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Actually I would argue exactly the opposite. If you are an oppressive regime, you likely have the maximum capability for violence many times over in your regio
by fsloth 7y ago
Actually I would argue exactly the opposite.
If you are an oppressive regime, you likely have the maximum capability for violence many times over in your region.
Hence violent civil resistance will start off with a bad footing in two ways:
1. People are not so keen to take up arms
2. For any amount of violence, the government will likely respond with an overwhelming amount of violence.
Non-violent strategies, on the other hand beat these two stepping stones:
1. Non violent strategies, if they are at all popular, are way less riskier for individual participants and due to their non violent nature are easier for people to copy
2. Government has a way harder time to respond to non-localized non-violent influence strategies, as their oppressive regime is likely specialized in fielding force projection troops to localized events
- chongli 7y agoYeah, the determinant of the success of nonviolent movements is not the oppressiveness of the regime, it's the relative dependence on resources vs labour. Since it's much harder for the government to force everyone to go back to work than it is to throw a few violent people in jail, nonviolent movements can paralyze an economy and hold the government to account. This is not as effective in so called "resource-cursed" countries. There, the government does not care whether the population works, so long as the oil keeps flowing. It's much harder for a nonviolent movement to disrupt the economy in that case, and hence oppressive regimes tend to thrive in resource-cursed countries.