The Contagion of Nonviolent Conflict Between
Autocracies⇤
Alex Braithwaite†
Je↵rey Kucik‡
Jessica Maves§
September 29, 2012
⇤
Paper to be presented at the Workshop on Data on Nonviolent Conflict, Uppsala (Sweden): October 11-12, 2012.
This is a very rough draft. Please do not cite or circulate without permission. All remaining errors are our own.
†
Department of Political Science, University College London, alex.braithwaite@ucl.ac.uk
‡
Department of Political Science, University College London, j.kucik@ucl.ac.uk
§
Department of Political Science, Pennsylvania State University, jessica.maves@psu.edu
1
Introduction
Domestic challenges to despotic governments appear to be contagious. Recent studies show that
violent conflicts spread across borders in systematic ways (Buhaug & Gleditsch 2008; Braithwaite
2010; Maves & Braithwaite 2013). In this paper we ask: are nonviolent civil conflicts1 against
autocratic regimes also contagious?2 If so, under what conditions?
The unexpected eruption of the Arab Spring and its rapid spread highlight the importance of
this question. The period from December 2010 to April 2011 was marked by the emergence of both
violent and nonviolent conflicts across the majority of countries in the Middle East and North Africa
(MENA) region. Each of these events seemed to contribute to contagion in the region, with rebels
and opposition movements apparently motivated by actions taken by similar groups overseas3 —
namely domestic organizations operating in comparable states (e.g., other autocracies). Contagion
also helps explain the spread of Communist movements across East and Southeast Asia in the
1960s and 1970s, as well as the wave of protests and civil wars that accompanied democratization
in post-Soviet Eastern Europe. It is cases such as these that motivate the present study.4
To answer the questions posed at the outset of this paper, we build upon the growing literature
on the transnational causes of civil war (see, e.g., Lake & Rothchild 1998; Gleditsch 2007; Buhaug
& Gleditsch 2008) and the emerging work on the efficacy of nonviolent resistance (c.f., Chenoweth
& Stephan 2011). We o↵er two specific contributions. First, we argue that nonviolent movements
inspire emulation within the family of autocracies. The occurrence of nonviolent movements signals
to latent opposition groups (in other autocracies) that overcoming collective action problems is
possible within the constraints facing domestic actors. Second, we recognize that these constraints
vary. Not all would-be opposition groups have the same opportunities to act. Only in those
autocracies where the opposition has had time to “mature” will the desire to emulate nonviolence
1
By ‘conflict’ we refer to campaigns in resistance to the established authority or government of the state. We
employ this label with a view to referring to both violent and nonviolent forms. We use it interchangeably with
resistance, instability, unrest, and rebellion. In this paper, we focus our attention upon accounting for patterns in
nonviolent conflict.
2
We focus on autocracies in particular because this removes one source of variation and because autocracies are
united in placing at least some constraints on the expression and activities of opposition groups.
3
Here, as is the case across the literature on contagion, “overseas” refers to other countries—both across oceans
as well as across a land border.
4
Whilst we use the example of the Arab Spring to help motivate the research questions at the heart of our paper,
we are not able to o↵er direct empirical analyses on the individual events of which it was comprised because of a lack
of requisite data covering the period 2010—2012.
1
elsewhere translate into the ability to act domestically. We measure the opportunity to mature by
looking at the length of time that an autocracy has had an elected national legislature. Elected
legislatures provide the opposition opportunities to gain access to government. This, in turn, can
lead to longer lasting, more ideologically coherent, and more experienced groups—i.e., the kind of
groups that can e↵ectively overcome collective action problems once catalyzed by overseas examples.
We test our argument using data on nonviolent campaigns within autocratic regimes between
1946 and 2006. Our models confirm the validity of our test hypotheses. They show, first, that
nonviolence is contagious between autocratic states. When nonviolence occurs in one autocracy
it significantly increases the likelihood of a movement occurring in another. Second, the results
show that contagion is conditioned by the political context in which groups operate. While we
assume that all domestic opposition groups look for exemplars of resistance outside of the state,
our findings suggest that only those groups with long-established channels of opportunity (through
which they oppose the regime) are able to convert the desire to emulate overseas nonviolence to
action.
The paper proceeds as follows. First, we discuss the dominant themes and logics of conflict
contagion from the literatures on internal conflict and civil resistance. Second, we discuss the role
of political institutions, opportunities, and opposition opportunities in the contagion of nonviolence.
Third, we detail a research design to test the implications of our logic. Finally, we outline the results
of our multivariate analyses and discuss their implications.
2
Background
The proposition that conflict is contagious features prominently in both pessimistic prognoses of
regional instability and optimistic opining about the potential for waves of revolutions against
autocrats. Indeed, both views of contagion featured in popular discussions of the course and likely
outcomes of the Arab Spring. On the one hand, countries such as Egypt and Algeria were said to be
ripe for mass-led democratic change in the aftermath of government overthrow in Tunisia. On the
other hand, commentators spoke cautiously of the danger of bloodshed as uprisings against dictators
in Libya and Syria took hold. Herein, we seek to explain cases of the contagion of nonviolence,
2
such as that from Tunisia to Egypt and Algeria.5
The onset of new civil conflict episodes of this kind is most commonly explained by factors
prevalent within the state. Poverty (Collier & Hoe✏er 2002; Collier et al. 2003; Fearon & Laitin
2003), ethnic diversity/dominance (Horowitz 1985, Hegre & Sambanis 2006), and a lack of political
opportunity (Elbadawi & Sambanis 2002; Miguel, Satyanath, & Sergenti 2004) are frequently cited
as causes of civil strife and wars. Much of this literature focuses upon explaining the onset of challenges that rely upon violent tactics. Kubik (1998) and Koopmans (2007) theorize that restrictions
on access to policymaking channels and government more generally should lead to the radicalization of opposition groups and the increased probability of protests and strikes, a few elements of
nonviolent conflict.
In part as an e↵ort to cover the shortfall of domestic theories of civil conflict in accounting for
new onsets, recent scholarship has established some principles regarding the transnational causes of
civil conflict (c.f., Hill, Rothchild, & Cameron 1998; Gleditsch 2007). Again, much of this literature
focuses attention upon cases in which campaigns adopted predominantly violent tactics. As part
of this, a body of quantitative studies (see, e.g., Salehyan & Gleditsch 2006; Buhaug & Gleditsch
2008) has built upon Lake and Rothchild’s (1998) comprehensive treatment of the international
contagion of conflict. Contagion refers here (both in this literature in general and in the current
paper, more specifically) to the e↵ect that an event in one country has in increasing the probability
of a similar event occurring in another country; or to put it another way, a circumstance in which
“[p]rior adoption of a trait or practice in a population alters the probability of adoption for remaining non-adopters.” (Strang 1991, 325). For Elkins and Simmons (2005), apparent clusters of
interdependent but uncoordinated decision-making of various kinds—including the di↵usion of innovations, policies, democratic regimes, and conflicts—occur because of one or both of two possible
mechanisms: (a) another’s adoption alters the value of the practice and/or (b) another’s adoption
imparts information.
We refer here to the second of these two mechanisms of contagion as emulation, and it is the
primary focus of this paper with respect to nonviolence. The emulation of tactics being used
overseas is identified frequently within literature on the spread of protests and other forms of
5
The examples from the Arab Spring suggest that violence and nonviolence may also share some form of contagion.
This is not the focus of this paper—aside from the inclusion in our empirical models of a single parameter controlling
for violence overseas. This certainly warrants further investigation in future research, however.
3
nonviolence (McAdam 1988; Hill, Rothchild, & Cameron 1998). Hill, Rothchild, and Cameron
(1998) o↵er an account of protest that critiques logics omitting transnational factors. They note
that domestic political opportunities for nonviolent protest are only very slowly dynamic and exhibit
considerable uncertainty. As such, they argue political opportunity structures that are conducive
to protest are insufficient on their own to account for mass mobilization. Rather, new onsets of
protest require the addition of a crucial catalyst for mobilization—namely, the demonstration of
utility elsewhere.6
The catalyzing influence of overseas exemplars is also commonly cited as being central to processes of the di↵usion of democracy, and the influence of democratization upon conflict onset.
Huntington (1991) identifies a demonstration e↵ect at the core of the so-called “Third Wave” of
democracy, and Starr (1991) argues that geographic proximity is key to enabling the dissemination
of knowledge regarding the value of democratization. Gleditsch and Ward (2006) demonstrate that
countries are more likely to democratize if their neighbors are democratic and that democratization
often results from a change in the relative power of domestic actors and their evaluation of political
institutions. They argue that this changed position and perception is influenced by forces that are
external, rather than internal, to the country.
Whether designed to establish the sources of the spread of violence, democracy, or—as is the
case here—nonviolence, we suggest that each of these explanations of contagion actually neglects
to explain when and why the desire to emulate will prove practicable. In particular, we expect
that an increase in nonviolence overseas is likely to increase the desire to emulate at home; however, emulation is only possible for a subset of groups: those that benefit from a long-established
opportunity to oppose the regime.
3
Theory
We begin by making two assumptions about politics within autocratic states. We assume that
within the general population there exists some underlying desire for change that could mature into
6
Fox (2004) o↵ers an assessment of the potential for contagion of both violent and nonviolent forms of opposition of
the state. His analysis o↵ers a somewhat confounding set of results given the logic and findings of the wider literature.
Focusing exclusively upon religious movements, Fox demonstrates that contagious e↵ects are observed only for violent
activities and not for nonviolent alternatives. He suggests that this may be unique to religious campaigns given that
violence plays an intrinsic role in most religions.
4
a mass movement against the regime. In other words, there exists an inherent grievance against the
government. We also assume that the leader(ship) of the state (the autocrat) prioritizes holding
onto power and that this limits their interest in moving towards full democratization (Gandhi and
Przeworski 2007; Magaloni 2008).
Starting from those assumptions, we argue that two mechanisms help account for the potential
contagion of nonviolent conflict across borders and for the escalation of grievance to conflict. First,
external catalysts can encourage action at home by providing domestic groups with examples of
successful mobilization abroad. In particular, we expect that potential nonviolent movements will
pay most attention to events occurring in structurally-equivalent states (i.e. where opposition
groups face similar conditions and struggles). Maves and Braithwaite (2013) demonstrate that this
is true with respect to the contagion of civil wars, and we anticipate the same principle applies to
nonviolent conflict as well. As such, this analysis focuses on the contagion of nonviolence among
autocratic regimes. Second, the domestic institutional context determines the extent to which
opposition groups, motivated by overseas activity, can e↵ectively overcome their own collective
action problems.
3.1
Why Would Nonviolence Spread?
There are strong theoretical reasons to expect that nonviolent conflict di↵uses around the global
in a systematic manner. Existing research shows that actors seeking reform emulate examples of
successful mobilization across a variety of policy domains. Emulation is shown to be the catalyst
of, for instance, the imitation of innovation and policy adoption between U.S. states (Simmons
& Elkins 2004, Volden 2006), the di↵usion of democratic institutions between countries globally
(Starr 1991, O’Loughlin et al 1998), and the development of regional zones of peace and cooperation
(Gleditsch 2002). In each of these areas, emulation results from information that hints at increases
in incentives—i.e., from the prospect of an improvement in conditions (Elkins & Simmons 2005).
Similar dynamics ought to apply to the contagion of nonviolence. A key premise of the logic
of cross-national contagion is that opposition actors are inspired by actors overseas that have
themselves challenged their governments. Examples of successful mobilizations abroad encourage
latent domestic opposition groups to act. These examples show domestic groups that action is
possible for groups who are constrained by non-democratic institutions and, by extension, who face
5
significant collective action problems.
There are numerous sources of the collective action problem facing opposition groups. Chief
among them are the costs that individuals bear when participating in an opposition movement.
Individuals (or indeed groups) may not want to risk participating in opposition movements because
of the repercussions doing so may have for their livelihoods and safety. Lost employment and
potential imprisonment are just two of the risks that an individual may have to take in order to
participate. These risks are then exacerbated by uncertainty over the outcome of an opposition
movement. Ending up on the losing side of a campaign increased the likelihood of paying a high
cost for participation.
However, these costs are relatively low for nonviolent movements. To begin with, Chenoweth
& Stephan (2011) argue and robustly demonstrate that nonviolent campaigns have a participation
advantage over violent insurgencies, which is an important factor in determining campaign outcomes. The moral, physical, informational, and commitment barriers to participation are much
lower for nonviolent resistance than for violent insurgency, which helps to attract greater levels of
popular participation than violent conflict (Kurzman 1996; Chenoweth & Stephan 2011)
Nonviolence is also associated with a relatively high likelihood of success. Existing research
demonstrates quite starkly that a greater proportion of campaigns leading to the successful removal
of governments and significant changes to state policies rely on nonviolent resistance (Chenoweth
& Stephan 2011). The level and depth of participation is critical to determining the outcome of
a resistance movement (DeNardo 1985; Lichbach 1994; Weinstein 2007; Wickham-Crowley 1992)
and nonviolence consistently encourages greater participation because it has fewer associated costs
and barriers (Kurzman 1996). Higher levels of (diverse) participation bring tactical and strategic
advantages. Of 259 campaigns (of the 323 for which data were available), 80 nonviolent and 179
violent campaigns have very di↵erent average participation levels: 50,000 and 200,000, respectively.
Moreover, 20 of the largest 25 campaigns were nonviolent (Chenoweth & Stephan 2011: chapter 2).
The collective action problems that have to be overcome for nonviolent mobilizations are significantly lowers than those associated with violence. This has important implications for the contagion
of political unrest. Existing work shows that violent movements spread across countries systematically. Domestic groups’ observations of violent movements in comparable countries increases the
likelihood of violent action at home. Nonviolent movements are associated with lower barriers, and
6
should therefore also di↵use readily around the globe.
We contend, therefore, that contagion depends upon the individual actor’s observation of (i)
relatively low costs for participation and (ii) the belief that action can be successful. We argue that
these precursors for contagion are likely in nonviolent movements. All else being equal, therefore,
we expect that:
Hypothesis 1. Nonviolent conflict spreads between autocratic states.
3.2
The Conditioning E↵ects of Domestic Institutions
Our first hypothesis rests squarely upon the well established conclusion that the barriers to and
costs associated with participation in nonviolence are low, or at least are lower than those associated
with participation in violent campaigns. However, as much as an opposition group may wish to
emulate exemplars of nonviolence overseas, they require time, e↵ort, and resources to be able to
recruit the large numbers required to sustain a nonviolent campaign. An organization must have
been founded. Some experience with opposition is required. Time is required to facilitate the
development of trust within the movement. In sum: opposition groups need more than the desire
to mobilize. They also need the opportunity.
We argue that opposition movements must “mature” in order for emulation of nonviolence
to be a practicable option. Indeed, much of the literature addressing the onset of civil conflict
wrestles with how rebels are able to overcome key collective action problems that undermine the
kind of mobilization and participation upon which resistance movements depend (Lichbach 1995,
Weinstein 2005). The social movement literature o↵ers at least two major accounts of mobilization
that are germane to understandings of conflict onset and contagion. Political opportunity structure
(POS) arguments center upon the fundamental premise that collective action is encouraged (or,
indeed, discouraged) by the characteristics and dimensions of the prevailing political environment—
including but not limited to key institutions of government (c.f., Tarrow 1998). POS theories have
been very widely employed; it has been claimed that, “most contemporary theories of revolution
start from much the same premise, arguing that revolutions owe less to the e↵orts of insurgents than
to the work of systemic crises which render the existing regime weak and vulnerable to challenge
from virtually any quarter” (DeNardo 1985: 24). By contrast, resource mobilization theories (RMT)
7
tend to argue that mobilization occurs most efficiently when resources converge around a set of
shared preferences.
Within autocratic states, the maturation of an opposition requires political opportunities which
a↵ord citizens a chance to identify and organize with others who hold similar beliefs and grievances.
The presence of a legislature in an autocracy provides an indication that opposition forces are at
least minimally organized and can no longer be bought o↵ with rents (Gandhi and Przeworski 2006).
As Maves and Braithwaite (2013) argue, elected legislatures provide openings in the structures of
an autocratic state that are regularly associated with the absence of violent conflict when the
state resides in a conflict-free neighborhood, but with the contagion of violent conflict when the
state resides in a conflict-ridden neighborhood.7 They demonstrate that this is the case because
these institutional structures serve as a sufficient concession by the dictator to the opposition when
the balance of power still rests firmly with the regime, but violence in other states increases the
opposition’s strength relative to the regime.
With respect to the emulation of nonviolence, the longevity of these institutional openings
and opportunities (rather than their mere existence) plays a crucial role. In order for movements
and campaigns to achieve a critical threshold sufficient to sustain a large-scale challenge against
the autocrat requires an adequate maturation period. Returning to the example of the Arab
Spring, countries with young or nonexistent elected legislatures experienced the onset of violent
conflict: Libya has been without an elected legislature since 1969, and Bahrain only established
their legislature in 2003. Conversely, countries that had a long history of elected institutions
a↵ording the opposition a chance to mature organizationally tended to be faced with nonviolent
challenges. Egypt has had a popularly-elected legislature since 1964, and Tunisia since 1958.
Hypothesis 2. The likelihood of emulation of nonviolent conflicts between autocracies is conditioned by the longevity of political openings, with states enjoying a longer period of maturation for
opposition movements most likely to be a↵ected by contagion.
7
For example, peace prevailed in Niger following the establishment of an elected legislature. However, this peace
was short-lived. In 1991 the Tuaregs, unhappy about the regime’s unwillingness to make further compromises with
respect to autonomy, initiated a civil war against the Nigerien government, aided in large part by arms flows and
inspiration from other conflicts in the region. Importantly, though, not all autocratic legislatures are windowdressings. As an illustration of this point, the o↵er to give the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood’s political organization
more control over the legislative agenda concerning religious issues was sufficient to cause the group to call o↵ massive
protests against the regime (Schwedler 2006).
8
4
Research Design
Our tests employ explanatory variables relating to conflict experience and institutional design
within autocracies. Accordingly, we limit our analyses to autocracies. While a variety of data sets
exist to assess dimensions of (and di↵erences among) autocratic regimes, we use the data collected
by Cheibub, Gandhi, and Vreeland (2010; henceforth CGV) due to its wealth of information about
the institutions in these regimes. In keeping with the CGV definition, we code autocracies as those
regimes in which at least one of the following conditions is not met: both the legislature and the
executive are elected, multiple political parties outside the influence of the regime exist and compete in these elections, and executive power has been handed over peacefully between parties as
the result of elections.8 140 countries are represented in this population of autocracies from 1946
to 2006, with the country-year as our unit of observation.
Dependent Variable
This paper explores the e↵ect of nonviolence overseas and political opportunities at home on the
prospects for nonviolent challenges against local autocrats. The dependent variable is a binary indicator of whether a new campaign of nonviolence against the government breaks out in an autocracy
i in year t. We code this variable as “1” for every country-year in which a new campaign onset is
predominantly nonviolent and “0” otherwise. We utilize data from Chenoweth and Stephan (2011)
detailing 323 cases of violent and nonviolent resistance between 1900 and 2006. These data include
details of e↵orts to achieve regime change, the expulsion of foreign occupiers, and/or secession. We
include only the cases of nonviolence in our analyses, although we do control for the occurrence of
violence overseas. We observe 142 onsets of nonviolent resistance in autocracies in the post-WWII
period; 49 of these break out in autocracies without an elected legislature, while the remaining 93
are fought in autocracies with an elected legislature.
Explanatory Variables
We construct a measure of conflict in the population of autocracies that captures the rate of conflict
8
Because of this last rule, countries like Botswana and South Africa, as well as Japan and Mexico for most of
the period in this study, are considered to be non-democratic. Dropping the few countries which do not experience
executive turnover does not a↵ect our results.
9
amongst structurally-equivalent countries. The emulation mechanism of contagion is expected to
work most efficiently when valid reference groups are observable by potential adopters. This is
because potential adopters are likely to pay attention first to events and policies in similar countries
or contexts (Elkins & Simmons 2004: 45); that is to say that the observation of similar cases nearby
(in a social sense) reflects a cognitive heuristic in the calculation of utilities. For example, the Otpor
resistance movement in Serbia, which was integral in the 2000 removal of Slobodan Milosevic from
office, is said to have inspired several similar movements around the world, including the Bolga
movement in Uzbekistan opposing the dictator Islam Karimov, and the April 6 Youth Movement,
which has been active in Egypt in recent years.
Practically, this is measured as the percentage of all other autocracies in the international system
that experienced an ongoing campaign of nonviolence in the previous year. This continuous variable
conceptualizes a “neighborhood” as being comprised of countries that are institutionally similar
to one another, thereby providing a means to test the potential for emulation between opposition
groups faced with analogous political conditions.9 Again, these data are drawn from Chenoweth and
Stephan (2011). This variable, Nonviolence Overseas, serves as our primary explanatory variable
for tests of Hypothesis 1, and it is one of the constituent terms in our test of Hypothesis 2, which
requires an interaction term.10
The other constituent term in the interaction needs to capture di↵erent legacies of opposition
formation and types of institutional designs within autocracies. In an ideal scenario, we would
operationalize the concept of longevity of oppositional opportunity by measuring organizational
characteristics of the population of potential rebels and opposition movements within the state
that might choose to challenge the authority of the central government. Unfortunately, what little
data exists on rebel groups typically only characterizes those groups whose ambitions to raise arms
are actually realized (see, e.g., Cunningham et al. 2009). These data are not, therefore, available
for those latent challengers who are not able or willing (for whatever reason) to actually engage in
9
While we recognize that physical distance may be important, we believe it to be secondary to having a more
substantive reference group. Given that we cannot empirically consider the composition of opposition groups given
the lack of available data, the best alternative is to look at a similarity of situational contexts. However, our results
are robust to model specifications using a physical distance-based measure in place of this measure of structural
equivalence.
10
We preference employment of a non-geographic measure of the neighborhood both because of the reference
group concept of Elkins and Simmons—as noted above—and because there are some quite stark examples of alleged
emulation across considerable geographic ranges.
10
a campaign of resistance.
Thus, we opt to identify a proxy for this concept. In doing so, we prioritize a measure that (i) is
available for the full set of autocratic states11 , (ii) is available throughout a long temporal domain12 ,
and (iii) reflects a period of time during which opposition movements may plausibly have been able
to mature sufficiently to mount and sustain a nonviolent challenge against the government. For
this purpose we rely upon a measure that characterises openings and opportunities in the political
institutions of the state. Specifically, we measure the number of years for which a state’s current
elected legislature has been in place.
We do so by drawing upon one measure from the CGV dataset. Their indicator variable Closed
is a three-category coding of the nature of the country’s legislature. This variable is coded “0” if
the legislature does not exist, “1” if the legislature is appointed, and “2” if the legislature is elected.
From this, we first generate a dummy variable to indicate whether the autocracy had an elected
legislature on 1 January of the observed year.13 We then generate from this a measure, Age of Legislature, which counts the number of years that the state has had an elected legislature. This variable
ranges from 0 (the state does not have an elected legislature) to 62 years with an elected legislature.
Control Variables
We include a standard set of control variables from studies of civil conflict onset in both of our model
specifications. First, we include the natural log of GDP per capita, lagged one year. Economic
development typically has a robust negative relationship with the probability of violent conflict
onset and there is good reason to suspect that the same relationship would hold for nonviolence,
too. Second, we use the natural log of the population of a country, which is expected to be positively
correlated with the likelihood of all varieties of conflict onset. Both of these variables come from
Maddison (2010).
Third, we include an indicator of the level of violent conflict in the population of autocratic states
11
Data on freedoms and rights to associate and organize tend only to be available for a subset of countries and
their measurement commonly relies upon media reporting, which is often highly unreliable in autocratic states.
12
Again, data on freedoms and rights to associate and organize tend to only be available for the period post-1980
or so.
13
As was true in Maves and Braithwaite (2013), we use the more restrictive coding of ‘elected’ (rather than
appointed) legislatures only, as the process of elections suggests that the dictator has made an additional concession
to the opposition by foregoing his ability to hand-pick members of the institution, and as a result he may not have
much else to give in order to appease the opposition—short of democratizing completely.
11
in the previous year. This variable captures the weighted minimum distance between autocracy i
and civil wars in other autocracies j, by normalizing the inverse of the distance between autocracies
i and j by the sum of the inverse distances between i and all other autocracies j.14 Higher values of
this variable indicate that most autocracies in the international system experienced violent conflict,
or—more likely—that an autocracy or set of autocracies in close proximity to i were host to a civil
war in the previous year. The data on civil wars come from the Uppsala/PRIO Armed Conflict
Dataset (Gleditsch et al. 2002, Harbom and Wallensteen 2010), which defines an internal armed
conflict as fighting between the government of a country and one or more internal opposition
group(s) resulting in at least 25 deaths per year.
Fourth, we control for the proportion of neighbors that are coded as democracies in the CGV
dataset to account for the level of democracy in the neighborhood, lagged one year. Neighbors
are defined as those countries whose territories are separated by not more than 950 km.15 We use
data from the CGV dataset rather than the oft-employed Polity data because the latter has been
shown by Vreeland (2008) to be endogenous to the process of civil war onset, and thus it cannot
produce reliably unbiased results. We expect that countries in more democratic neighborhoods
should be less likely to experience the onset of nonviolent campaigns than their counterparts in
more autocratic neighborhoods. We are mindful, though, that this relationship may not be quite
as strong as that typically found in models of violent campaigns.
Fifth, we construct a binary variable to indicate the end of the Cold War period, as this has
been shown to increase not only the likelihood of countries democratising their institutions of
government but also the likelihood of mass protests and conflict. Last, we include a variable that
accounts for the number of years since the autocracy last experienced a nonviolent campaign. We
also include the squared and cubic polynomials of this variable to control for the possibility of
temporal non-monotonicity (Carter and Signorino 2010).
Summary statistics of the variables used in this study are reported in Table 1.
14
Further detail on the conceptual and operational definitions and construction of this variable is available in Maves
and Braithwaite (2013) as well as the study by Buhaug and Gleditsch (2008).
15
We also constructed this variable using higher minimum distance constraints, as well as more specific institutional
characteristics—namely, the proportion of autocratic neighbors with elected legislatures. Results were consistent for
all measures used.
12
5
Discussion of results
The results of our multivariate analyses are detailed in Table 2. To assess the validity of our
hypotheses, we present a pair of tests to address two related questions. First, we investigate
whether the occurrence of nonviolence in other autocracies increases the likelihood of nonviolence
in the home autocracy (Model 1). Second, we look more closely at the conditioning e↵ect that
domestic opportunities to organize against the government have upon this contagion (Model 2).
Both models are specified as probit regressions, with the same set of control variables and robust
standard errors clustered by country. Model 1 includes the independent measures of legislature age
(our proxy for the opposition maturation concept) and nonviolence overseas. Model 2 additionally
includes the interaction of these two component parts.
Table 2 about here
The coefficient on Nonviolence Overseas is positive and strongly significant in Model 1, which
supports the idea that nonviolence is contagious and thereby provides strong initial confirmation
of Hypothesis 1. A one standard deviation increase in the proportion of autocracies overseas
that experienced nonviolence in the previous year (this reflects an increase from 4.7% to 8.4% of
autocracies) is associated with a 38 percent increase in the predicted probability of the onset of a
new nonviolent campaign at home.
This same model returns a negative but statistically insignificant coefficient on the parameter
estimate of Age of Legislature, which suggests that, ceteris paribus, the longevity of the opportunity
to oppose the regime does not have an independent bearing upon the likelihood of nonviolent
onset across the whole population of autocracies. However, it is possible that the e↵ect of this
variable changes across contexts: namely, that older legislatures (and, in keeping with our theory,
the longevity of opportunities for opposition) decrease the likelihood of nonviolent conflict when
opposition groups are not particularly inspired to dramatically challenge the status quo, whereas the
occurrence of nonviolent conflict elsewhere inspires emulation—which is especially possible when a
group exist in an autocracy with long-running opportunities for opposition.
In Model 2, once we additionally include the interaction between these two key explanatory
variables, we find some consistency and an important change in the factors predicting the onset
of nonviolence in autocracyi . Specifically, while the coefficient on Nonviolence Overseas remains
13
positive and statistically significant, the coefficient on Age of Legislature remains negative but dramatically increases in statistical significance. In the presence of the term capturing the interaction
of these two continuous variables, these coefficients can only cautiously be interpreted as reflecting
the impact of the variable when its counterpart is equal to 0. Accordingly, this model indicates,
first, that increases in levels of nonviolence overseas do have a positive influence upon the probability of nonviolence at home amongst the set of autocracies without an elected legislature—those
autocracies for which Age of Legislature is equal to zero. Second, this model shows that autocracies
with older legislatures (and, therefore, potentially more mature opposition movements) are much
less likely to observe the onset of nonviolence when other autocracies in the world are free from
nonviolent conflict.
These are both interesting conclusions, and the first point is still consistent with the logic of
our first hypothesis. More pertinent to the task at hand, however, is the interpretation of the
coefficient on the interaction term. This is positive and strongly significant, indicating that the
contagious e↵ect of nonviolence overseas (Hypothesis 1) exists most strongly at older ages of the
elected legislature within the autocracy. This finding appears consistent with the conditioning logic
underlying Hypothesis 2. It appears as if nonviolence is most likely to spread to those autocracies in
which there potentially exists a mature opposition movement practiced in opposing the government.
Given that both of our explanatory variables of interest are continuous, however, it is crucial
and certainly more informative to view predicted probabilities (detailing the substantive e↵ects of
the variables) in graphical form. As an example, we plot the predicted probability of nonviolent
onset based on the specification from Model 2. Figure 1 details the predicted probability (on the
y-axis) of the onset of a new nonviolent campaign at home that is associated with increases in
the proportion of autocracies overseas experiencing nonviolent challenges (the x-axis). The graph
compares this relationship for low (25th percentile = 0 years) and high (75th percentile = 16 years)
illustrative values of the age of the elected legislature–our measure of the opportunity for opposition
maturation.
Figure 1 about here
Figure 1 demonstrates, as expected by Hypothesis 1, that the predicted probability of nonviolence at home increases consistently as the proportion of autocracies globally experiencing nonviolent challenges increases. This is the case in both autocracies with young (the dashed green line)
14
and old (the solid orange line) elected legislatures. Importantly, whilst the confidence intervals
associated with the two illustrative predictions remain marginally overlapped across the full range
of values of nonviolence overseas, the point predictions themselves do diverge quite notably as the
proportion of autocracies overseas experiencing nonviolence increases. As predicted by Hypothesis
2, the e↵ect of nonviolence overseas appears to be conditioned by the age of the domestic political
context. In years with relatively low levels of nonviolence occurring overseas, autocracies with
older elected legislatures actually appear to experience lower levels of nonviolence at home than
do those with young legislatures. However, in years with higher levels of nonviolence overseas, this
relationship is reversed: those autocracies with older elected legislatures—i.e., those with the more
durable opportunities for opposition maturation—are actually more likely to experience nonviolence
at home.
6
Concluding remarks
This article tests whether nonviolent conflicts spread between states in a systematic manner. The
literature on civil conflict demonstrates that violence is contagious. There are strong theoretical
reasons to expect that nonviolence follows similar patterns. By comparison, nonviolent forms of
resistance are much more likely to motivate mass participation and, not coincidentally, to achieve
their goals than are their violent campaigns. These two traits imply that opposition groups have
much more manageable collective action problems to overcome. When they observe a successful mobilization overseas, latent domestic opposition groups can choose to act against their own
regime. However, not all groups are a↵orded the same opportunities to emulate examples in other
autocracies. The domestic political constraints in which groups operate vary significantly and this
variation has important implications for whether a group can mobilize.
Our analysis demonstrates that the net e↵ect of nonviolence overseas is positive—i.e., nonviolence is contagious. However, this e↵ect is not equal for all autocracies. The conditional relationship
between domestic politics and overseas events is such that in addition to having an example to follow, emulation requires the opportunity for the existence of a sufficiently mature opposition in
order for emulation (and, thus, contagion) to be realized.
The results o↵er a number of contributions as well as opening new avenues for future research.
15
First, they show that nonviolent movements are contagious. This is a nontrivial finding given the
important implications nonviolence has for mass mobilization, successful campaign outcomes, and
durable peace. Nonviolence is significantly more likely to lead to the successful resolution of a
conflict and longer term stability.
Second, we help specify the conditions under which the desire to mobilize translates into political
action. Domestic institutional contexts play an important role in conditioning the efficacy of
examples of successful movements overseas. Only when domestic opposition groups have had time
to “mature” can we expect to observe clear patterns of emulation.
This final point suggests that more work has to be done before we fully understand how political
institutions shape the likelihood of conflict onset via contagion. Work already exists in the areas
of interstate and civil war on the role played by (non-)democratic institutions. However, we know
comparatively little about how domestic political institutions amplify, or dampen, cross-national
sources of conflict outbreak.
16
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Table 1: Summary statistics
Variable
Mean
Std. Dev.
Nonviolence Onset
0.028
0.164
Age of Legislature
10.143
12.713
Nonviolence Overseas
0.047
0.036
Nonviolence Overseas*Age of Legislature
0.539
0.950
Violence in the Neighborhood
0.184
0.246
Democracy in the Neighborhood
0.28
0.263
ln(GDPpc)t 1
7.517
0.891
ln(Population)
8.904
1.565
Post-Cold War
0.307
0.461
Peace Years
12.899
12.952
Peace Years (squared)
334.1
539.486
Peace Years (cubed)
10850.613 24448.816
21
Min.
0
0
0
0
0
0
5.333
4.111
0
0
0
0
Max.
1
62
0.15
6.437
0.997
1
10.667
14.097
1
63
3969
250047
N
5120
5120
4969
4969
5033
4974
4524
4577
5120
5120
5120
5120
Table 2: The Contagion of Nonviolent Conflict, 1946—2006
Model 1 Model 2
Nonviolence Overseas
5.808⇤⇤⇤
3.287⇤⇤
Age of Legislature
(0.996)
(1.227)
-0.004
-0.020⇤⇤
(0.004)
(0.007)
0.213⇤⇤
Nonviolence Overseas*Age of Legislature
(0.071)
Violence in the Neighborhood
Democracy in the Neighborhood
ln(GDPpc)t
1
ln(Population)
Post-Cold War
Peace Years
Constant
Log likelihood
No. of observations
0.257#
0.238#
(0.138)
(0.138)
0.339#
0.307#
(0.180)
(0.176)
-0.033
-0.026
(0.047)
(0.047)
0.119⇤⇤⇤
0.119⇤⇤⇤
(0.022)
(0.023)
-0.215⇤
-0.164#
(0.090)
(0.087)
-0.032#
-0.033#
(0.018)
(0.018)
-2.971⇤⇤⇤
-2.893⇤⇤⇤
(0.395)
(0.403)
-564.902
4330
-560.472
4330
Notes: Significance levels (two-tailed): ⇤: 95% ⇤⇤: 99% ⇤ ⇤ ⇤: 99.9%.
Coefficients with robust standard errors in parentheses.
Models estimated with squared and cubed polynomials of Peace Years, not reported here (n.s.).
22
Predicted Probability of Nonviolence at Home
.15
0
.05
.1
Figure 1. Predicted Probabilities from Model 2
0
.05
.1
Nonviolence Overseas
Low Age of Leg.
23
High Age of Leg.
.15