Chapter 2 provides an in-depth examination of the political violence occurring within and emanating from Xinjiang. We introduce the most comprehensive data on terrorism in China assembled to date, which we draw upon to argue that the nature of terrorism and counterterrorism in China has evolved in three fundamental ways. First, the nature of this violence has evolved over time from overt armed rebellions and riots to covert attacks. Second, the movement has shifted from separatism to a hybrid of ethnonationalism and jihadism. Third, the official response has partially transitioned from framing terrorism as a domestic issue cloaked by sovereignty to an issue of foreign affairs with increasing prominence in China’s diplomacy and military policy. This chapter also introduces the militant organizations that have been active in the conflict, details trends in violence, and assesses linkages between militants in Xinjiang and competent jihadist organizations active in Central Asia.

What makes some challengers willing and able to embrace a strategy of civil resistance and others not? This chapter shows how social ties–direct interpersonal connections that link members of a challenger organization to other actors in the society–are central to each of these processes. Two types of relationships, what I term “grassroots ties” and “regime ties,” are especially important. Each has distinct implications for different dynamics of challenger-state contention. I develop a typology of challenger networks based on different combinations of these ties, and make predictions about each type of challenger’s likelihood of initiating a campaign to overthrow the regime using a strategy of civil resistance. An attention to challengers’ social ties holds the potential to explain cases that other theories struggle with, such as variation within regional “waves,” within states, or even within movements over time. It can also improve our understanding of how other theoretical mechanisms work by suggesting why some movements might be more vulnerable to repression or fragmentation than others, or how tactical repertoires can evolve.

The early months of 2011 saw a wave of upheavals across the Middle East and North Africa that became known as the Arab Spring. But despite the spread of resistance campaigns against aging dictators across the Arab-speaking world, not all campaigns employed the same strategy. This chapter reveals how the social ties that underpin challenger groups can explain variation we see across cases in the Middle East as well as the tragic trajectory from civil resistance to repression to civil war within Syria. I begin with a brief discussion of Egypt and Libya, both to provide background context as well as to illustrate their consistency with the theory. I then turn to the case of Syria’s uprising to show how practices of selective social exclusion from the state resulted in a challenger coalition that had substantial grassroots ties to various social groups throughout the country, but limited ties to the regime. This produced a campaign that was initially able to attempt civil resistance, but eventually fractured into violence in the face of extreme state repression.

Civil resistance has proven itself to be a powerful force in international politics over recent decades. What this book has shown, however, is that the story of how civil resistance works begins long before protesters take to the streets demanding regime change. Challengers have been working for years to build organizations, form coalitions, and experiment with various tactics of resistance. The state has been playing this game as well, trying to pre-empt, co-opt, repress, and shatter organized challenges to its rule. The result is that not all challengers are equally positioned to attempt civil resistance. While traditional theories of contentious politics put great emphasis on the ability of states to shape and constrain the political opportunities available to challengers, the central argument of this book has been that the specific attributes of challengers matter as well. Challengers with social ties that link their core members to multiple social groups as well as to key pillars of regime support will be well positioned to engage in civil resistance while those lacking such ties will not. This concluding chapter provides a final reflection on the argument and evidence as well as implications for research, policy, and activism.

In 1996, the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist launched an insurgency that lasted 10 years and killed an estimated 16,000 people. But the case of Nepal's Maoists is particularly fascinating for the way in which the conflict ended: with their decision to put down their arms and join with other political parties in a campaign civil resistance. Drawing on original field research, this chapter will make the argument that the Maoist change in strategy was the result of changes in their social ties that came about as a result of territorial gain through war and coalition with other political parties. These changes caused the Maoists to reassess the relative viability of armed and unarmed strategies of rebellion.

This chapter turns to cases from South Africa and India to highlight the challenges inherent in trying to launch and sustain a civil resistance campaign within a highly divided society. In both contexts, movements refrained from even attempting national campaigns with maximalist goals when they had only insular networks, preferring instead to either try to work for reforms within the system or to pursue more limited goals during these periods. When they had established grassroots ties and were able to engage in massive nonviolent mobilizations, they encountered massive repression from the regime and struggled to constrain violence within their own ranks. But in the end, both movements were successful in achieving their goals. The cases therefore offer valuable lessons for how challengers, especially those from excluded groups, may be able to overcome some of the social barriers to civil resistance that have presented in this book.

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.

This chapter traces the strategic evolution of the Nepali Congress from its deliberation and rejection of nonviolence through a vote of party leaders in Calcutta in 1950 to its gradual return to an exclusively nonviolent platform by 1990. It illustrates that the movement's lack of social ties with other groups within Nepal limited its ability to generate mass mobilization, causing leaders to sour on the prospects of being able to achieve victory through civil resistance. But over the course of the following four decades, the Nepali Congress party was able to substantially enlarge its social base in ways that made it far better positioned for civil resistance. Interestingly, a challenger with a very different ideology, the Marxist-Leninists, underwent a very similar transition. After a failed effort at inciting revolution through the beheading of “class enemies” in the early 1970s, the Marxist-Leninists, like the Nepali Congress, engaged in a program of organization- and coalition-building that paved the way for the adoption of civil resistance.

This chapter moves backward in time to the “mandate period,” when, in the aftermath of the first World War and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the territory of Syria was placed under French colonial rule. The chapter begins with the Syrian Revolt of 1925-27. Launched by the “Patriotic Club,” a group made up of tribal leaders from the Druze religious sect in the mountainous Jabal Hawran region of South-Western Syria, this revolt shares many similarities with the early stages of Nepal’s Maoist uprising in that it was initiated amongst a relatively isolated ethnic community with few ties connecting them to the broader national population. The chapter then turns to an often overlooked case of mass civil resistance: the Syrian General Strike of 1936. The strike was led by an opposition political group called the “National Bloc,” whose leaders, while almost entirely older Sunnis from prominent families, stood at the top of extensive clientelistic networks that they were able to leverage to generate mass participation. The strike compelled the French administration to negotiate a treaty with the opposition leadership that set the groundwork for eventual independence.

From Eastern Europe to South Africa to the Arab Spring, campaigns of civil resistance have proven capable of overthrowing regimes and bringing about revolutionary political change using primarily nonviolent tactics. Recent research has suggested that nonviolent campaigns are more likely to achieve their self-stated goals, to produce democratic outcomes, and to yield an enduring peace. But if nonviolent strategies are so effective, why do so many groups still choose to take up arms? This book aims to explain the crucial early-stage strategic choices made by challengers to state power seeking the political goal of regime-change. Drawing on multiple cases each from Nepal and Syria, as well as global cross-national data, it details the processes through which revolutionary organizations come to attempt or reject civil resistance as a means of capturing state power.The book illustrates how the social ties that link a challenger organization with broader society inform the challenger’s expectations about the viability of nonviolent tactics and consequently its strategic behavior.

Transnational social movements are social organisations and processes that reach across borders to unite social movements. They are a likely platform for civil resistance, understood as organised but non-violent resistance to injustice that steps outside the realm of accepted political discourse. This is highly contextual. The labour movement in the Global North, for example, does not regularly engage in civil resistance because it operates within liberal democratic norms, while in the Global South trade unionism often carries with it extreme risks.

Transnational social movements are potential sources of solidarity amongst the global poor. This because they generate solidarity amongst distant strangers. This is not solidarity derived from abstract political principles, but derived from the shared experience of oppression. This shared experience need not be uniform; it is necessarily diverse.

The chapter looks at two test cases, the labour movement and indigenous rights movement, as examples of just-seeking and injustice-evading resistance. It concludes by examining criticism that civil resistance does not capture the urgency of global poverty.