When They Hurt Us, We Win
Why Mass People’s Movements May See Greater Success Following Escalatory, Violent State Reactions
The following is some political theory I wrote during my BA regarding sequences of conflict in a context where a mass people’s movement is facing off with a state. I argue that a violent escalation on the part of the state may lend to greater people’s movement success due to three mechanisms: (1) the political-psychological outcome of increased resolve and cohesion amongst the targets of violence, (2) political-psychological processes related to political contention theory which increases the number of actors involved on the side of the target and (3) the increased probability of conflict internationalization in response to state violence.
Introduction
The subject of this theory is an actor which has organically manifested as a facet of political life since the earliest days in the development of political tradition. Domestic politics are understood as existing under some semblance of hierarchy, while theorists tend to constrain the characteristic of anarchy to the international sphere. However a polity, and any structure attributed to it, only functions as such in circumstances where its subjects (i.e. the governed) consent or are by some means coerced into abiding by its sequence. The sum of any polity’s parts, the people, have thus the power to topple any political functioning if the conditions of their movement to do so are sufficient to achieve their objectives. This fragility inherent to any polity, whether perceived as anarchical or hierarchical, can and has time and again been altered and even completely re-invented by what I will refer to as mass people’s movements (MPMs). The definition of a MPM I will use is “an organized effort by a large number of people to bring about or impede social, political, economic, or cultural change” (“21.3 Social Movements,” 2016).
MPMs operate primarily outside of conventional or formal political channels and vary widely from movement to movement in their structure, goals, sequence of engagement, duration, etc. Given their unpredictable nature and the reality that an MPM’s primary method of engagement exists outside of formal political institutions, MPMs do not follow a formal political sequence. This informal, widely practiced mode of political engagement begs the question: under what conditions are MPMs more likely to achieve their goals and why? I argue that MPMs are more likely to achieve their goals in contexts where governments react with an escalation of violence due to three primary mechanisms invoked by this intervening variable.
In the following, I argue that under circumstances where governments react to MPMs with an escalation of violence, the MPM is more likely to achieve their goals. I will delineate three mechanisms invoked by this intervening variable that I argue lead to more MPM success: two mechanisms revolve around domestic movement dynamics and political psychological processes and the other revolves around the participation of non-domestic actors. The first political-psychological process mechanism is as follows: the state’s reaction of violence promotes increased MPM intragroup cohesion, increases MPM intragroup resolve, and instigates the manifestation of new, often more extreme norms for tactics the MPM is willing to engage in to achieve their goal(s). Another domestic political-psychological mechanism draws on existing political contention theory which suggests a state reaction of escalatory violence “widens the spiral” of individual actors in the domestic sphere willing to engage in the MPM. The “widening” of the number of actors willing to engage in the dispute shifts the balance of power (or at least perceptions of the balance of power) between the MPM and the state, while increasing the capacity of the movement to achieve their ends. The final mechanism I will argue to explain how the intervening variable of a state escalation promotes greater MPM success is the internationalization of the domestic dispute: where a domestic state reaction of escalating violence attracts international attention and intervention, turning the tide of the conflict in favor of the MPM and pressuring the disputing government to concede to MPM demands.
Past Conceptions of MPMs and How They Achieve Their Goals
Sociologists have purported five types of MPMs, characterized by the nature and extent of the change or goal(s) they seek to achieve: reform, revolutionary, reactionary, self-help and religious movements. Reform MPMs seek limited change to a nation’s political, social or economic system in an effort to improve some condition(s) within the existing regime. Revolutionary MPMs seek to overthrow an existing regime and instill a new one. Reactionary MPMs seek to block or reverse a social, political or economic change that is in the process of, or has already been, achieved. Self-help movements are more narrowly focused on a specific aspect of improvement in participants’ personal lives. Religious MPMs seek to reinforce their preferred religious beliefs, practices and institutions among their members as well as convert outgroup members into their religious sect. Regardless of MPM type, we can view MPMs as a large number of people organizing under a goal-oriented framework, collectively wielding social power via a wide variety of mechanisms directed at a government to invoke a certain change. (“21.3 Social Movements,” 2016)
The logic of the intervening variable lending to greater MPM success I posit is agnostic to MPM type: the mechanisms I will defend are applicable to contexts where MPMs deploy militaristic tactics/structures (i.e. organized militant rebel groups) as well as those that deploy non-violent demonstration tactics (picket lines, sit-ines, vandalism, etc.). My research design broadly conceives MPMs as goal-oriented mobilizations of people acting outside of traditional/formal political channels.
I inform the variables lending to greater MPM success that are instigated by the intervening variable of a state escalation with past conceptions of how social movements form, sustain and mobilize- the necessary building blocks to MPM success. In the 1950s and early 1960s, collective behavior theorists focused on the role of grievances in social movement mobilization. Collective behavior theorists argued that the grievances lending to mobilization stemmed from underlying, structural circumstances rather than viewing singular events as primary drivers of mobilization. Resource mobilization theorists in the late 1960s and the 1970s focused primarily on leadership and movement organization. This rationalist family of thought, influenced by the dominance of economics among the social sciences in the academy, asserted that leaders need to impose constraints on movement members or provide incentives to convince members to participate. Resource mobilization theorists tended to focus on the transaction costs of movement participation/non-participation. Resource mobilization theorists also emphasized the role of movement organizations, they initially viewed ‘professional organizing’ as a primary driver of sustainable MPM mobilization to a more culturally relevant model that emphasized grassroots movements characterized by decentralization and informality. Framing and collective identity theorists in the 1980s-1990s focused on sources of consensus within movements. These constructivists view movements as engaging in a struggle against the imposition of identity and view the construction of meaning and manipulation of cultural symbols as paramount to the sequence of social movement building. Beginning in the 1970s, political process theorists emphasized political opportunities and constraints to explain why some movements gain sustainable traction and others do not. Political process theory is the most relevant school of theory to the logic of my intervening variable, given the emphasis on episodic factors which set in motion new, or prolong existing, political sequences. (Tarrow, 2011)
Existing literature regarding the efficacy of MPMs focuses on specific variables that lend to MPM success, many of which are intuitive. One such variable is that of more or less protest, with MPMs that engage in more protest (demonstrations of longer duration and larger number of participants) tend to be more successful than MPMs with less protest. Additionally, research has found that MPMs are more likely to achieve success when the focus of their mobilization revolves around one key issue, rather than multiple issues. Existing literature also asserts that MPMs are more likely to see success under circumstances where their government adversary is weakened by economic or other means. Existing research also touts that political consequences are most likely to occur when a movement deploys disruptive protest rather than engaging primarily in conventional politics-these political consequences can be detrimental to the goal(s) of the MPM or promote MPM success depending on the context. This argument regarding political consequences being correlated with disruptive protest tactics suggests that MPMs which engage in more extreme tactics will trigger political sequences that would not otherwise get triggered. (“21.3 Social Movements,” 2016)
Hypothesis
I speculate that if the intervening variable of a state escalation of violence in reaction to an MPM is present, the MPM is more likely to achieve its goal(s).
State Escalation: an Intragroup Psychological Process Trigger
In light of existing theory regarding intragroup psychological processes, the intervening variable of a state escalation of violence is presumed to spark increased group cohesion, the adoption of more extreme/committed demonstration tactics among the MPM and paves the way for more radical leadership that are thought to lend to greater MPM success.
One mechanism I argue leads to greater MPM success under conditions of state escalation draws on intra-group psychological process theory. The logic behind this mechanism is that the intragroup becomes more cohesive, exhibits higher resolve, and adopts new and often more extreme norms in pursuit of their goal(s). As the conflict escalates, intragroup members exhibit higher levels of loyalty, commitment, and intra-group cooperativeness. Increased group cohesion makes the group more capable of carrying out coordinated action in pursuit of common goals. Intragroup goals and norms shift during the conflict, with the escalation of inter-group conflict inciting recalculations of intragroup resolve/tactics. This re-evaluation of resolve and tactics takes place against a backdrop where the group is increasingly concerned with winning in light of the new shared perception that the adversary ‘took it too far’ with an escalation of violence. A constructivist interpretation can explain this phenomenon: where the state escalation of violence forms a collective meaning of the state shared by members of the MPM as an oppressive adversary, opting to harm the MPM rather than give in to demands. In moments of savage conflict, members demand higher conformity from one another to adhere to group norms and standards: such as “right-thinking” where intra-group members must adopt negative, harsher views of outgroup group members. Where “right-thinking” norms are initiated, members of the ingroup are expected to oblige for fear of being ostracized by their group- thus fortifying collective resolve. (Delamater et al., 2018).
Further, under conditions of threat, new leadership within groups commonly emerges that is more angry, radical and militant. In MPMs, “...movement leadership has a creative function in selecting forms of collective action that people will respond to…” and the nature of these forms of collective action and intragroup agreeability to follow leadership’s suggestions is contingent on political opportunities and constraints posed by the sequence of the dispute (Tarrow, 2011). This cycle of MPMs inventing/engaging in new forms of collective action or recycling conventional collective actions in response to dispute circumstances can be understood as Tarrow’s ‘repertoire of contention.’ Repertoires of contention both draw on historical prototypes of collective action, as well as lay subject to the creativity of MPMs and MPM leadership. With this logic, following an act of state escalation, leadership have more political opportunity to incite the MPM to engage in more extreme, high-capacity, or contentious forms of collective action. The installation of new forms of collective action increases capacity/resolve relative to their state adversary. The emergence of these new collective action norms into the repertoire, perceived by the MPM as justified in their extremism as a response to an escalatory state act, establishes the conditions for greater MPM success.
Thus, intragroup psychological processes could explain why mass movements are more likely to succeed in the long term in achieving their goals under conditions of threat or escalation by state adversaries given the increased resolve, group cohesion and more extreme norms that are likely to arise following a state escalation.
How State Fomented Political Contention ‘Widens the Spiral’
While the previous psychological explanation for increased capacity/resolve in light of escalatory state reactions has emphasized dynamics within the existing MPM intragroup, this next explanation emphasizes the importance of growing the MPM by bringing more actors into the ingroup. Political contention theory’s ‘spiral of contention’ is useful in understanding the logic behind this explanation. The spiral, widening with each ascending loop, is a visualization of how the repertoire of movement/countermovement or action/reaction in an ongoing dispute both escalates in the intensity of action and increases the number of actors involved in the dispute. The widening of the spiral is key in successful MPM organizing, as widening of the ‘spiral’ is synonymous with increasing the number of people engaged at each iteration of activity in the ongoing dispute. Power in MPMs is proportional to the number of people engaging in the movement’s demonstration activities, thus widening the spiral of people engaged in the dispute is an expansion of MPM capacity.
This research design draws on the Kingian theory of nonviolent direct action to explain this mechanism as instigated by a state escalation of violence. Firstly, this work accepts that one component of an MPM-government dispute is an inherent capacity asymmetry. Which is to say, there is little or no viable attempt for the MPM to confront their government adversary with the same weapons the government is using. So, the MPM has a strategic incentive to counter a government’s violent expression of power through indirect means, given that the MPM will likely (if not certainly) lose in a direct, conventional armed conflict. In light of this asymmetry, Kingian Nonviolent Direct Action (NVDA) tactics hold significant utility as an indirect means of perpetuating the cycles of contention in the ongoing dispute.
NVDA theory, in addition to being a philosophy of civic engagement, outlines a specific tactic/strategy of direct engagement. This can be exemplified by Dr. King’s repetition of the sentence “we are looking for our next Bull Connor” while campaigning and leading demonstrations during the civil rights movement. The Bull Connor he is referring to was a white segregationist politician that directed the use of fire hoses and police dogs on anti-segregation demonstrators at a May 3rd, 1963 desegregation demonstration. The images of the fire hoses and police dogs being deployed on swaths of youth garnered significant public attention, reaching national audiences, and support for the anti-segregation movement. Kingian movement strategy understood that this type of contention was good for the pursuit of the movement's goals. Given this understanding, NVDA is not necessarily nonviolent but rather it is a refusal to cooperate in a nonviolent way that knowingly incites violence. Inciting a violent reaction by a government adversary via engaging in nonviolent forms of contentious action is thus expected to ‘widen the spiral’ by instigating more people to engage in the conflict and to incite a counterpush/reaction to the state’s escalation. (Sharp, 2013)
The Provocation of Conflict Internationalization
A final mechanism, perhaps the most relevant from an international relations perspective, through which MPMs may achieve more success following a state escalation revolves around the provocation of the internationalization of the civil conflict. The logic behind this mechanism supposes that the intervening variable of a violent, escalatory state reaction is likely to provoke attention from the international community. The international community, in light of this violent escalation on behalf of the state, is expected to then engage in the civil conflict in a manner that will benefit the MPM. This engagement from unilateral foreign actors, coalitions of foreign states or international institutions can take various forms: ranging from condemnation to sanctions to full-on intervention.
The relevance of this mechanism is profound given the rise of internationalized intrastate conflicts. This conflict type is most commonly in the form of a civil war where a government is disputing with a rebel group within its territory, and another government (or multiple other governments) is providing aid to one side in the dispute. In 2019, for example, twenty-two intrastate conflicts were internationalized in this way. The number of internationalized intrastate conflicts is at its highest since 1946. Coinciding with this trend is a decline in interstate conflict. This decline may be attributed to the low benefits relative to the high costs of interstate war in the modern sphere. Additionally, in the modern circumstance where most territorial borders are solved, a traditional military force that is designed to capture and occupy territory is no longer a route to bring about gains for a given state. Engaging in interstate conflict poses much higher costs, both in an economic and global reputation sense, than aiding one side in a civil conflict. States have less incentive to engage in the declining conflict type of interstate war due to the cost of such engagement, while states bear relatively lesser costs in aiding one side in a pre-existing civil conflict. Of internationalized civil conflicts, the United States stands as the state involved in the most conflicts as a secondary warring party. One example of this conflict type in recent years is US involvement in the Syrian Civil war. (Pettersson & Öberg, 2020)
In addition to the relatively low cost of secondary involvement in intrastate conflict, there are many reasons a state may provide support to one side in an intrastate conflict. The supplying state or ‘sender state’ may have an interest in settling the intrastate conflict, such as to prevent conflict diffusion into neighboring states that may incite geopolitical challenges to economic or policy interests. The sender state may be sympathetic to the goals of one of the disputants, such as the US supporting rebel groups in Syria in reaction to the Assad regime’s aggression to Arab Spring demonstrators- with the US having an interest in fomenting Middle Eastern democratization. It may also be the case that the sender state may have underlying contention with the government involved in the intrastate conflict, thus may want to support an MPM to oust or otherwise undermine the regime. Especially in the context of a sender state having an interest in the ousting of a regime, the rise of an MPM (militarized or not) provides a favorable opportunity for the eventual overthrow of the unfavored regime given the relative tolerance domestically of a domestic MPM as opposed to a foreign military invasion seeking to overthrow the regime.
Another possible explanation for this global trend toward internationalized intrastate conflicts is the rising global responsibility to protect (R2P) norm. While the international system is founded on the principle of internal sovereignty, a shift in global norms favoring the acceptance of intervention in internal affairs has occurred since the 1638 Treaty of Westphalia. This treaty marked the beginning of international cooperation predicated on the principle that, should one state gain enough power to oppress or eradicate members of opposing states or religious sects, other powers should form a coalition to protect the minority sect from such intrusions. The establishment of this collective security framework marks the beginning of a major evolution in international security-related cooperation, where principles of securitization overcome previous restrictions on intervening in state internal affairs. This principle has been reasserted, for example, by international agreements such as the 1948 Genocide Convention following the holocaust. Signatories of this convention assert their responsibility to prevent and punish genocidal acts committed by governments, thus undermining absolute state sovereignty over internal affairs.
This shift in international norms culminated in The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) unanimous adoption at the largest gathering of Heads of State and Government in world history, the 2005 UN World Summit. This norm “seeks to ensure that the international community never again fails to halt the mass atrocity crimes of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.” This norm emerged in reaction to atrocities committed during the Rwandan genocide and has since been invoked in over 80 UN Security Council Resolutions concerning crises in Africa and the Middle East. (Global Centre For The Responsibility To Protect, n.d.)
Against the backdrop of the emergence of the R2P norm, the landscape of intrastate conflict changes. Inherent to MPM-government conflicts is capacity asymmetry, where conflict capability rests disproportionately in the hands of the government. Thus an MPM conflicting with its government has an interest in the internationalization of their conflict which may equalize the MPM’s relative capacity. The international community or single foreign actors can turn the tide of a civil conflict via rhetorical condemnation or aid in the form of arms, military training, or constraining the government’s ability to deploy certain tactics to suppress the MPM. This ‘turning of the tide’ of conflict in favor of the MPM via internationalization, and the degree of international involvement, is contingent on whether a case can be made among the international community that the invocation of R2P is appropriate. Given the nature of R2P, the state committing an act of escalatory violence against an MPM provides a justification for an international response. It is important to note, however, that R2P intervention is variable given the structure of the UN- since intervention under R2P is only likely to occur where at least one powerful state has domestic pressure or state interest to intervene and where no permanent member of the UN Security Council has an incentive to veto an R2P intervention.
This sequence creates an incentive for MPMs to potentially seek an escalation in conflict by their state adversary in hopes of said action sparking internationalization, this moral hazard inherent to R2P has played out in previous civil conflicts. The logic behind the moral hazard is that the provision of protection against a risk leads actors to engage in more risk-taking behavior that may bring about an undesirable outcome. Since R2P internationalization to protect groups targeted by government violence confers aid to the MPM, thus shifting the balance of capacity in favor of the MPM, MPMs may escalate or provoke their state adversaries into engaging in violent escalation against the MPM. One potential case of this moral hazard manifested in 1999 Kosovo, where the Kosovo Liberation movement transitioned from primarily peaceful protests to engaging in more violent/escalatory forms of demonstration following international intervention in Libya. Insight gleaned from the moral hazard of R2P in the Kosovo case is that the Kosovo Liberation movement reasoned that if it challenged the Serbian government, which had a reputation of engaging in violence and had superior capacity, the international community would step in. This logic holds in this case, given the ultimate involvement of NATO. Scholars also point to the impact that international intervention in Libya may have increased the violence of opposition groups in Syria in hopes of similar internationalization. This diffusion effect is of particular interest in this research design, where the invocation of the R2P norm in one conflict influences MPMs in other conflicts to seek disproportionate state retaliation in hopes of internationalization. (Kuperman, 2008)
Conclusion and Constraints of This Theory.
I have laid out the logic behind my argument that a state escalation of violence enacted on an MPM lends to more MPM success due to domestic psychological processes and internationalization. Much of the theory behind these mechanisms seems very intuitive, though I anticipate concerns about the ability to measure the legitimacy of these mechanisms. For example, the measurement of MPM success itself is not clear-cut depending on the MPM. Logically, measuring whether an MPM achieved its goal when the goal is the overthrow of a dictator is easy. On the other hand, MPM success is often not binary such as in the case of BLM- which is multi-objective. Additionally, the decentralized nature of the movement translates into various sects of the MPM touting different goals. Further, for measuring the internationalization mechanism, there may be some confounding conditions which may skew the data. For example, one can anticipate a selection bias as it relates to regime type- where authoritarian regimes are more likely to both react to MPMs with an escalation of violence, as well as are less likely to give in to MPM demands.
One research question that may follow from this work is that of the impact of this theorized phenomenon on global MPM strategy diffusion. In other words, does the sequence of one of more of these theorized mechanisms following the intervening variable lending to greater MPM success change the sequence of dispute for MPMs in other, perhaps neighboring contexts? This phenomenon has been theorized by Kuperman, but has not been proven beyond the assumption that US intervention in Libya led members of the Kosovo MPM to change tactics to incite the internationalization mechanism. The internationalization mechanism’s moral hazard may be an area of interest in studying global trends in MPM tactics/strategy. Additionally, future analyses should consider the variance of this hypothesis’ accuracy depending on scale: this piece focuses on the national level, but it is also valuable to analyze these dynamics and sequences in highly localized, smaller-scale movements. Given the decentralized nature of many MPMs, escalations and cycles of action/reaction in MPM-state disputes at the subnational and local levels are highly relevant in studying the sequence of MPM-state disputes.
One major consideration for this theory is my personal acknowledgment that, in the event that this theory holds (that the intervening variable of state escalation lends to greater MPM success), the implication that follows should not be that state escalations of violence are ‘good’ or justified by any means. The ethical implications of this work may suggest to some that state escalations are ‘good’ or ‘needed’ for MPMs to achieve a certain level of success. I do not seek to purport that message. Rather, this work seeks to study the sequence and dynamics played out in fundamentally asymmetric MPM-state conflicts and understand how particular actions/reactions escalate, foment, and impact the sequence of the conflict.
Works Cited:
Anon. n.d. “Libya Revolt of 2011 | History, War, Timeline, & Map | Britannica.”
Global Centre For The Responsibility To Protect. n.d. “What Is R2P?” Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. Retrieved April 18, 2021 (https://www.globalr2p.org/what-is-r2p/).
Kuperman, Alan J. 2008. “The Moral Hazard of Humanitarian Intervention: Lessons from the Balkans.” International Studies Quarterly 52(1):49–80. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2478.2007.00491.x.
Kuperman, Alan J. 2015. “Obama’s Libya Debacle: How a Well-Meaning Intervention Ended in Failure.” Foreign Affairs (New York, N.Y.) 94(2):66–77.
Pettersson, Therése, and Magnus Öberg. 2020. “Organized Violence, 1989–2019.” Journal of Peace Research 57(4):597–613. doi: 10.1177/0022343320934986.