This MENA Politics Seminar was delivered at the Middle East Centre on Thursday 7 May 2026 by Dr Ali Kadivar (Boston College) and chaired by Professor Neil Ketchley (St Antony’s College).
What drives the uneven geographic spread of revolutionary episodes? While structural approaches emphasize
pre-existing fault lines, contingency approaches highlight emergent processes. We synthesize these
perspectives, arguing that specific triggers shape a revolutionary episode's social geography by activating certain
fault lines while leaving others dormant. Through a comparative analysis of three revolutionary episodes in Iran
(2017–2022), each with a distinct trigger, we demonstrate how different triggers shape patterns of contention.
Using event-history and spatial regression analysis of subnational protest data alongside socioeconomic and
political variables, we show that a fuel price hike activated grievances in oil-producing areas, while a repressive
event targeting a woman from an ethnic and religious minority mobilized protests in minority-populated districts.
Our findings illustrate how triggers structure revolutionary mobilization, offering broader insights into the
interaction between structural conditions and contingent events in contentious politics.
BIOGRAPHY
Mohammad Ali Kadivar is a Fellow at the **Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and an
Associate Professor of Sociology and International Studies at Boston College. He received his PhD in sociology
from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and previously held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Watson
Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.
His work contributes to political and comparative-historical sociology by examining the causes, dynamics, and
consequences of protest movements. While growing out of his experience as a participant-observer of the pro-
democracy movement in Iran, his research agenda extends comparatively to explore these processes globally
using historical analysis, case studies, and statistical methods.
His book Popular Politics and the Path to Durable Democracy (2022) was published by Princeton University
Press. His research has appeared in journals including American Sociological Review, Social Forces,
Comparative Political Studies, European Sociological Review, and Comparative Politics, and has received
awards from multiple sections of the American Sociological Association.
