When Nonviolent Civil Resistance Campaigns Fail

This book examines both how and why nonviolent civil resistance campaigns fail, and the diverse category of campaigns that fall short.

Civil resistance campaigns are known for their success, for their ability to overthrow central governments or gain territorial independence. There have been a growing number of civil resistance campaigns in recent decades; however, their rate of success has decreased. More unarmed campaigns are now ending without achieving their ultimate political goals. This study moves beyond the success or failure dichotomy to unpack how nonviolent campaigns end, while also paying attention to the processes that encourage conflict demobilization or transformation. Drawing from the fields of political science, sociology, and nonviolence studies, the book develops a continuum of campaign outcomes that includes full and partial success as forms of positive demobilization as well as disbanding and defeat as forms of negative demobilization. It provides an overarching framework that links sources of internal campaign strength to termination types, and then considers each outcome in depth to explore the reasons why and how campaigns demobilize. The work is global in scope, including descriptive statistics, quantitative analyses, and case illustrations spanning a variety of regions and time periods, from East Germany in 1953 to Suriname in 1984 and Togo in 2013.

This book will be of much interest to students of civil resistance movements and nonviolence, conflict studies, intrastate conflicts, and International Relations.