Date of Award
1-1-2014
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Department
Josef Korbel School of International Studies
First Advisor
Erica Chenoweth
Keywords
Civil Resistance, Democracy, Elections, Political Violence, Protest, Revolution
Abstract
Several recent studies indicate that revolutions of non-violent civil resistance lead to more democratic and peaceful political transitions than either violent revolutions or elite-led political transitions. However, this general trend has not been disaggregated to explain the many prominent cases where nonviolent revolutions are followed by authoritarianism or civil war. Understanding these divergent cases is critical, particularly in light of the problematic transitions following the "Arab Spring" revolutions of 2011. In this paper I explain why nonviolent revolutions sometimes lead to these negative outcomes. I show, through quantitative analysis of a dataset of all successful non-violent revolutions from 1900-2006 and comparative case studies of the revolutions in Egypt and Yemen, that the mechanism of success whereby the non-violent revolution achieves its goals, such as an negotiation, election, or coup d'etat, has a significant impact on the likelihood of democracy and civil war. Most centrally, mechanisms which involve pre-transition capacity-building, civil resistance campaign initiative, and broad political consensus are significantly more likely to lead to democracy and peace. This research has powerful implications for understanding both the options available to non-violent activists seeking revolutionary goals and the choices likely to lead to optimal outcomes during the post-revolutionary transition.
Recommended Citation
Pinckney, Jonathan, "Winning Well: Civil Resistance Mechanisms of Success, Democracy, and Civil Peace" (2014). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 517.
https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/517
Provenance
Recieved from ProQuest
Rights holder
Jonathan Pinckney
File size
238 p.
Copyright date
2014
File format
application/pdf
Language
en
Discipline
International relations, Political Science, Peace studies
Comments
Copyright is held by the author.