Government Concessions and Wartime Non-Violent Resistance

• In Event: Non-Violent Resistance and Protests

Abstract

Civil war and non-violent resistance rarely occur in isolation; in fact, more than half of non-violent resistance events happen in the context of domestic armed conflict. Yet, there is a considerable variation in the effectiveness of wartime non-violent resistance in extracting concessions from the government, which is also facing an armed challenger to the political status quo. This paper seeks to explain under what conditions and why wartime non-violent resistance is more likely to gain concessions from the government. I argue that governments facing armed rebels as well as non-violent resisters are more likely to concede to the demands of resisters when they can tap into mobilization networks built around civil society and civil society organizations. The logic of this proposition stems from the idea that higher capacity civil society is able to provide coordination, leverage, and resilience to non-violent resistance so as to maximize its chances of obtaining concessions. Additionally, the government’s failure to appease protesters might result in new recruits for the armed group already fighting the government and it can also bring about broad-based societal dissatisfaction with the inability of the government to address popular grievances. I conduct a large-N analysis using data on civil war episodes and I find support for the proposition that civil society capacity is an important determinant of non-violent resistance’s achieving government concessions.

Author

• Marina G Petrova, Università Bocconi