Swords into ploughshares? Why human rights abuses persist after resistance campaigns

Abstract

Human rights abuse tends to increase during national crises, such as civil wars and mass nonviolent uprisings. Under what conditions does this abuse abate or persist? I argue that violent challenges provoke much more coercive state responses, exposing more personnel within the security forces to extreme forms of repression and priming them (both leaders and followers) to reproduce these behaviors after the conflict has terminated. This effect is mitigated or avoided when challengers rely on nonviolent tactics instead of violence, leading to less post-conflict abuse. I test this argument with several quantitative methods, which establish a positive association between nonviolent resistance campaigns and subsequent freedom from political killings. Results also suggest that democratization can partially – but not fully – counteract the repressive legacies of violent conflict. By choosing to specialize in nonviolent tactics, therefore, resistance leaders avoid a repression trap that not even democratization can fully disarm.

Guest Editors’ introduction: Nonviolent resistance and its discontents

“…Our contributions feature a wide range of methodological and empirical approaches, demonstrating the pluralistic approaches to these topics that have emerged in recent years. Among the contributions, we see the use of novel datasets (Dahlum, 2023; Kang, 2023; Nilsson & Svensson, 2023; Shay, 2023), qualitative process tracing (Clarke, 2023), observational data analysis (Cunningham, 2023; Dorff, Adcox & Konet, 2023; Turner, 2023), field surveys (Croco, Cunningham & Vincent, 2023; Grewal, Kilavuz & Kubinec, 2023) and mixed methodologies (Sombatpoonsiri, 2023). Methodological pluralism leads to more generalizable findings and greater engagement with a broader research and policy community.…”