When Diaspora Movements Make a Difference 39 were detained or killed by the regime). These changes released diaspora members from the obligation to keep silent in order to protect their loved ones by undermining the relational mechanisms that made transnational repression an effective deterrent. The risks and sacrifices undertaken by vanguard activists for the Arab Spring also disrupted the normative effects of transnational repression by broadening diaspora members’ objects of obligation and their sense of shared fate with the national community (Moss 2016b: 493; Mueller 1992). When peaceful protesters were slaughtered, participants came to “believe the costs of protest should be collectively shared” (Hirsch 1990: 245) and felt called to mobilize openly for moral and emotional reasons (White 1989). Diaspora activists also embraced voice when they perceived that the regimes were unable to deliver on the threat of transnational repression. Libyans abroad felt empowered to come out when the defections of students and officials signified the collapse of regime control abroad. Syrians did so when escalations in violence at home posed imminent or arbitrary threats to their loved ones in Syria, leading respondents to perceive that coming out would not incur additional costs on their significant others. Both situations suggest that regimes facing insurgencies and zero-sum threats to their survival may be unable to repress-as-usual abroad. Perceived changes in the regimes’ capacities for repression, therefore, rendered high-risk activism as low-risk (McAdam 1986) and signaled openings in activists’ opportunities for dissent (McAdam 1982; Tarrow 2005). Diaspora members overcame the effects of conflict transmission when previously factionalized groups and individuals in the home-country joined popular anti-regime coalitions. When the formation of revolutionary coalitions at home brought together formerly atomized and divided groups for regime change, these solidarities also traveled abroad to soften divisions between anti-regime diaspora members. Accordingly, the formation of mass movements in the home-country made anti-regime diaspora members more willing to work together for both strategic and emotional reasons. However, once opposition groups at home became embroiled in internal power struggles and splintered once again, so too did diaspora activists re-fragment abroad. The extent to which diaspora members came out and came together for the Arab Spring, therefore, was contingent on the degree to which disruptions to conflict transmission endured. 1.5 when diaspora movements make a difference After diaspora members come out and come together, they have the potential to undermine authoritarian regimes in different ways. They can do so indirectly by lodging claims to their host-country governments, third-party states, the media, and to international bodies in order to persuade these powerholders to grant their allies attention and support (Bob 2005; Brysk 2000; Kay 2011; Keck 1995; https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press