Social Ties and the Strategy of Civil Resistance

Abstract

This article examines the impact of social ties on a challenger's ability to initiate a civil resistance campaign. Recent waves of nonviolent uprisings, from the color revolutions of Eastern Europe to the Arab Spring, have sparked renewed scholarly interest in civil resistance as a strategy in conflict. However, most research has focused on the effectiveness and outcomes of civil resistance, with less attention paid to when, why, and how challengers to regime power come to embrace a strategy of nonviolent action in the first place. Drawing upon a longitudinal analysis of challenger organizations and coalitions in Nepal, this article illustrates how social ties inform challengers’ assessments of the viability of civil resistance and consequently shape their strategic behavior. The findings complicate state-centric approaches to contentious politics by showing how diverse actors within the same state face different sets of political opportunities and constraints. They also highlight the indeterminate effects of ideology, as variation in challengers’ social ties drive Gandhians to take up arms and Maoists to lay them down.

The politics of nonviolent mobilization: Campaigns, competition, and social movement resources

“…In particular, political competition reduces the use of violence consistent with the ‘domestic democratic peace’ (Davenport, 2007a,b) and theories of political opportunity (Carey, 2009). Third, it affirms literature which shows social movement resources – such as organizations, networks, and skills of participants – explain the choice of nonviolent resistance (Thurber, 2019; Dahlum, 2019; Clarke, 2014; McAdam, Tarrow & Tilly, 2001). Finally, it makes an empirical contribution by extending data on contentious campaigns to include more than a dichotomous measure of resistance methods (Cunningham, Dahl & Frugé, 2017).…”

‘Like a Chicken in a Cage’: Civil Resistance, militant Islamist Rulers and Traditional Authorities in Southern Somalia

“…2-3), demonstrates why and how non-violent collective action strategies may be more effective than violent ones in fostering political change (see for example, Kuran 1989, Stephan and Chenoweth 2008, Celestino and Gleditsch 2013, Dahlum et al 2019, Thurber 2019). However, this literature takes a maximalist approach to the term, largely analysing large-scale collective resistance campaigns against incumbent state regimes, often overlooking civil war settings (Chenoweth and Stephan 2013, Pinckney 2018, Djuve et al 2020, Thurber 2019, Dahlum et al 2019. The field is dominated by quantitative methods which largely utilise aggregated data, making it difficult to reveal local micro processes of civil resistance often taking place in areas dominated by non-state armed groups (Masullo 2015, pp.…”

“…On the other hand, the rapidly expanding literature on civil resistance clearly shows the potential of civilian agency and demonstrates that non-violent, collective campaigns may be an effective strategy to alter established political structures. Yet, this literature is primarily focusing on a maximalist approach of the phenomena, examining large collective resistance campaigns seeking to influence profound political transformations, typically aiming to overthrow an autocratic state ruler (Chenoweth and Stephan 2013, Pinckney 2018, Djuve et al 2020, Thurber 2019). Hence, our knowledge of micro-level processes and mechanisms pertaining to civilian agency and civil resistance under insurgent rule is still highly understudied.…”

Curving the resource curse: Negative effects of oil and gas revenue on nonviolent resistance campaign onset

“…Why might we expect oil and gas revenue to affect nonviolent resistance campaign onset? The literature on nonviolent resistance campaigns in autocracies suggests that to succeed in defeating an autocratic regime, nonviolent resistance campaigns typically require three key elements: the ability to mobilize a significant portion of the population (Chenoweth and Stephan, 2011; Thurber, 2019), elite divisions to undermine regime cohesion (Lichbach, 1998), and security force defection (Nepstad, 2011).…”