Pro-democracy activists protest an authoritarian government’s actions. The government responds with repressive techniques, from surveilling activists and denying protest permits to conducting targeted assassinations and mass killings. Is this the start of a vicious cycle or the first step in a national transformation?
While of course every country and every situation is different, political scientists Erica Chenoweth, Evan Perkoski, and Sooyeon Kang write that there are some common factors that tend to predict whether mass opposition will be successful. Looking at work on government repression and nonviolent resistance in recent years, they offer six takeaways.
First, they write, states almost always react to protest intended to challenge or remove the government, or otherwise transform the status quo, with some form of repression. One 2011 analysis of 108 nonviolent campaigns found that in 90 percent of cases, state actors responded with violence.
Second, governments with more democratic characteristics are less likely to use extreme violence such as declaring martial law, routinely committing human rights abuses, or killing large numbers of people. However, the authors note, even more democratic states may use crowd-control techniques and imprison protestors. Democracies are also more likely to use serious violence when they’re facing stressors like foreign military occupation.
Next, the authors report that repressive techniques are often effective in suppressing protest in the short run but tend to make resistance more intense in the long term. This is presumably partly because they stoke popular anger at the government. Another hypothesis is that movements subjected to repressive techniques like surveillance, arrests, and torture develop better skills to resist, such as establishing secure communication, figuring out how to produce effective forged documents, and learning to spot government agents.
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Perhaps not surprisingly, nonviolent movements’ success depends on how well they’re organized. Individual protests can be quashed by state violence, the authors explain, but they’re much more likely to succeed when they’re part of a large and ongoing nonviolence campaign. Successful organizing includes documenting evidence of government abuses, sharing information broadly, and building administrative systems rather than relying on a few leaders who may be assassinated or otherwise incapacitated.
Fifth, governments more readily respond to violent dissent, such as guerrilla attacks, with intense repression. The research team found that nonviolent tactics, including strikes, protests, and mass uprisings are less likely to lead to state violence.
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And finally, repressive regimes often succeed to the extent that they can get security forces to act against dissidents. Nonviolent campaigns tend to prevail when they create divisions that pit regime leaders against the military or police, or against other sources of power such as economic elites and government bureaucrats.
Chenoweth, Perkoski, and Kang note that many research questions remain about both repressive regimes and the resistors who fight them. But they argue that it’s worth learning from the work that has been done about what it looks like when resistance movements succeed.
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