Debunking the Myths Behind Nonviolent Civil Resistance

Abstract

Scholars argue that nonviolence is likelier to cause political change in comparison to other strategies, including violence. This study identifies issues throughout this literature ranging from coding procedures, observational sampling, to interpretations of phenomena. If unarmed violence, reactive violence, and omitted cases are analyzed, nonviolent success rates are worse than formerly considered. Inclusion of 19th century (1800–99) cases and previously unanalyzed cases from the 20th century reveals that nonviolent campaigns experienced a 48% rate of success, whereas campaigns that adopted unarmed violence were 61% successful, campaigns utilizing reactive unarmed violence were 60% successful, and 30% of fully violent campaigns were successful. Nonviolence is not a causal determinant of political change, but rather, its implementation falls short of a probabilistic coin toss. There is reason to presume this literature is biased toward elite interests in similar ways to how scientific inquiry on dietary and substance guidelines has historically been skewed by corporatism.