Research Note Civil Resistance in the Streetlight: Replicating and Assessing Evidence on Nonviolent Effectiveness

Does civil resistance work? Research emphasizes the effectiveness of nonviolent resistance over violent resistance in achieving campaign goals, with the seminal study Why Civil Resistance Works (WCRW) by Chenoweth and Stephan being the main point of reference to date. I revisit this pivotal finding...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Comparative politics 2023-07, Vol.55 (4), p.639-651
Main Author: Dworschak, Christoph
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bias
Bootstrap method
Campaign Success
Civil Resistance
Effectiveness
Nonviolence
Resistance
Robustness
Simulation
Violence Bias
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Summary:Does civil resistance work? Research emphasizes the effectiveness of nonviolent resistance over violent resistance in achieving campaign goals, with the seminal study Why Civil Resistance Works (WCRW) by Chenoweth and Stephan being the main point of reference to date. I revisit this pivotal finding in three steps. First, I reproduce WCRW's results on nonviolent effectiveness. Second, I discuss how cases may have been over-looked due to a streetlight effect. Third, I quantify the results' sensitivity using simulations. I find that WCRW's main findings on nonviolent effectiveness are highly sensitive to variable selection, under-coverage bias, bootstrapping, and omitted variable bias. As a routine reference in scholarship and the public discourse, assessing the robustness of WCRW's findings is relevant to practitioners and researchers
ISSN:0010-4159
2151-6227
DOI:10.5129/001041523X16745900727169