What accounts for the survival and long-term commitment of activists to social movements under repression? Mai Van Tran of the Department of Government at Cornell University and Research Manager at Phandeeyar Foundation, argues for the role of an important yet oft-neglected player: civilian bystanders and observers of opposition activism. She proposes that protective support by ordinary citizens helps the activists to escape crackdowns and bolsters their attachment to their movement.  To test my argument, she studies hard cases for activist survival during both protest and non-protest periods under the two decades of Burmese military rule 1988-2010, with an original qualitative dataset consisting of semi-structured interviews and written testimony of more than 100 ordinary citizens and former pro-democracy activists in Myanmar. 

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