Reconceptualizing resistance organizations and outcomes: Introducing the Revolutionary and Militant Organizations dataset (REVMOD)

Abstract

In recent years, scholars of various forms of conflict involving revolutionary and militant organizations (such as terrorism, civil war, and nonviolent contestation) recognized that arbitrary organizational categories and typologies often leave large-N studies incomplete and biased. In moving away from nominal categorical boundaries that produce such selection biases and looking to a more generalized conception of resistance organizations, I constructed an original dataset that aims to bridge the gap between conflict literatures. Transcending traditional classifications, the Revolutionary and Militant Organizations dataset (REVMOD) consists of over 500 resistance organizations operative sometime between the years 1940 and 2014 and includes a diverse array of types of resistance organizations – many of which utilize a multitude of tactics, operate in various conflict contexts, and/or confront numerous target types. The dataset documents organizational attributes, allies, and adversaries at annual intervals (organization-years), making reliable time-series analyses possible. Tracking variables like organizational outcome-goal type and degree of achievement, political capacity, leader/s, constituent identity group, violence and demonstration levels, size, organization aliases, and several others, REVMOD breaks new ground in the collection of information on resistance organizations and can spur countless studies. A preliminary data analysis demonstrates that differences in organizational political capacity explain variation in resistance outcomes generally and in particular contexts such as civil war, terrorism, and nonviolent revolutions. REVMOD provides a unique opportunity to develop a new research paradigm for resistance studies that employs large-N empirical analyses to uncover generalities between different forms of political contention in the contemporary era, as well as to better understand why and how distinct resistance processes may produce specific outcomes.

When militant organizations lose militarily but win politically

“…For data analyses, we utilize the newly released Revolutionary and Militant Organizations Dataset (REVMOD), 4 which includes 536 resistance organizations operative sometime between the years 1940 and 2014. 5 REVMOD operationalizes resistance organizations ‘broadly as non-state organizations that employ noninstitutionalized (i.e., illegal or extralegal) means to pursue political outcome goals ’ (Acosta, 2019: 725). Our unit of analysis, militant organizations , represents the violent resistance organizations within REVMOD.…”

“… 4. The dataset and codebook are available at www.revolutionarymilitant.org. For sources of data within REVMOD, see Acosta (2019). For the two variables that we added for this study ( winning politically [WP] and negotiations ), see our coding rubrics in the Appendix (online supplemental materials).…”

“…REVMOD includes organizations from a variety of types of political violence: rebellion, insurgency, terrorism, among others. See Acosta (2019: 725–727).…”

“… 6. ‘Outcome goals’ refer to the chief political ends organizations pursue (Abrahms, 2006, 2012; Acosta, 2014a, 2014b, 2019; Cronin, 2009; Sullivan, 2012). They signify an organization’s raison d’être and purpose for its persistence. …”

Political sociology in a time of protest

“…Martin et al, 2009) characteristics focus on the correlates of media attention and stop short of discussing political outcomes (Andrews and Caren, 2010;Seguin, 2016). Conversely, the political science and international relations literature exploits coarser movement-level characteristics (violent versus nonviolent) but focuses on democratic outcomes, self-determination disputes, and revolutionary organizations mostly in authoritarian settings (Acosta, 2019;Chenoweth and Stephan, 2011;Cunningham et al, 2019). 25 A political sociology of protest outcomes would complement these agendas by using more fine-grained movement-level characteristics (inspired by the sociology literature) alongside a sustained attention to professed movement aims (a more frequent focus in political science).…”