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Do Contemporaneous Armed Challenges Affect the Outcomes of Mass Nonviolent Campaigns? *
Abstract
Civil resistance is a powerful strategy for promoting major social and political change, yet no study has systematically evaluated the effects of simultaneous armed resistance on the success rates of unarmed resistance campaigns. Using the Nonviolent and Violent Conflict Outcomes (NAVCO 1.1) data set, which includes aggregate data on 106 primarily nonviolent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006 with maximalist political objectives, we find that contemporaneous armed struggles do not have positive effects on the outcome of nonviolent campaigns. We do find evidence for an indirect negative effect, in that contemporaneous armed struggles are negatively associated with popular participation and are, consequently, correlated with reduced chances of success for otherwise-unarmed campaigns. Two paired comparisons suggest that negative violent flank effects operated strongly in two unsuccessful cases (the 8-8-88 challenge in Burma in 1988 and the South African antiapartheid challenge from 1952 to 1961, with violent flanks having both positive and negative impacts in the challenge to authoritarian rule in the Philippines (1983-1986) and the South African antiapartheid campaign (1983-1994). Our results suggest that the political effects are beneficial only in the short term, with much more unpredictable and varied long-term outcomes. Alternately, violent flanks may have both positive and negative political impacts, which make the overall effect of violent flanks difficult to determine. We conclude that large-scale maximalist nonviolent campaigns often succeed despite intra- or extramovement violent flanks, but seldom because of them.
... However, activists and scholars alike pose the question whether such radical groups, referred to as radical flanks, are a curse or a blessing in gathering public support for the environmental movement. A radical flank is defined as a group that is more radical than the movement's moderate body in regards to their (1) tactical choices, (2) political demands, or (3) beliefs, choice of words, and openness for compromise (Chenoweth & Schock, 2015). So far, researchers have not yet reached a consensus if the presence of a radical flank has mostly positive or negative effects for the movement (Belgioioso et al., 2021;Haines, 2013). ...
... Several studies identified favorable effects: Empirical evidence focusing on the out come of campaign progress identified positive RFEs (Belgioioso et al., 2021;Tompkins, 2015), and an insignificant RFE (Chenoweth & Schock, 2015). Furthermore, a radical campaign against fossil fuels had a positive influence on the media framing of the climate debate (Schifeling & Hoffman, 2019). ...
... First, we suggest that the direct contrast between radicals and moderates will cause people to identify more strongly with the moderate group (Simpson et al., 2022). While some of the literature indicates that moderates might face reduced public support when accompanied by radical groups (Chenoweth & Schock, 2015;Muñoz & Anduiza, 2019), we suggest that moderates will benefit from the direct contrast via identification. When creating shared social identities, individuals distinguish between ingroups and outgroups, favoring the ingroups (Tajfel & Turner, 1979;Turner et al., 1987). ...
Social movements often comprise a variety of actors employing differing levels of radicality. This study examines how collective action enables social change by studying the influence of the presence of a radical flank on public support for moderate and radical activists. We report two experimental studies investigating the reactions towards the protests of a movement in the United Kingdom opposing a university’s reduction in sustainable catering options (N = 485) and an anti-fracking movement in the US (N = 455). In both experiments, participants read a fake newspaper article about a: (1) completely nonviolent, (2) completely violent, or (3) mixed violent/nonviolent movement including a radical flank. The tested models reveal that identification with the activists drives effects on public support (i.e., intentions to participate and donate). Specifically, the presence of a radical flank caused an increase in public support for the moderates (Study 1) or a decrease in support for the radicals (Study 2). Study 2 additionally found that the magnitude of the effects is moderated by the participants’ sympathy for the movement’s cause. Observers who were sympathetic towards the advocated changes reacted more strongly towards the chosen tactics. Implications for theory, practice and future research are discussed.
... The literature on "radical flanks" addresses this question by asking how more radical factions impact the success of more moderate factions within the same movement, offering compet-ing predictions about the direction of this impact (11)(12)(13)(14). The positive radical flank effect hypothesis predicts that the presence of a radical flank-a discrete activist group within a larger movement that adopts an agenda and/or uses tactics that are perceptibly more radical than other groups within the movement-will increase support for a more moderate movement faction. ...
... Although there is little empirical support for negative radical flank effects, a number of correlational studies support the positive radical flank effect hypothesis (11,13). But other empirical tests find no evidence that radical flanks increase or decrease support for moderate factions within the movement (14). Thus, the radical flanks literature has yielded inconsistent findings. ...
... Similarly, a more moderate faction may adopt a more popular agenda or tactics to distinguish itself more explicitly from an unpopular radical flank. For these reasons, as Chenoweth and Schock note, "social movement research on the radical flank effect tends to reflect biases of case selection and context" (14). ...
Social movements are critical agents of social change, but are rarely monolithic. Instead, movements are often made up of distinct factions with unique agendas and tactics, and there is little scientific consensus on when these factions may complement – or impede – one another's influence. One central debate concerns whether radical flanks within a movement increase support for more moderate factions within the same movement by making the moderate faction seem more reasonable– or reduce support for moderate factions by making the entire movement seem unreasonable. Results of two online experiments conducted with diverse samples (N = 2,772), including a study of the animal rights movement and a preregistered study of the climate movement, show that the presence of a radical flank increases support for a moderate faction within the same movement. Further, it is the use of radical tactics, such as property destruction or violence, rather than a radical agenda, that drives this effect. Results indicate the effect owes to a contrast effect: use of radical tactics by one flank led the more moderate faction to appear less radical, even though all characteristics of the moderate faction were held constant. This perception led participants to identify more with and, in turn, express greater support for the more moderate faction. These results suggest that activist groups that employ unpopular tactics can increase support for other groups within the same movement, pointing to a hidden way in which movement factions are complementary, despite pursuing divergent approaches to social change.
... The Radical flank mechanism refers to the impacts of groups that adopt more militant positions or forms of action on broader non-violent movements. It can affect political leverage and resources in positive or negative ways, either discrediting the wider movement and legitimizing repression or generating attention and resources and inducing political elites to collaborate with moderate groups (Haines 1984;Gupta 2007;McCammon et al. 2015;Chenoweth and Schock 2015). ...
... During phases of declining mobilization and radicalization, state repression has a significant impact on intra-movement competition by (often deliberately) exacerbating internal divisions that may lead to fragmentation and by imposing higher costs on participation and thus further increasing competitive pressure (Tarrow 1989;della Porta 2013). In this situation, radical flank effects can contribute not only to delegitimizing the wider oppositional movement but also to reducing the danger that repression backfires; that is, the risk of state violence, perceived as excessive and unfair, increases public support for challengers (Chenoweth and Schock 2015). ...
Political violence by non-state actors, whether in the form of clandestine groups, riots, violent insurgencies, or civil wars, o en emerges in the context of social movements, can shi back to non-violent methods of contentious collective action, and in many cases does not mark a new and separate phase of contention but proceeds in parallel with street protests, marches, boycotts, and strikes. At the same time, di erent forms of political violence are interlinked and are part of a continuum of repertoires of actions—rather than representing discrete and mutually exclusive types—and o en occur successively or simultaneously during processes of con ict escalation (when violence increases in scale, type, and scope) or de-escalation (when violence overall decreases).
In this chapter, “political violence” is preferred to the term “terrorism” because it allows us to capture continuities and shi s between di erent forms of violent and non-violent contention as well as variance within violent repertoires. Moreover, “terrorism,” because of its strong normative and political connotations, is much more contested, has doubtful heuristic value, and has o en been used to stigmatize rather than to explain the social phenomena under examination (Tilly 2003). Political violence, in this sense, involves a heterogeneous repertoire of actions oriented at in icting physical, psychological, and symbolic damage on individuals and/or property with the intention of in uencing various audiences for a ecting or resisting political, social, and/or cultural change.
... Shootings have similar inconsistent correlations. These inconsistent correlations are not true for all variables: in 994 regressions, protester violence negatively correlates with protest size (which matches others' findings [46][47][48]), and state accommodation is similarly consistent [6]. [49]. ...
... Vertical dotted lines are at ± 1.96. These inconsistent findings do not apply to all variables: protester violence consistently correlates with smaller protests, state accommodation with larger, matching others' results [6,[46][47][48]. ...
Scholars have offered multiple theoretical resolutions to explain inconsistent findings about the relationship of state repression and protests, but this repression-dissent puzzle remains unsolved. We simulate the spread of protest on social networks to suggest that the repression-dissent puzzle arises from the nature of statistical sampling. Even though the paper’s simulations construct repression so it can only decrease protest size, the strength of repression sometimes correlates with a decrease, increase, or no change in protest size, regardless of the type of network or sample size chosen. Moreover, the results are most contradictory when the repression rate most closely matches that observed in real-world data. These results offer a new framework for understanding state and protester behavior and suggest the importance of collecting network data when studying protests.
... The recent literature on political violence and nonviolent resistance maintains that dissident movements do not involve unitary actors (Weinstein 2006;Pearlman 2011). Indeed, nonviolent movements include radical, emotional, and spoiler members who are prone to provoke violence on their own (Haines 1984;Chenoweth and Schock 2015). Thus, the development of monitoring and sanctioning mechanisms is required to prevent these members from deviating from nonviolent strategies. ...
... She argues that the prevailing path to nonviolent resistance is only available when the movement is cohesive. Chenoweth and Schock (2015) also show that nonviolent movements usually have a radical flank, whose role in the movement and relationships with the other groups within the movement can change over time. ...
If nonviolent methods of resistance are effective – and perhaps even more successful than violent methods – why do opposition movements ever resort to violence? The literature on social movement and nonviolent resistance implies that expansion in an opposition movement’s size decreases the risk of violent dissent since successful recruitments improve the movement’s relative power and reduce the necessity of using violence to pressure the state. Nevertheless, a sudden and large expansion in movement size can overburden its organizational capacities and thus increase the risk of violent dissent. Therefore, this study contends while a gradual expansion in the size of the movement decreases the likelihood of violent dissent, a sudden and large expansion in its size raises the risk of violence. These theoretical arguments are evaluated empirically using Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes 2.1 and Mass Demonstrations and Mass Violent Events in the Former USSR datasets. The analysis of these datasets across several regression models supports the developed theoretical arguments.
... However, the theorists of revolutions did not notice these studies for a very long time because their authors preferred to call the objects of their research not revolutions but 'maximalist campaigns' (e.g. see the study by Bayer et al., 2016;Braithwaite et al., 2014Braithwaite et al., , 2015Butcher and Svensson, 2016;Celestino and Gleditsch, 2013;Chenoweth and Lewis, 2013;Chenoweth and Schock, 2015;Chenoweth and Stephan, 2011;Chenoweth and Ulfelder, 2017;Cunningham, 2013;Gleditsch and Rivera, 2017;Lutscher, 2016;Pinckney, 2016;Schaftenaar, 2017;Stephan and Chenoweth, 2008;Stoddard, 2013;Sutton et al., 2014;Svensson and Lindgren, 2010). ...
There are grounds for claiming that a new (‘fifth’) generation of revolution studies has emerged in the 21st century. It can be noted that the characteristics of this generation are as follows: a tendency toward a macro-level outlook, encompassing both historical and geographical dimensions, coupled with a propensity toward a systemic approach; study of distinct types of revolutionary processes, such as Mark Beissinger’s ‘urban civic revolutions’, and the pivotal revolutionary innovations, including the impact of new information technologies in recent revolutions; innovations regarding the factors and causes of revolutions and innovations in the analysis of the factors influencing the choice of revolutionary strategy and revolution outcomes; a special interest in the topic of revolutionary waves/‘the diffusion of revolution’; a strong understanding that armed and unarmed revolutionary events are characterized by significantly different factors, structure, and consequences; a focus on the study of unarmed revolutionary episodes/‘non-violent maximalist campaigns’; the use of global databases of revolutionary events; extensive use of modern methods of quantitative analysis.
... Thus, the individual organizations differ in the resources they can bring to the campaign, their goals, but also in the strategies they prefer to use. Numerous studies have taken up these findings and, for a better understanding of internal campaign dynamics, point to the importance of radical flanks for its success (Chenoweth & Schock 2015;Haines 1984). Others ...
... Others have argued that violent or disruptive movement elements benefit nonviolent action movements (Haines 1984, Kadivar and Ketchley 2018, Case 2019. And at least some forms of contemporaneous violence, such as concurrent armed insurgencies, appear to have little to no effect on the success of nonviolent action movements (Chenoweth and Schock 2015). More research is urgently needed to do the difficult work of teasing apart these relationships. ...
From the Plebeians' refusal to engage in military service in the Roman Republic to the uprisings of the Arab Spring, nonviolent action has been at the centre of social change throughout history. Yet the systematic theoretical understanding and empirical examination of nonviolent action is a relatively recent development. This chapter traces the emergence of this field, identifying the contributions of key thinkers such as Gene Sharp and Mahatma Gandhi and seminal cases such as the Civil Rights Movement in the United States and the anti-Communist uprisings of 1989. The chapter concludes by discussing the relationship between nonviolent action and important areas of social change and presenting some major unanswered questions in the study of nonviolent resistance today.
... The most cardinal method is revolution, but the experience of the 20th century shows that most revolutions attempting to impose democracy failed and ended in the establishment of equally or even more authoritarian regimes (see, e.g., Goldstone, 2001: 168; see also Gurr, 1988;Weitman, 1992;Foran & Goodwin, 1993;Grinin & Korotayev, 2016). However, in the recent decades the revolutionary overthrow of the old regime led to the establishment of democracies much more frequently than in the previous period (Goldstone, 2001, p. 168;Chenoweth & Schock, 2015;Chenoweth & Ulfelder, 2017;. But what could account for this shift? ...
In recent years, the question of what form a revolutionary uprising will take – armed or unarmed – has been raised more often. This is because, as shown by numerous studies, revolutionary nonviolence can explain why an uprising fails or succeeds to lead to democracy. In the recent decades the likelihood of revolution being nonviolent appears to have significantly increased, but it is still not clear why this tendency is observed. Moreover, there are only a few quantitative cross-national studies on this topic, in which the authors tried to explain the apparent pattern. However, none of them considered political factors separately. This article tests the hypothesis that a country’s level of democracy can inhibit the armed revolutionary violence. By applying logistic regression to the NAVCO database, the authors analyze more than 400 revolutionary episodes and conclude that, in general, the more democratic the political system, the more likely the revolution take an unarmed form. Nevertheless, various revolutionary events could be of a rather different nature, and it is further shown that the level of democracy matters only for sociopolitical revolutions, while for ethno-separatist revolutions it does not play a significant role.
... What is important to note here is that, first, organisations and movements can be involved in many different functions and, second, that even actors who seem to be exclusively involved in violence (such as terrorists) may overlap and interconnect with broader movements. Scholars have, for example, recognised that the presence of a violent radical flank sometimes increases and sometimes decreases the likelihood that a social movement is successful (Chenoweth and Schock 2015;Haines 1984). Consequently, to explore the issue of violence and civil society in Southeast Asia, it is not possible to begin with a pre-set list of civil society organisations and map their relative inclination towards violent behaviour. ...
... En raison de la nature hétérogène des mouvements d'auto-détermination qui rassemblent de nombreux groupes et organisations politiques aux aspirations et idéologies relativement diverses, il n'est en effet pas rare que des franges armées émergent en marge de mouvements pourtant profondément engagés sur une trajectoire non-violente et fassent escalader le conflit vers la violence (Gupta 2013;. Ce phénomène est commun à d'autres types de mouvements sociaux où des factions radicales -généralement définies comme des groupes qui font partie d'un mouvement plus large et poursuivent les mêmes objectifs que le mouvement, mais utilisent des tactiques violentes pour y parvenir (voir Haines 1984(voir Haines , 2013Chenoweth et Schock 2015;Ellefsen 2018; Ryckman 2020) -peuvent exercer une pression vers la radicalisation de la trajectoire du mouvement de différentes façons. Par exemple, les factions radicales peuvent faire augmenter la répression étatique sur l'ensemble du mouvement ou décourager les supporteurs en ayant recours à des tactiques de résistance violentes perçues négativement par certaines audiences (Gupta 2007(Gupta , 2016Glasser 2011;McCammon et al, 2015;Arves et al. 2019). ...
Pourquoi certains mouvements indépendantistes principalement non-violents sont-ils entraînés dans la
violence par des factions radicales tandis que d’autres mouvements résistent à l’escalade des violences et
continuent de s’engager sur une trajectoire non-violente ? Au Québec, la tentative la plus achevée du FLQ
de faire escalader le conflit entre le mouvement indépendantiste et les forces étatiques s’est soldée par la
dissolution des factions radicales et la disparition progressive de la violence au sein du répertoire d’action
du mouvement. De même, l’escalade du conflit entre le FLQ et les forces étatiques lors de la crise d’Octobre
n’a pas entraîné d’autres organisations indépendantistes vers la violence et c’est plutôt un processus de
désescalade qui s’est mis en place, permettant ensuite au mouvement de réaliser plusieurs succès électoraux.
En s’appuyant sur des entretiens semi-dirigés avec d’anciens militants indépendantistes et des recherches
d’archives, ce mémoire retrace ainsi le processus par lequel les factions radicales ont échoué à radicaliser la
trajectoire du mouvement indépendantiste québécois des années 1960 avant de disparaître au début de la
décennie suivante. L’analyse soulève plus spécifiquement les mesures imposées par les principales
organisations indépendantistes pour faire dé-escalader la violence et maintenir le mouvement sur sa
trajectoire non-violente au travers de différents épisodes historiques. Ce mémoire révèle finalement
comment un niveau de coopération de plus en plus important entre organisations indépendantistes
concernant la posture à adopter vis-à-vis de la violence a permis d’isoler les franges radicales à l’intérieur
du mouvement et d’empêcher ainsi les extrémistes d’affecter la réputation du mouvement ou d’entraver sa
trajectoire démocratique et non-violente.
... In this regard, it is worth asking to what extent repression of terrorists can be perceived as illegitimate. Radical groups may even be considered undesirable under certain circumstances, as their actions undermine nonviolent groups' goals (Chenoweth & Schock, 2015;Robnett et al., 2015). Likewise, it does not seem plausible that a terrorist group, when it is amid an escalation (i.e., when dissent is increasing), decides to reduce the intensity of their attacks after repression for "fear" of losing what has been gained. ...
How does state repression influence levels of mobilization in authoritarian regimes? This study argues that the relationship between repression and protest is temporally dynamic. Specifically, the short-and long-term effects of autocrats' coercive actions differ conditionally on each phase of the contentious cycle. This argument is tested taking advantage of an original database of protest events in Pinochet's Chile between 1982 and 1989. Using an Interrupted Time Series design, the results show that the State of Siege declarations issued in 1984 and again in 1986 had divergent short-and long-term influence. When the cycle was on an expansive stage, the State of Siege shows no immediate influence on the protests, followed by an increase in long-term mobilization. However, when the mobilization was declining, the State of Siege was associated with an immediate and prominent drop in mobilization, followed by a progressive decrease in the number of protests over the long term. This chapter contributes to the literature on the protest-repression nexus by providing new evidence on the dynamics shaping the relationship between state repression and civil disobedience in authoritarian regimes.
... Priming can increase our understanding of the tensions between nonviolent and violent factions of various social movements. Previous research suggests that violent factions can seek to discredit the wider movement, 85 and the resource mobilization theory sees mobilization as dependent on organizations' capacity to strategically deploy various resources as they compete for a limited pool of recruits. 86 Indeed, nonviolent religious, far-left, far-right, and nationalist/separatist organizations contain many human resources, which can be mobilized by seeking to activate primes through framing. ...
Social movement approaches have explored how protest movements transition into terrorist organizations. However, there has been little academic work examining potential causal mechanisms that drive the movement of individuals from nonviolent organizations to violent ones. This study uses priming theory to explain how nonviolent organizations can function as inadvertent gateways that facilitate the movement of individuals into violent organizations. Rather than elaborating on social contacts between nonviolent and violent organizations, priming shifts the analytical focus to socialization processes inside gateway organizations and how they can be exploited by violent organizations through framing. The study also analyzes priming in gateway organizations as a gendered process. Although the examples provided are drawn from the Islamist context, the priming process applies to all religious, far-left, far-right, and nationalist/separatist groups.
... We prefer the term unarmed conflicts for a few reasons: first, to highlight that some of these conflicts do not involve the degree of organization implied by the term "campaigns of nonviolent action," and also to clarify that the conflicts we are discussing often involve significant incidents of violence (Kadivar and Ketchley 2018;RezaeeDaryakenari 2021). This violence is typically peripheral and may even be detrimental to the uprisings' success (Abbs and Gleditsch 2021;Chenoweth and Schock 2015;Pinckney 2016), but nevertheless must be considered. ...
Forecasting major political conflicts is a long-time interest in conflict research. However, the literature thus far has focused almost exclusively on armed conflicts such as civil wars. Attempts to forecast primarily unarmed conflicts have yet to identify a model able to forecast such uprisings with a high degree of accuracy. This thorny forecasting problem may in part be due to the literature’s heavy focus on parametric forecasting methods and relatively rare testing and comparison of a wide range of forecasting algorithms. This paper addresses these gaps in the literature by developing the first unified forecasting model of both major armed and unarmed conflicts at the country-year level based on extensive training, cross-validation, and comparison of eight machine learning algorithms and five forecasting ensembles. We draw on two types of data: slow-moving structural factors such as geography and levels of economic development and short-term political dynamics captured by events data trends, to inform our forecasting models. This approach significantly improves predictive power for both armed and unarmed conflict in comparison to commonly used methods in the literature and suggests that there is significant room for improving forecasts of major political conflicts. However, our algorithms still forecast armed conflict significantly better than unarmed conflict, suggesting the need for continued theory development to inform future forecasting efforts in this area.
El poder predecir los grandes conflictos políticos es un tema que interesa desde hace tiempo dentro del campo de la investigación de conflictos. Sin embargo, hasta ahora, la literatura especializada se ha centrado casi exclusivamente en los conflictos armados, como, por ejemplo, las guerras civiles. Los intentos de predecir conflictos, principalmente no armados, aún no han podido identificar un modelo capaz de pronosticar estos levantamientos con un alto grado de precisión. Este azaroso problema para realizar predicciones puede deberse, en parte, a que la literatura se centra mucho en los métodos predictivos paramétricos y a que las pruebas y comparaciones de una amplia gama de algoritmos de predicción son relativamente escasas. Este artículo aborda estas lagunas en la literatura desarrollando el primer modelo unificado de predicción, tanto de los grandes conflictos armados como de los no armados a nivel de país-año, basado en formación intensiva, validación cruzada y en la comparación de ocho algoritmos de aprendizaje automático y cinco conjuntos predictivos. Recurrimos a dos tipos de datos: factores estructurales de evolución lenta, como la geografía y los niveles de desarrollo económico, así como la dinámica política a corto plazo plasmada en las tendencias registradas en los datos de los acontecimientos, para fundamentar nuestros modelos de predicción. Este enfoque mejora significativamente el poder de predicción, tanto para los conflictos armados como para los no armados, en comparación con los métodos que se usan habitualmente en la literatura y sugiere que hay un margen significativo para mejorar las predicciones de los grandes conflictos políticos. Sin embargo, nuestros algoritmos siguen prediciendo mucho mejor los conflictos armados que los no armados, lo que sugiere la necesidad de seguir desarrollando la teoría para fundamentar los futuros esfuerzos de predicción en este ámbito.
L’anticipation de conflits politiques majeurs est un objet de recherche déjà ancien. Toutefois, à ce jour, la littérature spécialisée existante est presque exclusivement focalisée sur les conflits armés, tels que les guerres civiles. Les efforts de prédiction portant sur des conflits principalement non armés requièrent donc l’identification d’un modèle capable de prévoir les soulèvements, et ce avec un haut degré de précision. Cet épineux problème de prévision est probablement partiellement dû à une littérature fortement axée sur des méthodes de prévision de type paramétrique, laissant peu de place au test et à la comparaison d’un vaste éventail d’algorithmes prédictifs. Cet article a vocation à combler cette lacune en développant le premier modèle prédictif unifié pour des conflits majeurs armés comme non armés, par pays et par année. Ce type de modèle s’appuie sur un entraînement approfondi, une validation croisée et une comparaison portant sur huit algorithmes d’apprentissage automatique et cinq ensembles prédictifs. Pour informer nos modèles, nous nous appuyons sur deux types de données : des facteurs structurels à évolution lente, tels que la géographie ou le niveau de développement économique, d’une part, et sur des dynamiques politiques à court terme, illustrées par des données sur les tendances événementielles, d’autre part. Cette approche permet d’améliorer de manière significative les capacités de prédiction pour les conflits armés comme non armés, par rapport aux méthodes habituellement utilisées dans la littérature, et suggère que la prévision des conflits politiques majeurs peut encore être considérablement optimisée. Toutefois, nos algorithmes restent nettement plus performants pour la prévision des conflits armés que pour les conflits non armés ; un constat reflétant la nécessité de poursuivre ce travail théorique, de manière à mieux informer les futurs efforts de prévision dans ce domaine.
... While grievances, like repression, might often be underlying factors, many of the constraints described for example by resource mobilization theory stem from mass mobilization research on large nonviolent campaigns (e.g. Chenoweth and Schock 2015). These campaigns often have maximalist goals like secession or the overthrow of an regime or political system. ...
... In quite a few anti-regime struggles, the main movement remains nonviolent but one or more groups use violence (Chenoweth and Schock, 2015). ...
Military forces are sometimes called out to confront unarmed civilian protesters, a contingency for which they may or may not be prepared. Studies of civil-military relations have focused on relations between civilian and military elites, with interactions between armed forces and civilian protesters given little or no attention. The objective here is to improve understanding of military-protester dynamics. Key relevant features of nonviolent action are outlined, including methods, campaign stages and theoretical assumptions, with a particular focus on interactions with troops. The implications for military-protester dynamics are spelled out with illustrations from several protest campaigns. When troops use force against non-resistant protesters, this sometimes creates more support for the protest movement, a process called political jiu-jitsu. An important method used by some protesters is fraternisation, namely trying to win over troops to their side. Commanders and troops, through their actions, can encourage or discourage protesters’ use of nonviolent methods. Learning about military-protester dynamics is important for both strategists and practitioners.
... The only alternative mentioned by Anisin to his own classification is research on radical flanks, which he describes as a very broad label. Indeed, it can be argued that radical flanks, in this context better called violent flanks, encompass a variety of violent tactics (Chenoweth and Schock, 2015). Anisin's category of unarmed violence raises the same sorts of issues. ...
In recent decades, civil resistance, also known as nonviolent action, has become more widely used among social movements and recognised by researchers. Alexei Anisin has usefully offered a critique of civil resistance theory and practice. His ideas are used as a basis for reflection and deeper understanding of both strengths and weaknesses of this approach. Inspired by Anisin’s questioning of the dataset used to compare nonviolent and violent anti-regime campaigns, we point to multiple neglected factors. Anisin contrasts quantitative nonviolence research unfavourably with medical and scientific research. Although Anisin’s image of science is idealised, it does point to the value of recognising the role of values in civil resistance research and in critiques of it.
... Radicals can provide the impetus for which moderate strategies and demands become refined and normalized-i.e., treated as "reasonable" (Haines, 1984, p. 32). Chenoweth and Schock (2015) argued that radical factions positively impact the effectiveness of more moderate groups by indirectly increasing the credibility of more moderate parties. Relative to the radicals' approach non-radical actors can cast the actions in a more favorable light. ...
There is an ideal time to get things done, the right time for accomplishing things, including implementing change. This paper looks at realizing change that differs significantly from the status quo and offers a slight modification from the classic three-step change model that entails creating the perception that a change is needed (i.e., unfreezing) then moving toward the new, desired level of behavior (i.e., change), and finally solidifying that new behavior as the norm (i.e., refreezing). We submit that organizational unfreezing is most effective when exogenous radical activists attempt to superimpose a significant shift from the current state (second-order change) followed by incremental change efforts by moderate insider activists (first-order change) who present their ideas and beliefs in ways that are less threatening and more appealing to mainstream audiences. Such effects are discussed in terms of sequential compliance-giving techniques of foot-in-the-door, door-in-the-face, and radical flank effects using the lens of perceptual contrast.
This article is the final part of our systematic review of the substantive findings of fifth-generation revolution studies, building on the examination of the emergence and characteristics of this generation contained in the first article in the series. Our systematic review is divided into two parts. In this second and final part, the following areas of research explored by fifth-generation scholars will be specifically considered: (1) impact of repression on the course of revolutions; (2) causes and factors that contribute to the success of revolutions; and (3) the outcomes of revolutionary uprisings. This article also presents the authors’ vision of the tasks ahead for the fifth generation of revolution studies.
By viewing transnational corporations as powerful political actors, this article draws on an area of research in conflict studies, namely nonviolent action (NVA) research, to explore how civil society actors can curtail corporate power to regulate corporations effectively. The concept of power underlying NVA theory is synthesised with the interdependent view of power, an understanding borrowed from social movement theory. How power is perceived has an impact on the preferred routes to change. The developed conceptual framework of power and change is used to analyse two case studies of transnational campaigns directed at corporations. While the Nestlé boycott (1977–1984) disrupted profits and sales growth and led to an international regulation on WHO level, the Play Fair at the Olympics Campaign (2003–2011) only posed a symbolic risk to the reputation of sportswear brands with limited outcomes. The article argues that for more effective corporate accountability, civil society actors need to tackle more than just the company’s legitimacy. Its dependence on other social groups (workers, consumers, citizens etc.) also needs to be considered.
The article is devoted to the analysis of the academic discussion that revolves around the problem of conceptualization of violent and nonviolent protest. After the author briefly documents the main milestones in the study of protest movements, he focuses on the main one — the emergence of the concept of Erica Chenoweth and her database of Nonviolent and Violent Campaign Outcomes (NAVCO). On the basis of this concept and database, as well as their criticism, the author demonstrates the existing conceptual chaos in defining and disentangling violent/nonviolent and armed/unarmed protests. According to his initial hypothesis, such chaos largely stems from the inattention to the extent of violence and disregard for its relativity. However, after the author elaborates an alternative hypothesis taking into account these factors, and it appears incapable of answering several questions that arise when studying protest campaigns, he had to conclude that the origins of this situation are far deeper. Having examined in detail the set of problems faced by protest researchers, the author suggests that at least some of them will be solved by returning to the context, which in turn requires abandoning methodological homogenization and including qualitative methods in the research arsenal, along with quantitative ones. At the same time, according to his conclusion, the general conceptualization of violent/nonviolent, as well as armed/unarmed, protests is impossible and meaningless. It will always encounter limitations that Political Science cannot overcome.
How does the domestic environment affect a government's incentives to use coercion against another country? Traditional diversionary literature indicates that governments facing internal pressures will initiate military actions overseas to improve popularity. I argue that struggling governments are more inclined to employ economic sanctions over military force because of lower cost and political risk. I further posit that when governments encounter nonviolent protests and strong competition in the legislature, they have more incentives to initiate sanctions. Foreign sanctions are used to project sanctioning leaders’ competence and increase national cohesion. I test the empirical implication of the argument on a sample of 137 countries from 1975 to 2005. The multinomial logit results show that diversionary use of sanctions is more likely when incumbents face maximalist nonviolent mobilization and higher legislative opposition, but these domestic challenges do not prompt military actions. This study presents a domestic explanation for sanctions initiation; it also casts doubt on the conventional predictions that beleaguered governments will resort to the use of force.
There are grounds for stating that in the 21st century a new ("fifth") generation of revolution studies has emerged. It can be noted that the characteristics of this generation are: a tendency towards a macro approach (both in the historical and geographical sense) together with a systemic approach; the research of separate important types of revolutionary processes (such as Mark Beissinger's "urban civic revolutions") and important revolutionary innovations, such as the role of new information technologies in recent revolutions; innovations regarding the factors and causes of revolutions and innovations in the analysis of the factors influencing the choice of revolutionary strategy and the revolution outcomes; a special interest in the topic of revolutionary waves / "the diffusion of revolution"; a strong understanding that armed and unarmed revolutionary events have significantly different factors, structure and consequences; a focus on the study of unarmed revolutionary episodes / "non-violent maximalist campaigns"; use of global databases of revolutionary events; extensive use of modern methods of quantitative analysis.
Andreas Malm says sabotage is needed to save the world from climate catastrophe. In this Forum, scholars of pacifism and nonviolence caution against such a course of action by pointing to several important factors at play in determining the success or otherwise of activist campaigns, including barriers to participation, organisational dynamics, loyalty shifts, the backfire effect, and the role of framing and public opinion. Ongoing research into pacifism and nonviolence presents a nuanced picture of the current strategic landscape of climate activism, revealing lessons that the climate movement must consider as it reflects on what repertoire of action to embrace to enhance its effectiveness and mitigate the unfolding climate emergency.
In the field of civil war studies, there is now a consensus that the risk of war decreases as average income increases. Nevertheless, such consensus has not been reached in the field of unarmed revolutions, which dominate the revolutionary process of our time. This can be explained by the fact that the researchers assumed a linear effect of income level on the risk of unarmed revolutions' onset. In contrast, this paper proposes a curvilinear framework that challenges this conventional assumption. It is demonstrated that two opposing trends can be identified within the context of economic development. On the one hand, economic development increases the resources required by the state to prevent illegal displacement and makes revolt costly for potential rebels. Conversely, it develops infrastructure and resources for civil resistance, which gives rise to the politicization of a society and the demand for political rights and participation. Utilizing two independent datasets to define revolutions and employing distinct methodological strategies, I have identified robust support for the inverted "U-shaped" relationship between income level and the risk of unarmed revolutions.
Pacifism and anarchism share some territory and have cross-pollinated across historical contexts, but are also distinct traditions and movements, with voices in each holding serious reservations and criticisms of the other. Identifying and critically discussing these reservations helps correct widespread misunderstandings in the scholarship and the wider public, thereby also presenting arguments for those outside either tradition to reevaluate their own assumptions and analyses. Anarchist qualms about pacifism and nonviolence include: disputes about the effectiveness of nonviolence; a distrust of the origins and compromises of pacifism and nonviolence; and complaints about the censoring effects of nonviolence in social movements. Pacifist qualms about anarchism include: its support for violence; and its radicality. Each accusation is nuanced or countered with arguments grounded in the indicted tradition. Shared concerns and mutually resonating themes that emerge in the process include: critiques of state violence, militarism and structural violence; and arguments about means as ends-in-the-making.
Die Klimakrise kann nicht gelöst werden, indem nur Einzelne ihr Verhalten ändern. Wir brauchen einen systemischen Wandel - einen Wandel im Kollektiv. Dieser beginnt mit engagierten Menschen: Personen, die Petitionen veröffentlichen, die eine Freiwilligengruppe organisieren oder zivilen Ungehorsam ausüben. Doch wie erhalten diese Menschen den Mut aufrecht, sich für einen sozial-ökologischen Wandel einzusetzen? Wie begeistern sie andere? Und wie entsteht daraus eine resiliente kollektive Bewegung?
Ausgehend von wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen aus der psychologischen Forschung wird praxisnah erklärt, wie Menschen zu Klimaprotest und Engagement motiviert werden und wie Klimagruppen widerstandsfähig, gesund und effektiv handeln können.
How do non-state armed groups form in intra-state armed conflicts? Researchers have started to disaggregate armed groups, but we still know little about how armed groups emerge in different ways. Drawing on the literature on social movements, civil wars, and civil–military relations, we generate a typology of ‘movement’, ‘insurgent’, and ‘state splinter’ origins of armed groups. We argue that fundamentally different dynamics of conflict shape armed group origins in the context of broad-based mobilisation, peripheral challenges to the state, and intra-regime fragmentation. Armed groups that emerge in these contexts in general differ in their initial membership and leadership, the basic organisational dimensions that we focus on. We demonstrate the utility of our typology by mapping different origins of armed groups onto existing cross-national data and charting type narratives in illustrative cases. This discussion advances recent efforts to understand the importance of armed group emergence for outcomes of interest to conflict scholars by moving beyond either separate types of origins or highly disaggregated organisational analyses to broader conflict dynamics through which armed groups form, with implications for how these groups act. Future research should consider different origins which we identify in comparison through an in-depth analysis of armed groups’ complex histories.
Differential participation in violent protests has been explained in terms of protesters’ personal values, biographical availability, and network embeddedness. However, the form of mass protest may be influenced less by the microstructure of protesters and more by their collective past experiences of resistance. Through the South Korean candlelight protests of 2008 and 2016–2017, this article examines novices’ and repeaters’ perceptions of nonviolent protest. Onsite survey and interview data show that previous frustrating protest experiences in 2008 made repeater protesters more perseverant, even when violence was expected. Repeaters had little faith in “disciplined” protests, whereas novices hoped for change through “peaceful” protests. I argue that previous experiences of resistance and their outcomes influenced protesters’ perceptions on the efficiency and legitimacy of violent protest. By examining protesters’ varying perseverance, which mediates the condition of violence, this article advances the relationship between violence and civic participation.
Why do governments make concessions to some rebels but not others? We argue that the origins of rebel groups influence the bargaining process, and the government’s willingness to make concessions in particular. Rebel groups inherit different resource endowments – community ties and military expertise – from pre-existing “parent” organizations. These resource endowments are visible to the government, and they provide critical information about the likely durability of the rebellion. We expect that rebel group origins facilitating these endowments are associated with the state offering concessions earlier in the conflict. Employing original data on rebel group origins, as well as information on government concessions during post-Cold War African conflicts, we find general support for our expectations, although not all types of parent organizations are equally beneficial to rebel groups when it comes to extracting concessions from the state.
Over the past two decades, there has been growing scholarly interest in nonviolent resistance—a method of conflict in which unarmed people mobilize collective protests, strikes, and boycotts in a coordinated way. Mass movements that rely overwhelmingly on nonviolent resistance sometimes feature unarmed collective violence, fringe violence, or even organized armed action. What do we know about the effects of violent flanks on movement outcomes? This article reviews findings on the relationships between nonviolent and unarmed resistance, violence, and the outcomes of mass mobilization, as well as the directionality of these relationships. The balance of empirical evidence suggests that organized armed violence appears to reduce the chances for otherwise nonviolent movements to succeed, whereas unarmed collective violence has more ambiguous effects. The field will benefit from greater analytical precision in comparing the units of analysis, scope, intensity, and media framing of violent flank activity.
Pacifism and nonviolence have separable foci and origins, yet also share important similarities, and their respective histories are mutually imbricated. Both have, furthermore, been attracting growing scholarly interest. However, that scholarship has so far been scattered in disparate sub-disciplinary debates and specialist publications. The time has come for an ambitious multidisciplinary agenda to coordinate research on topics including: the varieties of approaches to nonviolence and pacifism; accusations against pacifism; tensions between pacifism and nonviolence; theories and practices outside the Global North; the multiple consequences of violence; violence and nonviolence in political thought; the relationship between violence/nonviolence and gender, race, and other social identities; the religious roots of pacifism and nonviolence; the place of violence and nonviolence in popular culture; practical nonviolent policies of governance; predominant assumptions concerning violence in ir; the threshold characteristics of ‘violence’; and methodological challenges in the study and pedagogy of nonviolence and pacifism.
One of the unresolved puzzles in the civil resistance and contentious politics literatures is why some movements that begin seeking limited redress in a certain policy space escalate their claims to demand the ousting of a national leader or the entire regime, a process the article terms ‘demand escalation’. For instance, in the summer of 2019, thousands took to the streets of Hong Kong to protest about a proposed extradition bill that would allow criminal suspects to be sent to mainland China to face trial in courts controlled by the Communist Party. However, even after Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, announced the formal withdrawal of the controversial bill, protests continued with some calling for greater democracy and others demanding Lam’s resignation. Whereas most of the literature on civil resistance treats demands as fixed and focuses on different methods of struggle to pursue predefined ends, this article shows that demands can change as a result of the state–dissent interaction. The article argues that movements are more likely to escalate their demands when the state responds to the initial nonviolent action with a disproportionate use of force, because such an action intensifies the grievances the protesters have against the state and betrays the remaining trust that people might have had in the government. The analysis of a new quantitative dataset that catalogues both reformist and maximalist opposition campaigns globally supports this claim. By incorporating non-maximalist campaigns into the analysis and not treating demands as fixed, this article adds to our understanding of mass campaigns and highlights an overlooked means by which nonviolent campaigns can up their ante without resorting to violence.
This article examines the interplay between nonviolent movements’ use of polarizing issues for mobilization and pro-regime countermobilization. Thailand has been chosen as an explanatory case study because it has a history of political polarization and pro-regime mass mobilization. I focus on polarizing frames that were incorporated into the 2020 nonviolent resistance campaigns, which addressed a taboo subject in the country: the monarchy. In response, the regime applied various forms of repression, including the mobilization of royalists. But the assumption that the regime single-handedly mobilized countermovements is only half of the story. Autonomous elements within countermovements also joined forces when there were sufficient social conditions. By juxtaposing protest event data with an analysis of mobilizing frames (through movements’ Twitter hashtags), I shed light on a two-pronged process that underpins the nexus between framing choice and countermobilization: (a) how a movement’s choice for polarizing frames sustains existing ideological and identity-based cleavages, antagonizing segments of society that perceive their collective identity to be under siege and; (b) how these ideological and identity-based cleavages also provide social sources for countermobilization. I conclude by addressing some implications of this framing choice–countermobilization nexus on repression dynamics and suggest how we can rethink the relationship between strategic framing and nonviolent resistance campaigns in divided societies.
In this article, we introduce an updated version of the Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes dataset (NAVCO 2.1), which compiles annual data on 389 nonviolent and violent mass movements for regime change, anti-occupation, and secession from 1945 to 2013. This version of the dataset corrects known coding errors in NAVCO 2.0, adds news cases (including the Arab uprisings), and codes attributes for each campaign year (such as participation size and diversity, the behavior of regime elites, repression and its effects, support from external actors, and campaign outcomes). In addition, NAVCO 2.1 adds several new attributes to each campaign-year, including more precise participation figures, more nuanced data about the scope, intensity, and degree of violent flank behavior and state repression, and further information about the parallel or alternative institutions developed by the campaign. The data reveal four key findings: (1) that the success rate of nonviolent resistance campaigns has declined since 2001; (2) that far more people have participated in nonviolent than violent campaigns in the postwar period; (3) that nonviolent campaigns suffer far fewer per-capita fatalities than armed campaigns; and (4) that incidental violence by dissidents has become a more common feature of contemporary nonviolent campaigns compared with earlier cases. The article concludes with suggestions for further research.
This thesis contributes to the growing literature on the ethics of violent political resistance to the state and its constituent institutions. Political theory has historically been defined by two traditions: the revolutionary tradition, and the civil disobedience tradition that limits political participation to (generally) non-violent communicative law-breaking. Theorists have recently sought to forge a third path by describing the conditions for justified non-revolutionary violence. In particular, these theorists have drawn on the resources of the literature on defensive action to discern the normative limits of political violence, arguing that violence against an unjust state constitutes a form of defence. This thesis investigates the moral permissibility of violent political resistance. It assesses what it would take for political violence to satisfy the criteria of necessity, success, and proportionality, drawing nuanced moral distinctions between different kinds of political violence. In the process, this thesis considers in detail a range of topics: whether political violence impermissibly manipulates its victims; which agents of the state are liable to be harmed by virtue of their complicity in injustice; what moral implications follow from empirical evidence of the ineffectiveness of political violence; and whether the victims of injustice can commit violence to defend their dignity. While the thesis applies the defensive framework to a range of real and hypothetical examples throughout, it pays particular attention to the case of Fees Must Fall, a South African student movement that resorted to violence against state institutions and public universities. This thesis finds that limited violence can be permissible as a defence against injustice, particularly if violence is non-manipulative and directed discerningly at individuals complicit in institutions responsible for injustice. This thesis also defends violence against empirical criticisms of its inefficacy, but it reaches sceptical conclusions about the use of violence in defence of dignity.
States may use repression to control establishments such as the media and civil society organizations (CSOs). Yet, repressing the media and CSOs may backfire and trigger anti-government opposition. I study the effects of state repression targeting the media and CSOs on the onset of violent and nonviolent anti-government opposition by employing a global panel dataset with a timespan between 1961 and 2013. The findings suggest that repression of the media and CSOs have a divergent impact on anti-government opposition: repression of the media is the major driver of nonviolence, but it has no effect on the onset of violent opposition; repression of CSOs matters only for violent opposition, but not for nonviolence. I explain this result by concentrating on the different ways in which repression targeting the media and CSOs affect the resources and opportunity for mobilization, with a focus on the diversity of mobilization pools available for anti-government opposition.
Los estados pueden recurrir a la represión para controlar a instituciones como los medios de comunicación y las organizaciones de la sociedad civil (Civil Society Organizations, CSO). Sin embargo, la represión de los medios de comunicación y las CSO puede resultar contraproducente y desencadenar una oposición contra el gobierno. Me dedico al estudio de los efectos que tiene la represión estatal orientada hacia los medios de comunicación y las CSO en el surgimiento de la oposición violenta y no violenta contra el gobierno. Para ello utilizo un conjunto de datos de paneles globales de un período de tiempo entre 1961 y 2013. Los resultados sugieren que la represión de los medios de comunicación y las CSO tienen un impacto divergente en la oposición contra el gobierno: la represión de los medios de comunicación es el principal motor de la oposición no violenta, pero no tiene efectos sobre el surgimiento de la oposición violenta; la represión de las CSO tiene importancia solo en el caso de la oposición violenta, pero no en el caso de la oposición no violenta. Para explicar este resultado me concentro en las diferentes maneras en que la represión orientada hacia los medios de comunicación y las CSO afectan los recursos y las oportunidades de movilización, con un enfoque en la diversidad de grupos de movilización de oposición contra el gobierno.
Des États peuvent avoir recours à la répression pour contrôler des entités telles que les médias et les organisations de la société civile (OSC). Cependant, la répression des médias et des OSC peut être contreproductive et déclencher une opposition antigouvernementale. J’étudie les effets de la répression étatique ciblant les médias et les OSC sur le déclenchement d’oppositions antigouvernementales violentes et non violentes en employant un jeu de données portant sur un panel mondial et sur la période 1961-2013. Mes conclusions suggèrent que la répression ciblant les médias et les OSC a un impact divergent sur l’opposition antigouvernementale: d’une part, la répression ciblant les médias est le principal moteur de l’opposition non violente, mais elle n’a aucun effet sur le déclenchement d’une opposition violente, et d’autre part, la répression ciblant les OSC n’a de l’importance que pour l’opposition violente, mais pas pour l’opposition non violente. J’explique ce résultat en me concentrant sur les différentes façons dont la répression ciblant les médias et les OSC affecte les ressources et l’opportunité de mobilisation en mettant l’accent sur la diversité des viviers de mobilisation disponibles pour l’opposition antigouvernementale.
Authorities and elites who feel threatened by nonviolent social movements use a variety of methods to demobilize such challengers. When they use violence, such as shootings, assassinations, beatings, and incarceration, they risk producing moral shock among the public, undermining their own legitimacy and advancing recruitment to the movement. This dynamic is called the “paradox of repression,” and nonviolent activists can practice “repression management” through careful strategizing that makes it more likely that repression will backfire if authorities engage in repression.
For the second time in five years, citizens of Hong Kong mobilized in protest against proposed legislation that threatened to erode the Special Administrative Region’s relative degree of autonomy from the People’s Republic of China. The ensuing Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (Anti- ELAB) Movement subsequently became the largest social movement in Hong Kong’s history. While the movement had peaceful beginnings, clashes between police and protesters turned increasingly violent over time. Under what conditions do primarily nonviolent movements escalate to violence? Given the widespread diffusion of social movements around the world, insights into potential explanations to this question are important for both policymakers and citizens alike. Regarding this question of violent escalation, the social movements literature suggests that movements make strategic decisions to escalate, are driven toward this outcome by state repression, or alternatively engage in nonviolent escalation. This paper argues that a combination of state repression and a determination of the inefficacy of nonviolence by movement actors influences the likelihood of violent escalation. In a qualitative case study of the Anti-ELAB Movement, this paper finds support for the hypothesis that a combination of state repression and the perceived ineffectiveness of nonviolent protest drives violent escalation.
This article examines the conditional effect that repression has on non-violent vs. violent mass mobilization. While governments often resort to violence to deter future mobilization, studies of the repression–dissent nexus have produced divergent evidence with regard to the effect of repression. Many argue that repression tends to backfire, while others demonstrate its effectiveness in reducing mobilization. I argue that the effect of repression varies by differing opposition tactics. I test two competing propositions regarding the effect of repression using event data from the Non-violent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes dataset (NAVCO 3.0) from 1990 to 2012. The results show that repression, specifically physical repression, of non-violent opposition reduces participation size. Non-physical repression, on the other hand, has less of a deterrence effect on non-violent dissident mobilization.
In 2019, what began in Hong Kong as a series of rallies against a proposal to permit extraditions to mainland China grew into a raft of anti-authoritarian protests and challenges to Beijing’s grip on the city. Given the gravest political crisis confronting Hong Kong in decades, this research investigates why the protests have lacked centralized leaders and why the solidarity among the peaceful and militant protesters has been immense. This article also examines the strengths and limitations of this leaderless movement with different case studies. The authors argue that serious threats to the commonly cherished values in Hong Kong, amid the absence of stable and legitimate leaders in its democracy movement, underpinned the formation of a multitude of decentralized decision-making platforms that orchestrated the protests in 2019. Those platforms involved both well-known movement leaders organizing conventional peaceful protests and anonymous activists crafting a diversity of tactics in ingenious ways, ranging from economic boycotts, human chains around the city, artistic protests via Lennon Walls, to the occupying of the international airport. The decentralized decision-making platforms, while having generated a boon to the movement with their beneficial tactical division of labor, also produced risks to the campaign. The risks include the lack of legitimate representatives for conflict-deescalating negotiations, rise in legitimacy-sapping violence, and susceptibility to underestimating the risks of various tactics stemming from a dearth of thorough political communication among anonymous participants who had different goals and degrees of risk tolerance. In short, Hong Kong’s anti-extradition movement in 2019 sheds light on the basis of leaderless movements, and on both the strengths and risks of such movements.