Comparing Protest Massacres

Abstract

Why do some bouts of collective action end in bloodshed? This study evaluates a diverse collection of cases featuring opposition movements that experienced government‐led massacres. Historically, protest massacres originate to 19th century struggles associated with populational needs of obtaining public goods and political representation from governments. Unlike genocide and politicide which are likely to take place during heightened conflict, protest massacres tend to occur outside of war and civil war. Data on 76 incidents (1819–2017) capturing direct action strategies, preceding levels of mobilization, regime threat levels, and temporal characteristics of each massacre is analyzed.

Reinforcing Criticisms of Civil Resistance: A Response to Onken, Shemia-Goeke, and Martin

“…My criticisms of widely used data and coding practices in nonviolent civil resistance research stem from personal experiences with the Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes (NAVCO) 1.0 and 2.0 data sets. Having engaged in qualitative and comparative inquiry on nonviolence during doctoral and postdoctoral studies, I was well aware of these data and after substantial inquiry on many cases, variables, and research topics such as repression backfire (Anisin, 2016), state repression (Anisin, 2019), and security force defection (Anisin, 2020b; 2020c), I started to notice problems. Before delving into these problems, we must keep in mind that these data are widely utilized, cited, and studied across interdisciplinary scholarly outlets.…”