Opposition Against Authoritarianism in Exile: Patterns of Coordination Between Russian Exile Groups, 2022-2024

Authoritarian rulers across the globe not only face opposition at home but are also contested from exile. Due to the opportunities provided by new technologies, exiled political forces have more tools at their disposal than ever before to continue their struggle against authoritarianism from abroad. In line with the focus on opposition unity in the literature on democratisation, this paper looks at the determinants of coordination between opposition groups in exile who struggle against authoritarian home regimes. It is argued that five factors have an impact on coordination in exile: ideological and tactical divisions, geographical distance, legitimacy, and homophily induced cohort effects of age, gender, and circumstances of foundation. Using the tools of social network analysis, these expectations are tested on an original dataset of coordination among 10 Russian opposition groups in exile. Covering the period between February 2022 and September 2024, the dataset introduced in this paper is based on the political communication of exile groups on Telegram. Telegram channels were scraped using the 4CAT tool kit for data capture. Employing automated text processing and subsequent hand validation, the Telegram data was used to create a network of coordinated activities among 10 exile groups. Drawing on theoretical advances in network science, the approach in this paper utilises an extension of the ERGM-family, valued ERGMs, to allow for the modelling of a network in which the frequency of coordination between groups is represented as edge weights. Preliminary results suggest that ideological divisions and homophily induced cohort effects, specifically foundation histories, strongly impact the behaviour of Russian opposition groups in exile. Results also indicate that opposition groups are strategic actors and consider their respective audiences when choosing coordination partners.