7 - Barriers to Civil Resistance: A Global Analysis

Summary

This chapter is an attempt at exploring the drivers of dissident strategy beyond Nepal and Syria through an examination of global quantitative data. First, I present a cross-national overview of when and where civil resistance campaigns have been used in pursuit of regime change between 1951 and 2012. An examination of the characteristics of states in which these campaigns have occurred illustrates the strengths and limitations of alternative state-centric approaches to understanding civil resistance. Next, I test an implication of the theory of social ties by showing how ethnic divisions create barriers to civil resistance. The findings reveal that demographically small and politically excluded ethnic groups are relatively less likely to initiate civil resistance campaigns.