Week 10: Violence, Non-violence, & Revolution

Question 1

When was violence considered an integral part of revolution?

Answer 1

Second-generation research

Question 2

Violence in revolution should instead be understood as a ______ to be explained

Answer 2

Variable

Question 3

What is much of the violence associated with social revolutions due to?

Answer 3

• actions taken by authorities to suppress revolutionary challenges
• actions by post-revolutionary regimes after coming to power

Question 4

What explains the variations of violence within revolutions? Why are some extremely violent, and others not?

Answer 4

The role of civil wars

Question 5

Why do some revolutions involve civil wars, when it is a social revolution?

Answer 5

• social revolutions have a higher probability of being armed & of selecting into civil war compared to other types of revolutions
  Explanations
• the utopian character of goals justifies the use of violence as a tool of social transformation (Arendt)
• widespread resistance to class transformation from government and propertied classes (Mayer)

Question 6

Why do some revolutions involve civil wars, when it is a ethnic revolutions?

Answer 6

Revolutions that aim to alter an ethnic or racial order are more likely to involve civil war compared to other revolutions
Possible mechanisms
- resistance and the zero-sum character of some ethnic conflicts
- the role of cultural myths, memories, and symbols in legitimating violence
- inter-ethnic mistrust and spiraling into civil war.

Question 7

What do some revolutions involve civil wars – Why can it be State weakness (rough terrain)?

Answer 7

• civil war is more likely in countries with rough terrain b/c it provides a safe haven from state power, allowing oppositions to engage in protracted struggle
• negative relationship between state capacity and whether a revolution involves a civil war

Question 8

Why do some revolutions involve civil wars – why can it be poverty?

Answer 8

• as a country gets wealthier, the opportunities costs of civil war increase and the economic incentives to join rebel groups decrease

Question 9

Who says that poverty is a reason that revolutions involve civil wars?

Answer 9

Collier (2003)

Question 10

What is the reason for some revolutions involve civil war – Great Power competition?

Answer 10

• a significantly higher power that revolutionary contention would select into civil war during the Cold War than during the first half of the 20th century

Question 11

What are the 3 patterns of thinking about civil wars as stalemated revolutions?

Answer 11

1. weak states/weak rebel movements – government lacks the ability to suppress rebellion, but the rebellion lacks the ability to overturn the regime
2. revolutionary consolidation – the opposition captures power in the capital, but lacks control over large parts of the country’s territory and fights a war for consolidation of power
3. Fragmented rebellion – rebels succeed in toppling the old regime, but are themselves divided and the rebels contest among themselves over which faction to control the state

Question 12

Why is indiscriminate violence a driver of mortality in civil wars?

Answer 12

• selective violence is costly and often inaccurate: depends on informers
• indiscriminate violence is cheap, but incites resistance
• ‘jointness’ of civil war conflicts – intersection of national and local motives; civil war violence is more complex than master narratives would lead one to think

Question 13

What is the difference in environment for the roe organizations play in preventing violence against civilians?

Answer 13

• lootable resource environments – little need for local support or for organization, and high level of atrocities against civilians
• low resource environments – dependence on local population and need for organization to maintain discipline of fighters

Question 14

What are the three technologies of civil warfare?

Answer 14

1. conventional civil war: military technologies of states and rebels matched at a high level
2. irregular civil war: military technologies of rebels lag behind those of the state
3. symmetric non-conventional warfare: military technologies of states and rebels matched at a low level
   - decline of irregular civil war after the end of the Cold War and

Question 15

What are causes of mortality in civil wars?

Answer 15

• sustained armed combat between a regime and an opposition
• civil wars occurred in 51% of revolutionary episodes from 1900-2014
• civil wars accounted for 99% of deaths in revolution during this time

Question 16

What is the difference between rural revolts and urban revolts?

Answer 16

Rural: the greater the violence, the higher chances of success
Urban: the greater the violence, the lower chances of success

Question 17

What are urban civil wars typically like?

Answer 17

• are usually ethnic in character
• occur in situations in which the government feels constrained in practicing repression
• usually also contain a significant rural component
• can be unusually destructive because of the concentration of people and wealth in cities (creating incentives to contain them)

Question 18

What is nonviolent resistance?

Answer 18

A method of conflict in which unarmed people – mobilize collective protests, strikes, and boycotts without physically harming or threatening to harm their opponents
- usually does involve deaths, though most inflicted by regimes rather than by oppositions
- is a subset of unarmed resistance in which the nonviolent tactics are explicitly and deliberately maintained by the movement’s leadership and the vast majority of participants

Question 19

Key assumptions of nonviolent revolution?

Answer 19

1. relies on the public’s understanding of nonviolent resistance as a morally superior way of pursuing revolutionary change
2. requires a very high degree of discipline among protestors
3. relies upon the power of numbers (which may be in conflict with the need for discipline)
4. assumes that the regime that is the target of change is vulnerable to being influenced through nonviolent resistance

Question 20

Why do “violent flanks” emerge?

Answer 20

1. as a strategic response to violent state repression of a movement;
2. as a function of the opposition’s diverse organizational makeup;
3. as a response to structural factors that alter the incentives to adopt violent flanks alongside nonviolent campaigns

Question 21

Violence can be complementary to nonviolent mobilization when:

Answer 21

1. violence itself is participatory in character
2. violent tactics are embedded in a larger nonviolent movement
3. violence escalates beyond the cost-tolerance threshold of the regime

Question 21

When does violence enhance the likelihood of success rather than undermine it?

Answer 21

Nonviolence is more effective than violence, and the use of violence can undermine the ‘participation advantage’ of nonviolence
(Chenoweth)