Violent Civil Resistance

This paper looks at the role of violent actions in otherwise nonviolent civil resistance campaigns, and aims to answer the question of how different types and intensities of violent actions alter short-term responses to the campaigns’ effort to achieve change. Violence among nonviolent campaigns often takes place below the radar, as it does not clearly fall into the scope of one or the other research fields. Scholars on nonviolence focus on nonviolent aspects of such campaigns, while scholars of collective violence tend to focus on larger scale violence or on violence in different contexts. As violent repertoires of contention, such as presented by Bosi (2016), are rare and often overlooked it leaves room for theoretical and empirical exploration. The forms of violence among nonviolent campaigns are as diverse as other forms of collective violence. They occur in forms of riots, militant wings or terrorist actions, and do not only differ in their level of organization, but also in the amount of harm they inflict on various targets. As diverse as the forms of violence are also their effects. Differing from most outcome-oriented studies of nonviolent movements, this paper does not look at the success or failure of the overall campaign. Instead, it breaks down the concept of success into short-term responses to resistance actions. This reactionary approach allows seeing which forms of violence are correlated positive or negative responses to the campaign’s efforts to achieve change. Violent as well as nonviolent actions in resistance movements are both aiming at specific responses by the action’s audiences to influence their political behavior (Gallagher Cunningham & Beaulieu, 2010; Sharp, 1973). Primary audiences of said actions are the state, as it gives in to the demands or represses them, and the public, as it is a source of support and participation vital for the campaign’s survival. The argument the paper makes is that not all violent events will have the same impact on the responses to the resistance campaign. It argues that depending on the level of organization, its target and the intensity of harm caused by the violent action, the responses by the state and the public to the otherwise nonviolent campaign differ. Resulting, a reactionary approach is introduced to answer the research question of how different types and intensities of violent actions influence short-term responses by the state and the public to the overall resistance campaign? Ideally, I will be able to present preliminary statistical results of all major nonviolent campaigns on the continent of Africa from 1990-2012. If this is not possible, the contribution will be purely theoretical. Bosi, L. (2016). Violence/Militancy. In Protest Cultures: A Companion,. Oxford: Berghahn. Gallagher Cunningham, K., & Beaulieu, E. (2010). Dissent, Repression, and Inconsistency. In E. Chenoweth & A. Lawrence (Eds.), Rethinking violence: states and non-state actors in conflict. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kalyvas, S. N. (2004). The Paradox of Terrorism in Civil War. The Journal of Ethics, 8(1), 97–138. Sharp, G. (1973). The dynamics of nonviolent action. (M. Finkelstein, Ed.).