My research focuses on questions related to the intersection of state- and nation-building, authoritarianism, religion, and political violence. I explore these questions primarily in Southeast Asia, where I have extensive area knowledge and fieldwork experience. In my research, I use a combination of fieldwork, historical analysis, semi-structured interviews, quasi-experimental methods, and automated text analysis.
Dissertation
My dissertation and subsequent book project “The Politics of Religious Violence in Transitional Regimes: Evidence from Myanmar” builds on the literature on violence against civilians during regime change to understand the conditions under which this violence takes on a religious character. Drawing on the case of Myanmar and in-country fieldwork, I advance the argument that an autocratic regime’s cooptation of the majority religious institution in highly religious societies can set the stage for mass violence against religious minorities during a subsequent period of regime change. I demonstrate – using in-depth interviews with prominent Buddhist monks, a novel subnational dataset on religious scapegoating at the subnational level in Myanmar, and a variety of primary and secondary sources – how the Myanmar military regime’s cooptation of the Buddhist clergy for legitimacy prior to regime change weakened the Buddhist clergy’s ties to secular opposition networks and incentivized coopted clergy to scapegoat the Muslim minority to compete for influence in a more competitive civic marketplace. My findings not only bring the underexplored dimension of religion into the literature on mass violence during regime change, but also identify a new condition – the legacy of state cooptation of religion – that shapes the nature of this type of violence.
Current Research
My other current research projects center around the role of information communication technologies (ICT) in contentious politics. Under what conditions are new ICTs tools of political liberation in autocratic regimes with limited censorship capacity? I have two co-authored papers in the Journal of Contemporary Asia and the Asian Journal of Comparative Politics that use Burmese language public Facebook posts after the 2021 military coup to demonstrate how prior digital activism experience enhanced activists’ ability to harness the internet for resistance and to forge inter-ethnic bonds. In a paper in progress, my co-author and I use a difference-in-differences design to disentangle the relative effect of internet shutdowns on violent and non-violent anti-regime resistance after the 2021 Myanmar military coup. In another working paper, I leverage two unique datasets of public election-related Facebook posts during Myanmar’s 2020 election to classify election fraud disinformation and to analyze its spread and virality.
Future Research
If existing research finds that military rule is the most likely regime type to democratize, why do some military regimes cling to power at all costs? In a future book project, I will explain this puzzling variation in the durability of military rule using a comparative historical analysis of three military regimes with divergent outcomes: Myanmar, Indonesia, and Thailand. I developed the concept of military enmeshment and will explain how greater military enmeshment reduces the likelihood of democratization in military regimes.
Publications
Ryan, Megan. "The Politics of Religious Violence in Transitional regimes: Evidence from Myanmar." Journal of Comparative Political Studies, revise and resubmit status.
Ryan, Megan, Tran, Mai Van, and Ye Htut, Swan. 2023. “Strange Bedfellows or Trusted Comrades? Digital Solidarity-building among Myanmar’s Revolutionaries.” Journal of Contemporary Asia.
Ryan, Megan, Tran, Mai Van. 2022. “Democratic Backsliding Disrupted: The Role of Digitalized Resistance.” Asian Journal of Comparative Politics.
Working papers
“Internet Shutdowns and Resistance: A Difference in Difference Design to Estimate the Asymmetruc Effects of Internet Cuts on Violent and Non-Violent Resistance,” with Alexander Fertig. Working paper.
“The limits of Disinformation: Source Credibility and Election Fraud Disinformation During Myanmar’s 2020 Election” Working paper.
“Experimental Democrats: Military Enmeshment and Democratization in Military Regimes” Working paper.
"The Strength to Cooperate: Monitoring Capacity and Militia Violence in Indonesia." working paper.
Other writing
Ryan, Megan and Darin Self. 2021 “Myanmar’s Military Distrusts the Country’s Ruling Party. That’s Why it Staged a Coup and Detained Leaders and Activists.” The Washington Post, February 2.