When the Arab Spring gave way to demonstrations in Syria in 2011, the Kurds in the country were also full of hope. While they were going into the streets, the Kurdish political parties were debating what their people should do and offering competing visions for the future. Then in July 2012, the regime unexpectedly withdrew its forces from the Kurdish regions (Rojava). Suddenly, a revolutionary situation emerged in Rojava: a mobilized population and several political parties claiming leadership and offering competing political projects for a new society. Among these parties, only the Democratic Union Party (PYD) managed to move into the power vacuum and establish its control over large areas. Its rivals were unable to stop the rapid rise of this relatively young organization and fast erosion of their own base. How did the PYD manage to become the dominant organization even though it had rarely drawn attention before the civil war? This question raises the larger problem of how a revolutionary organization becomes the dominant one among competitors. Even though multiple organizations competing in a single revolution is a recurrent phenomenon, we still lack a comprehensive framework specifically focusing on this issue. In this paper, I argue for an approach based on legitimation: for people to follow a certain organization over others, they should see it as a legitimate leader. Bringing together the insights of the political and organizational legitimacy literatures, I identify three processes of legitimation for revolutionary organizations: ideological/normative congruence, effective organizational capacity, and accumulation of prestige. Drawing upon participant observation and 30 in-depth interviews with Kurdish individuals collected during fieldwork in Iraq, Germany, and the United States between 2016 and 2019, I demonstrate that the PYD has outperformed its contenders and managed to legitimate its leadership through these three processes.

中文翻译：

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竞争的革命者：革命形势下的合法性和领导力

2011年，当阿拉伯之春让位于叙利亚的示威游行时，该国的库尔德人也充满了希望。当他们走上街头时，库尔德政党正在辩论他们的人民应该做什么，并为未来提出相互竞争的愿景。然后在 2012 年 7 月，该政权出人意料地从库尔德地区（Rojava）撤出了军队。突然，罗贾瓦出现了革命性的局面：动员起来的民众和几个声称领导并为新社会提供相互竞争的政治项目的政党。在这些政党中，只有民主联盟党（PYD）设法进入了权力真空并建立了对大片地区的控制。它的竞争对手无法阻止这个相对年轻的组织的迅速崛起和他们自己基地的快速侵蚀。尽管在内战之前很少引起人们的注意，但 PYD 是如何设法成为占主导地位的组织的？这个问题提出了一个更大的问题，即一个革命组织如何成为竞争者中的主导组织。尽管多个组织在一场革命中竞争是一种反复出现的现象，但我们仍然缺乏一个专门针对这个问题的综合框架。在本文中，我主张一种基于合法性的方法：如果人们追随某个组织而不是其他组织，他们应该将其视为合法的领导者。结合政治和组织合法性文献的见解，我确定了革命组织合法化的三个过程：意识形态/规范的一致性、有效的组织能力和声望的积累。