In order to answer the broader question about the reasons behind authoritarian regimes’ survival or demise in the face of popular protest primary data collection via interviews has been collected and secondary sources i.e. newspaper articles have been analysed. The aim of the project was achieved by comparing the use of state-sponsored militias, shabiha and titushky, by the regimes of Bashar Al-Assad and Viktor Yanukovych in Syria and Ukraine respectively. It emerges that authoritarian regimes are more likely to survive when they engage in brutal, systematic repression through these actors of repression; when these actors of repression have more complex incentives than simply being thugs for hire, while the national and local elites are more reliable sources of state sponsored militias’ support.For the article on Ukraine and Syria, the new research strand I will develop involves a structured comparison between the regimes of Bashar al-Assad and Viktor Yanukovych. I will demonstrate how incumbent authoritarian regimes can deploy groups of civilians to disperse political protest that threatens to dislodge the regime and disrupt the status quo. A comparison will be drawn between the Syrian Shabiha and Titushki in Ukraine. I will argue that if an authoritarian regime is truly authoritarian, such use of armed civilians should be systematic, violent and clearly linked to the state. Through this comparison, I will question whether Yanukovych's regime was truly authoritarian as claimed by some analysts. Once it is published in a peer-reviewed journal, the article will generate impact on the academic community who work globally on the resilience of authoritarianism. I will use a novel comparison across space and time. I have already published a short version of this article for an academic blog Strife, which will serve as a framework. I will conduct interviews with activists in Ukraine and Syria (remotely) asking them specifically about the use of Shabiha and Titushki. The article on the USA-Ukraine comparison will provide a detailed discussion of how elite compromises were worked out in the two countries in the respective antebellum periods and how they helped forestall conflict. I will provide a discussion of the similarities between the two cases and build a theory of "oligarchic peace" that explains the outcome of peace. The decentralisation reform in Ukraine (2014 - present) is a new phenomenon that was a direct product of the events of 2014 investigated in my thesis. Case studies of countries that have pursued decentralisation to resolve conflicts have yielded mixed results. One school led by Lijphart (1977) and more recently by Miodownik (e.g. with et al., 2004 and with Cartrite, 2010) argues that decentralisation contributes to political stability. Another school led by Roeder argues that decentralisation gives groups resources to engage in secessionism undermining stability. The two main research questions of this research that will follow after this fellowship are: (1) Does decentralisation contribute to political stability across Ukraine? and (2) Is Ukraine's decentralisation model attractive to the residents of the non-government controlled area of the Donbas and, therefore, is it a viable model for conflict resolution? I will analyse the reform by looking at the Kharkiv and Odesa regions in south-eastern Ukraine. I will build on my doctoral work and test new hypotheses pertaining to how decentralisation affects local protest and the behaviours of local elites. The project will draw on digital and print newspaper reports as well as on interviews and my own public opinion survey. It will contribute to the growing case studies literature on the effects of decentralisation on political stability in fragile contexts. The puzzle at the heart of my monograph "The Donbas Conflict in Ukraine: Elites, Protest, and Partition", to be published by August 2021, focuses on how the behaviours of local elites and activists definitively contributed to the conflict outcome in Donets'k and the peace outcome in Kharkiv. Drawing on the insights from the literature on informal politics, networks and patronage in the post-Soviet space, I have explained why the elites in Donets'k allowed radical pro-Russian activism in their region while their counterparts in Kharkiv did the opposite. To support the discussion, I have drawn on the rich evidence from newspaper reports, interviews, social media, videos and blogs in Russian, Ukrainian and English. The book contributes to our understanding of Ukrainian politics, the literature on the Donbas conflict, and the broader literature on elites and conflicts. The book is also important for the broader policy community, especially when it comes to networks and budgetary politics in Ukraine

Primary data was collected via interviews with academics, journalists writing on Syria and Syrian activists; newspaper reports have been used for further qualitative analysis.