposition, whereas a weak state can succumb to a very weak opposition (62-64).
• A strong state is defined as having a strong single party apparatus controlled by the government, whose members can then be coerced, having discretionary control over large segments of the economy, and having direct and complete control over security forces. One of the reasons the Akayev regime fell was that it had none of these properties (62).
• Many of the weak states overthrown in these revolutions had lost control of the security forces not through lack of training or equipment, but because the security forces were no longer loyal to the government, often as a result of underpayment or non-payment (64).
• Control over economic resources can both empower government forces through effective use of patronage and bribery, and reduce the potential funds for disposal by opposition figures. In extreme cases like Belarus or Uzbekistan, complete state domination of the economy leaves no money for opposition figures and oftentimes results in their unemployment after they are blacklisted from state-owned firms (65).
• The analysis provided in this paper is not intended to be complete and should only be considered in determining structural factors which predispose certain regimes to collapse. In no way does this article account for the proximal factors which trigger specific instances of regime collapse (66).