Nonviolence beyond the state: International NGOs and local nonviolent mobilization

Abstract

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Studies of nonviolence have taught us much about what makes nonviolence successful, emphasizing the importance of local circumstance and strategy. Little attention has been given to the effect of ties with international organizations on nonviolence: that is, how the embeddedness of local actors in global networks shapes nonviolent mobilization. In this article, a world society framework is applied with the objective of understanding the transnational factors shaping local nonviolent mobilization. Through global and historical models exploring political, economic, and cultural factors, it is found that: first, the global integration and structure of the nation-state is an important and significant factor in shaping the emergence of nonviolent movements; second, integration into global civil society networks significantly increases the likelihood for large-scale nonviolent resistance; and third, ties to a specialized network of nonviolent organizations significantly shape the path toward nonviolence over violent means of resistance.

Keywords

Global civil society INGOs nonviolence nonviolent resistance transnational mobilization world society

Introduction

The field of nonviolent studies has provided much knowledge of what makes nonviolent resistance successful, with pointed attention to local level circumstances and strategies, and the generation of in-depth single or comparative case studies (Nepstad, 2015; Schock, 2015; Vinthagen, 2015). However, many recent studies of nonviolent campaigns celebrate rational choice assessments, allowing flexibility for some variation in local structural constraints. Gleditsch and Rivera (2015), for example, trace the effects of global campaign diffusion, proving the effect of neighboring country campaigns; but they leave out an understanding of longer movement lifetimes that embrace nonviolence across campaigns within movements. Furthermore, where comparable outcomes in discrete campaigns appear, they conceptually chalk these findings up to savvy, strategic imperatives at the local level, as if culture and strategy exist in separate universes. Cunningham et al. (2017) argue that activists make strategic choices in a resource-constrained but competitive environment of tactical effective potential. The theoretical conclusion that activists choose nonviolence because it always makes good strategic sense is becoming a familiar banner-cry of many of the scholars trained in traditionally Western frameworks of rational choice.

Here I present a world society framework for understanding the emergence of nonviolent movements that have ties to international organizations supporting a global repertoire for nonviolent claims-making. I argue that a world society understanding of global organizational nonviolence provides a much-needed complement to local level and rational choice studies as evidence shows that many actors may also choose nonviolence because they learn nonviolence as the most legitimate or strategically effective repertoire of resistance and also, they may come to consciously, morally hold strong to its principles, even and especially in the face of violent opposition. Either mechanism being operative at the local level, my macro-level study shows that organizations in concert with other global level social forces have a significant impact on longer movement lifetimes across comparable, local contexts.

Nonviolence beyond the state

Because many studies of nonviolent resistance focus on identifying which constellation of variables leads to successful outcomes, levels of analysis tend to be local and national in scope. Where transnational relationships are directly considered, if even as a secondary effect, we begin to realize that states do not operate solely in the relationships of local level fields, with resistance occurring in unmediated contexts; but states also orient some of their actions toward the world society or at least structure their responses with the watchful gaze of world society actors in mind (Cole, 2012; Longhofer et al., 2016; Tsutsui et al., 2012). A global level, world society framework helps to theorize the social world that supports the structure of relationships transcending political and cultural boundaries (Berkovitch, 1999; Boyle, 2002; della Porta, 2007; Drori, 2008; Frank and McEneany, 1999; Schaftenaar, 2017; Tsutsui and Shin, 2008). It is through these networks that movements emerge and develop and share common strategies, tactics, and goals as united social actors (Gallo-Cruz, 2016a). I will argue here that understanding the global historical context for nonviolent emergence necessitates the inclusion of global relational variables and that understanding the transnational origins of nonviolent movements over time may provide crucial insight into other factors that could shape nonviolent resistance outcomes.

Of increasing importance to the study of transnational movements is the structure of organizational ties that shape diffusion of agendas, strategies, and tactics. The study of movement organizations has tended to emphasize organizations as both facilitating and instigating new, morally framed discourses about the best courses for action, the ideal substance of claims, and the most ethical and effective strategies for how claims should be pursued (Clemens, 1993, 1997; Zemlinskaya, 2009). These processes are often considered the crucial link between other favorable structural variables and the culture and consciousness necessary to motivate a critical mass to concerted action, especially committed nonviolent resistance. With this intervening role, organizations can be vital structural foundations to mobilization.

Organizations also provide crucial resources such as meeting places and funds and they facilitate communication networks (Davis and Zald, 2005; Desai, 1996; Morris, 1981). Movement organizations influence the cognitive dimensions of social change efforts that eventuate types of institutional structures such as the type of democracy that results from democratic mobilization (Freeman, 1978; Polletta, 2004). In the few case and organizational studies that have scrutinized the role of nonviolence international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), we have learned that transnational nonviolence networks can shape the direction of movements toward nonviolence (Deats, 2009; Gallo-Cruz, 2016b; Mahoney and Eguren, 1997; Pagnucco, 1997; Smith et al., 1994). This occurs because nonviolence INGOs act as ‘midwives’ of nonviolence, through the concerted effort to diffuse discourse about best strategies and tactics (Pagnucco and McCarthy, 1999) and contribute to a sharing of a nonviolent ‘culture of opposition’ through the modeling of organizational structures that support and diffuse nonviolent mobilization, cultures, and idioms (à la Chabot and Vinthagen, 2007). When working directly with local populations, INGOs fold into local cultural structures of resistance by (1) helping to reconceptualize local relationships, institutions, and fields; (2) reconceptualizing actorhood as endowed with new entitlements in those fields; and (3) imparting new rules for field engagement (Gallo-Cruz, 2016b).

Tracing global nonviolence networks

To explore the global dimensions of nonviolence that lie beyond international state relations, insights are incorporated from comparative case research into global level models of nonviolent mobilization. To study only discrete actions of broader movements, namely unique campaigns, does not lend itself to a macro-level understanding of the structure of social movements, or the global dimensions of those movements, as scholars note that campaigns are only one publicly visible part of any movement (Lakey, 2011; Tilly, 2004). Likewise, to focus the study of movement emergence only on the transnational ties among global governmental and intergovernmental entities disregards the growing spread of movement ties across civil societies and non-state actors. A focus on civil society’s embeddedness in transnational networks beyond the state is needed for a robust understanding of how nonviolence globalizes across political and cultural borders.

The first set of models therefore interrogate national and transnational political, economic, and civil society relationships that shape broad, nonviolent movement emergence. The second set of models compare the effects of these relationships across nonviolent and violent forms of resistance, examining organizational ties and other global level structural features on whether nonviolent or violent forms of resistance developed. The study concludes with a third set of models that focus on the impact of nonviolent INGOs specifically on either outcome.

Global level data are employed in a historical statistical analysis of the effect of independent variables on movement emergence. Poisson regression analysis is used as it is more appropriate for count variables and for data that contain ‘spikes’ such as movement activity (Soule et al., 1999).

Dependent variables

The first dependent variable, the development of a major, national nonviolent movement, is coded from several sources. Compendiums of nonviolent movements catalog movements from the early Russian revolution to ongoing movements in Burma and Palestine (although this study is delimited to those beginning in 1948).¹ Two nonviolent campaign databases have also been consulted to check for major movements not covered in case histories, the Global Nonviolent Action Database (2102) and the Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes Data Project (Chenoweth, 2011).²

Movements are measured as a whole. I measure whole movements and not just count discrete campaigns because movements so often support multiple and intersecting campaigns to address common problems, because they are organized as strategically sustained and interlinked efforts to achieve broader goals through a series of smaller, more-focused campaigns, and because this research pursues both theoretical and empirical objectives of explaining the contours of movement lifetimes. These combined objectives require expanding the frame beyond climactic, regime-change stand-offs, or discrete policy-focused initiatives (Lakey, 2011; Tilly, 2004).³ There were 307 periods of movement activity measured and this database includes codes for the issue concerns of the movements out of which multiple campaigns have developed. Broadly, these include movements against government and market corruption, movements for human rights, democracy movements, independence movements, anti-occupation movements, and movements to end civil war (weighted in this order). Of these movements 26% occurred in African nations, 20% occurred in Asian nations, 17% in Central and South America and the Caribbean, 13% in Europe, 11% in the Middle East, 8% in Eastern Europe, 3% in the Pacific, and 2% in North America. The first 20% of the movements became active in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s; 13% of the movements arose in the 1960s and another 13% arose in the 1970s. Then 17% of the movements emerged in the 1980s and another 17% in the 1990s; while the last 20% of the movements developed in the 2000s. There were 101 movements which were actively organizing sustained and widespread resistance for one to three decades after emergence.

The second and third set of models comparatively test violent versus nonviolent outcomes. For these models, independent variables are weighed against the likelihood of violent protest using the Banks Cross-National Time Series (Banks, 2009) variable for riots defined as ‘any violent demonstration or clash of more than 100 citizens involving the use of physical force’. In each of the dependent and independent variables the year range begins at 1948 (following Indian independence, a paradigm-defining movement for nonviolence) and follows events through 2008. In this model, global level or local level forces are measured as they shape the divergence of collective action into violent events or into sustained nonviolent movements.

Independent variables

To understand what drives nonviolent movement mobilization, the effects of economic, political, and civil and cultural relationships are tested in how they shape nonviolence. Among these categories both domestic conditions and transnational relationships are explored. The domestic level variables come from the Polity IV and the Banks Cross-National Time Series databases (Banks, 2009; Gurr et al., 2010). From Polity IV, positive and negative political opportunities are tested with a measure of democratic process, or how democratic a local government is, and autocratic repression, a measure of how many freedoms are withheld from the general population.⁴

From Banks, the presence of a major political crisis that might provide an opening for effective resistance, defined as ‘any rapidly developing situation that threatens to bring the downfall of the present regime – excluding situations of revolt aimed at such overthrow’, is tested. Then, a measure of national income distribution per capita, also from Banks, is used to test the effect of monetary resources on mobilization. Although this is an imperfect measure, because it assumes growth in resources means increasing access to resources across participants, data are selected that indicate per capita GDP and which show some of the national level economic conditions that shape movement emergence.⁵ In the social movements literature, a general ‘resource mobilization’ hypothesis posits that increasing access to resources (including monetary resources) is an important part of the mobilization process (McCarthy and Zald, 1977). Additionally, Schock has indicated that the strong distinction between low- and middle-income countries’ strength of involvement in international civil society networks may have some effect on the trajectory of movement outcomes (2005: 183).

The effect of the circulation of national newspapers as a measure of national information systems is tested with the Banks data for ‘national news circulation’. This variable can act as an indicator of ‘communication structures’ or even a ‘free space for organizing’, also hypothesized as crucial to the mobilizing process (Diani, 1999; Gitlin, 1980). To assess a structural source of the cultural readiness for change, the effect of education on mobilization is tested as higher levels of education might introduce students to ideas about democratic process and human rights (Koenig and Dierkes, 2011; Meyer et al., 1997). Studies on global educational diffusion have long proven its effect on imparting a common, national world view that emphasizes the importance of national identity and the entitlement of citizens to a reciprocal relationship between citizen entitlements and state responsibility. The Banks database offers several measures for education and from these the effect of total primary and secondary school enrolment per capita as well as university enrolment per capita is tested.

Transnational factors were drawn from a number of sources. These include Banks’ measures of % GDP drawn from imports and exports per capita to assess the effect of global economic integration (Schock, 2005). In the second set of models a transnational economic variable measuring participation in IMF structural adjustment agreements drawn from Vreeland (2003) is added, and it provides a dummy variable coded for the presence of an IMF agreement by year. Where quantitative tests have studied the effect of structural adjustment loans on violence (Walton and Seddon, 1994), this current study is the first that I know of to measure the effect of these agreements on mass nonviolent mobilization, as suggested by case studies to be significant (Darboe, 2010).

For the transnational, cultural dimensions of mobilization both the general processes of global political and civil society building as well as each country’s unique ties to the general and nonviolent-specific population of INGOs are explored. First tested are the effects of the global growth of the intergovernmental network as well as the general growth in INGO networks, utilizing data from Schofer and Meyer (2005). These data represent gross counts in the global total of international governmental and nongovernmental organizations by year and examine the hypothesis that as international civil society and state-to-state relations grow, movements will be more likely to turn to nonviolent methods. Much like Stephan and Chenoweth (2008) have tested the effect of the global Cold War climate on the development of local movements, here the effect of the global climate on nonviolent emergence is examined – specifically the development of more international alliances among states and among civil societies.

In the second and third set of models the effects of country ties to the general INGO population, and to nonviolent INGOs specifically, on nonviolent and violent mobilization are tested. With these variables, I scrutinize how international civil society networks shape mobilization despite poor odds in domestic or transnational economic and political conditions. The country counts of ties to the general population of INGOs were provided by Schofer and Meyer (2005). Both these data and the country counts of ties to nonviolent INGOs are constructed from the Union of International Associations (UIA) Annual Yearbook of International Associations electronic database, ‘the world’s oldest, largest and most comprehensive source of information on global civil society’ (UIA, 2012). The electronic database of international organizations historically catalogs information from over 40,000 organizations (information remains in the archive even after an organization dissolves). The electronic database organizes data into several categories for which organizations can submit information and which guided the initial search. These include founding, history, aims and objectives, structure, languages spoken, secretariat, finance, IGO relations, NGO relations, activities, publications, and the countries in which the organizations hold membership.

The construction of a database of nonviolence INGOs began with a comprehensive search through UIA’s 2001–2002 CD archive for the terms ‘nonviolence’ or ‘nonviolent protest’ in all the aforementioned categories and limiting the search to NGOs only (excluding IGOs – intergovernmental organizations). From this initial list, organizations whose only participation in nonviolence was to foster awareness of philosophical or religious orientations to nonviolence, e.g., ‘nonviolence as a way of life’, without actively participating in nonviolent resistance movements were excluded. This yielded an initial database of 139 organizations. This database was later expanded with data drawn from the updated 2008–2009 CD archive. In the latter search, it was not necessary to conduct a search in each individual category because by 2008 the UIA had created a distinct category for ‘nonviolence organizations’ so that one simple keyword search brought up several hundred organizations (and the same list is yielded despite trying to conduct the search through distinct categories). The final search yielded, in combination with organizations found in the earlier search, 215 organizations, a list of which can also be provided by the author upon request.⁶

The impact of nonviolent INGOs on nonviolent movement emergence – among testing the effects of other global and regional factors – is modeled with negative binomial regression. Negative binomial regression is a historical method of analysis that tests the effect of a process on the development of another process over time. It is a specialized form of Poisson that attends to processes that do not follow a linear progression, such as the emergence of social movements. Where Poisson assumes equality between the mean number of counts and the conditional variance, analysis can lead to the erroneous assumption that the activity of major movements is independent of the movement activity of prior years (Kim, 1999). Periods of ‘contagion’, or the outbreak of large-scale protests, mean spikes in the rates of movement activity, often over several years or more. To put it simply, it can be reasonably expected that movements that break out at any one point in time may continue for some time and then dissolve. Negative binomial regression appropriately measures these dynamics with count variables (Barron, 1992; Hannan and Freeman, 1989). With a dependent variable of movement activity, all countries will have large counts of ‘0’ or no activity, with many countries experiencing periodic counts of ‘1’, the presence of movement activity.

The negative binomial regression model therefore adds a parameter that accounts for overdispersion, reflecting the unobserved heterogeneity among observations, by employing the quadratic parameterization,

μ i = e x p (β 0 + β 1 χ i 1 + β 2 χ i 2 + β 3 χ i 3 + E i)

where μi, the presence of a nonviolent movement at a point in time, is equal to the exponential of the independent variables in addition to an error term (assumed to be uncorrelated with the xs) that accounts for a set of period-specific effects (Hilbe, 2007; Long and Freese, 2006). The full model negative binomial regression model is specified as,

P (y_{t}) = \frac{Γ (y_{t} + \frac{1}{K})}{y_{t}! Γ (\frac{1}{K})} {(\frac{K μ_{t}}{1 + K μ_{t}})}^{y_{t}} {(\frac{1}{1 + K μ_{t}})}^{\frac{1}{K}}

where K is the overdispersion parameter and the variance is μi + K(μi)2.

Findings

A global level and historical analysis of the factors leading to nonviolent mobilization both confirms and adds to insights of case studies, in particular, demonstrating the importance of the transnational sphere in shaping local mobilization. These models also illustrate the significant impact of ties to global civil society organizations on nonviolent resistance.

Source and recourse for nonviolent grievances

Table 1 displays results from models that tested the impact of domestic and global trends in political, economic, and cultural development. Among domestic structures favorable to nonviolent mobilization, a higher percentage of university-educated population, an open national news circulation (one measure of a ‘communication structure’ for broad-based mobilization), and a strong GDP are all significant factors in shaping the emergence of major nonviolent movements. Repressive governments also significantly and negatively impact the likelihood of movement emergence, but a government’s openness to democratic processes has an even greater negative impact on movement emergence. This confirms that nonviolent movements avoid protest when grievances can be redressed through peaceful, democratic means. Conversely, nonviolent movements are also less likely to protest under a heightened experience of repression, though the negative effect of repression is not quite as significant as the deterrence of democratic openness. There can also be found notable exceptions to this statistical trend with a closer look at case data where some movements mobilize even under conditions of heightened repression as they also remain committed to nonviolence.⁷

Table 1.

National and transnational conditions shaping nonviolent movement emergence.

Independent variables	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4
Democratic process	−.009***
	(.002)
Government crises	.030	.030	.129	.081
	(.073)	(.074)	(.079)	(.080)
Political repression		−.006**
		(.002)
University education	.920e-03**	.922e-03**	.002***	.002***
	(.000)	(.000)	(.001)	(.001)
National news circulation	−.119e-03**	−.118e-03**	−.761e-05*	−.791e-05*
	(.000)	(.000)	(.000)	(.000)
National economic growth	−.761e-04**	−.795e-04*
	(.000)	(.000)
World exports as % GDP			−4.61e-06***	−4.63e-06***
			(7.92e-07)	(7.79e-07)
			.006***
Global growth of IGOs			(.000)
Global growth of INGOs				3.68e-04***
				(.000)
alpha	3.06e-30	3.06e-30	1.54e-15	1.54e-15
Constant	−2.462***	−2.430***	−4.350***	−3.630***
	(.065)	(.064)	(.214)	(.137)

***

p < .001, ** p < .01, * p < .05; unstandardized coefficients; standard errors in parentheses.

Over and above the growth of GDP per capita, a proxy for measuring expanded access to resources, the integration of a country into a global economy is a highly significant and positive factor conditioning large-scale nonviolent resistance. This finding provides support for both the strategic and structural sources of nonviolent protest as it indicates that activists are likely tapping into more complex interdependencies as opportunities for change.

Most surprising among this first set of models on national and transnational precursors to nonviolence, however, was the insignificance of what was expected to be a control variable. In none of the models was the development of a government crisis a significant precursor to mobilization. Where US-developed political process theory has long-assumed grievances to be held constant, it points to shifts in governance (‘positive’ or ‘negative’ political opportunities) as activating mobilization. In these models, this relationship does not prove to be significant on a global level. Political processes are more favorable for nonviolence when the national polity shares characteristics of the world polity (à la Meyer, 2004), extensive educational enrolment and national news circulation, and a globalized economy, i.e., greater integration into complex economic interdependencies with other economies.

This finding offers important, new perspectives. First, it points to the need to pay greater attention to the cultural-structural thrust of nonviolent mobilization: that is, the ideational ties that form the base of social structures empowering mobilization. This also shows that the culture which shapes the structure of the nation as well as the culture which shapes the path of civil resistance is equally important. It is not just the right concatenation of events or the strategic acumen of the protesters that culminates in broad-based nonviolent movements. Rather, countries’ integration into a world polity and the integration of a local society into a world civil society prove to be significant factors in shaping mobilization.

To further illustrate this point, the increasingly expanding networks of intergovernmental organizations and international nongovernmental organizations also have a highly positive and significant impact on the likelihood of the emergence of a major nonviolent movement. Even as access to weaponry (Degrhran, 2017; Feinstein, 2011; Louise, 1995) and the rates of violent civil wars have grown exponentially (Hironaka, 2008), the global growth of nonviolence has followed the expansion of the globalization of political and civil networks. This global dimension of repertoire growth works on two levels: (1) as an effect of the global integration of states – as governments become more embedded in international networks; and (2) as an effect of the expansion of global civil society networks, as resisters increasingly mobilize nonviolently to demand change. The global organizational investment in spreading nonviolence has quadrupled since the late 1970s (Gallo-Cruz, 2012), and so too has the incidence of major nonviolent movements grown. Because this ‘third force’ of global civil society (Florini, 2000) is developing its emerging role in world affairs for peace (Dar, 2015) and civil resistance is shifting the authoritative approach to social problems through global–local interfaces (Gallo-Cruz, 2016a), the ways in which global civil society connections shape the choice of nonviolent over violent contention also merits closer scrutiny.

Nonviolent actors in the global neighborhood

In Tables 2 and 3 the relationships between local movements and global authorities, inter-state and civil society networks, are explored more closely. These models reveal that ties to nonviolent networks positively shape the course of local action. In Table 2, it is examined how ties to global civil society organizations affect both nonviolent and violent resistance. Here again, the democratic openness of a state has a highly significant and negative effect on the likelihood a major nonviolent movement will emerge. This is an important finding that underscores the rational organization of nonviolence especially in comparison to the effect of repression on nonviolence and the effect of democratic process and repression on the emergence of violent resistance. Where some scholars have suggested that nonviolence may occur as an un-strategized default, or from the lack of a more concerted and strategic plan (Ackerman and Kruegler, 1994), there is macro-level evidence that nonviolence occurs in a particular globalized context. This evidence suggests nonviolence at least partially emerges through the integration of specialized global nonviolence networks oriented toward spreading nonviolence as the ideal means for claims-making and conflict resolution.

Table 2.

Effect of general population INGO ties on violence and nonviolent movement emergence.

Independent variables	Nonviolence	Nonviolence	Violence	Violence
Democratic process	−.008***		.002
	(.002)		(.002)
Political repression		−.004		2.26e-04
		(.002)		(.002)
Internal conflict	5.66e-05***	6.24e-05***	5.70e-04***	5.67e-04***
	(.000)	(.000)	(.000)	(.000)
Secondary education	5.15e-06	6.04e-06	−1.33e-05	−1.20e-05
	(.000)	(.000)	(.000)	(.000)
World trade as % GDP	6.87e-06*	6.50e-05***	9.39e-05**	9.45e-05***
	(.000)	(.000)	(.000)	(.000)
IMF agreement	.650***	.637***	.511***	.510***
	(.104)	(.104)	(.096)	(.096)
Ties to INGOs	2.45e-05**	1.94e-04*	4.29e-04***	4.38e-04***
	(.031)	(.000)	(.000)	(.000)
alpha	1.55e-30	1.55e-30	3.159	3.162
Constant	−2.775***	−2.740***	−2.556***	−2.558***
	(.094)	(.093)	(.094)	(.094)

***

p < .001, ** p < .01, * p < .05; unstandardized coefficients; standard errors in parentheses.

Table 3.

Effect of nonviolent INGO ties on violence and nonviolent movement emergence.

Independent variables	Nonviolence	Nonviolence	Violence	Violence
Democratic process	−.008***		.001
	(.002)		(.002)
Political repression		−.005*		−.003
		(.002)		(.002)
Internal conflict	5.72e-05***	6.17***	5.55e-04***	.001***
	(.000)	(.000)	(.000)	(.000)
Secondary education	3.34e-05	3.68e-05	−1.68e-05	−1.35e-05
	(.000)	(.000)	(.000)	(.000)
World trade as % GDP	6.91-02***	6.18e-05***	1.46e-04***	1.48e-04***
	(.000)	(.000)	(.000)	(.000)
IMF agreement	.720***	.712***	.400***	.403***
	(.097)	(.097)	(.078)	(.078)
Ties to NV INGOs	.087**	.072**	.008	.009
	(.031)	(.031)	(.026)	(.026)
alpha	1.18e-15	1.18e-15	2.754	2.753
Constant	−2.947***	−2.920***	−2.172***	−2.167***
	(.078)	(.077)	(.064)	(.065)

***

p < .001, ** p < .01, * p < .05; unstandardized coefficients; standard errors in parentheses.

Here, when measured in concert with a host of other transnational conditions, repression has a negative but just-shy-of-statistically-significant impact on the emergence of major nonviolent movements. Both democratic process and repression fail to have any significant impact at all on the development of violence, which provides further support for the importance of context in compelling nonviolent mobilization. This indicates that we should pay greater attention to the source and nature of movement strategies in expanding on the research trajectory spearheaded by Chenoweth and Stephan (2012).

Tables 2 and 3 show that education again bears a significant and positive relationship on nonviolent mobilization as it also has a significant, negative relationship on violent resistance. More significant indicators here, however, are the two measures of global economic and political integration. The level of country engagement in a global economy has a highly significant, positive impact on major resistance efforts, both violent and nonviolent, although the odds ratio is just slightly higher that economic integration will more likely lead to nonviolence. Also, an incredibly interesting finding here is the impact of IMF structural adjustment agreements on resistance efforts, which is positive and significant for both the emergence of major nonviolent movements and violent protest. That is, aggrieved peoples do not just respond to internationally imposed austerity policies with food riots, as is often sensationalized by journalists and scholars of structural hardships. Peoples aggrieved by austerity programs also invest in the longer-term efforts to build nonviolent social change. Further, the same double-edged phenomenon is found for the integration of countries in global civil society more generally. Such integration with the broader population of INGOs does not just lead to ‘civil resistance’ but also positively and significantly impacts the outbreaks of violence (supporting qualitative research that has shown this relationship sometimes surreptitiously happens in indirect ways; Reno, 2011). This finding underscores the importance of scholarship on how specialized, radical NGO populations shape different trajectories of resistance (Fitzgerald and Rodgers, 2000). Importantly, these findings also emphasize the significance of the impact of ties to nonviolent INGOs in turning local resisters toward nonviolent change.

Ties to INGOs focused on nonviolence have a significant and positive impact on the likelihood of nonviolent movement emergence. Further, and important to the work of these nonviolent INGOs, unlike the equally positive impact of the general population of INGOs on violent resistance, countries with ties to this specialized population of peaceful protesters do not increase their odds of outbreaks of violence. Nonviolent INGOs are in many respects a newer population. They are a population that goes into fields where high levels of violence are experienced. Their work aims to deter this violence and, as admitted by the personnel involved in these INGOs, this is often a long and arduous process; sometimes small and temporary stop-gap effects are all they can hope for initially. Even so, in the half century wherein this smaller population of specialist advocates has grown from a handful to over 100 organizations, violence continues to erupt even where the general civil society expands its reach; but such widespread, collective violence is statistically, significantly unlikely to do so where nonviolent specialists concentrate their efforts. This finding importantly provides the first global level statistical support to the efforts of hundreds of transnational organizations that work for a peaceful means and ends to social change. It is of phenomenal importance to those who dedicate their lives to this cause. Too often movement analysts focus their measures of success on the overthrow of dictators and, in the process, miss the qualitative states of peace achieved before or after the fall. Here it is found that the cessation and/or absence of violence is a significant effect of ties to transnational nonviolence INGOs while wide-scale mobilization continues on the ground.

INGO ties over time

A closer look at the descriptive data for this population helps to place these findings within the contours of the overall dynamics of a growing global society for nonviolence. Nonviolent INGOs are an important part of major political changes and most often in the very early stages of grievance and mobilization. Of the 70 countries that reported active membership ties with nonviolent INGOs before nonviolent movements emerged, 68% of them held ties to these INGOs at least 10 years or more before a major nonviolent movement emerged. That is, two-thirds of the countries whose nonviolent mobilization was positively shaped by their relationship with nonviolent INGOs had developed that relationship over a decade or more before wide-scale mobilization. Of the 24 countries that reported membership ties with nonviolent INGOs after a major movement developed, 66% of them reported active ties to nonviolent INGOs within the first few years of their mobilization. So, two-thirds of the remaining major movements developed ties with nonviolent INGOs immediately after wide-scale mobilization erupted. This analysis shows that these transnational networks are not just accessory ‘boomerangs’ called on to provide limited diplomacy in discrete campaigns as is suggested by the literature that focuses squarely on INGO-to-state relations (Keck and Sikkink, 1998). They are a long-term part of the context in which the structure and the language of claims-making unfolds non-violently. While we cannot suggest – from these data – that they are sufficient mechanisms for mobilization, we can conclude that they are an important part of the ‘bee swarm’ of concomitant factors that aid and impel a movement toward widespread mobilization (Hironaka, 2014).

A broader historical look at the cultural context of the late twentieth century and into the 2000s in which this global wave of nonviolent movements and organizations unfolded further underscores this point. Since the 1940s when India finally gained independence, tens of thousands of campaigns have drawn on nonviolence as a guiding tactical repertoire (Global Nonviolent Action Database, 2012). Global nonviolent meetings, marches, conferences, and workshops are regularly scheduled on a calendar of internationally organized events, all aimed toward the building of a global society supporting one way of organizing social change that holds within it great global potential. The Global Books in Print database catalogs over 3000 books on the topic of nonviolence over the twentieth century.

One important rallying event for intergovernmental organizations was the 1989 UN adoption of the Seville Statement on Violence, a statement by an international conference of scholars and scientists who opposed the assumption that violence is a natural or inevitable aspect of human conflict. They insisted the UN and other international bodies work for peaceful conflict resolution as a fundamental responsibility of humankind. Other important international events aimed to enlist governmental endorsement and support for broadening civil society capacities to use nonviolence. Some of the more visible of these campaigns included the UN International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence, from 2000 to 2010. A first ever cross-continental World March for Nonviolence closed the event in the decade’s last year. Then, beginning in 2011, World without Wars and Violence, the INGO established at the conclusion of the World March to carry on global nonviolence advocacy, publicized an international call to a World Forum for Peace and Nonviolence that has launched a series of worldwide events to promote nonviolence. In 2011, the INGO Global Food for Thought declared January through April, the time between the anniversary months of Gandhi’s and King’s assassinations, an annual ‘Global Season for Nonviolence’.

This finding adds global level affirmation to single case study qualitative data that have shown how nonviolent INGOs can act as ‘movement midwives’ in a number of important discursive and tactical ways (Pagnucco and McCarthy, 1999). I have argued here that the multi-level linkages among IGOs/INGOs/NGOs and local movement actors are one of many social forces that can shape the culture of movement strategizing and tactical approaches. This research helps to explain why INGOs work especially to interject nonviolence into violent contexts, as they are called to attend to heightened conflict situations and offer support to those protesting alongside outbreaks of violent resistance. Most importantly, this research presents some of the contours of the growing presence of international supporters explicitly dedicated to nonviolent resistance, which future research should continue to explore.

Nonviolence as global repertoire and local action

To conclude that nonviolence is emerging as a global cultural repertoire for resistance does not negate the strategic agency of local level actors, but adds much-needed complexity to how we understand and study the operation of agency within a globally changing socioscape. In sociology, we have long debated, and added greater complexity and understanding to, the structure versus agency divide, once reified through typological conceptual devices (Hays, 1994; O’Donnell, 2010). Scholars now assess the interaction between the two poles of types of action. To assert that engagement or even enactment of a growing world culture of nonviolence is at play does not mean actors do not think critically about their choices, although a long-held sociological tenet is that social ‘thinking’ occurs along a continuum of strategic versus taken-for-granted engagement with ready made cultural ‘scripts’ for action. Rather, it asserts that there is empirical evidence that the resistance ‘toolkit’ is increasingly shaped by our cross-cultural exchanges, and international actors are among the players in these exchanges. To formulate a language of resistance does imply that greater homogeneity is possible and even likely as a common resistance repertoire is increasingly shared as the operative language of solidarity building. These linkages also threaten new constraints with power tipped toward interested global ‘others’ and new forms of corruption made possible (Adhikari and Goldey, 2010; Vervisch and Titeca, 2010). But heterogeneity and creative, mutual empowerment are always also possible, as local level improvisation entails a mixture of strategic calculations, relying on and/or incorporating new models because they have gained great legitimacy, promising to connect actors with a support network of global others, and/or appealing to a local level cultural or value system (Alasuutari and Qadir, 2013; Roudometof, 2015). The motivations of individuals cannot be proven through any global statistical analysis, whether it considers only rational choice assumptions or incorporates a cultural framework. Nevertheless, the global spread of a culture of nonviolent resistance through organized solidarity can enlighten us to the expanding range of motivations, meanings, strategies, and tactics shared across political and cultural divides. Much research remains to disentangle how these repertoire connections work through qualitative assessment of the politics and cultures of relationality among transnational and local level actors. I suggest future research pay particular attention to: (1) the nature of working relationships with INGOs and how they shape movement trajectories and outcomes; (2) the particular populations that gain greater visibility and support from nonviolent INGOs and the populations that don’t and why; (3) the intersection between political economy and culture in both the development and impact of ties to nonviolent INGOs; and (4) the impact of ties to INGOs on the types and nature of different campaigns adopted by broadly-construed nonviolent movements.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank John Boli, Ann Hironaka, Alex Hicks, Evan Shofer, Lynne Woehrle, and the ASA annual association meeting ‘Peace, War and Social Change’ panel participants on nonviolent social movements for many helpful comments, and Alex Hicks and Evan Shofer for assistance acquiring data.

Funding

This research was supported by Emory University and College of the Holy Cross.

Notes

Author biography

Selina Gallo-Cruz is an Associate Professor of Sociology at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. She conducts research on social movements that are global in scope and organization, with a focus on how international networks shape engagement with nonviolent strategies and tactics. She has published in Social Movement Studies, Sociological Forum, Research in Social Movements, Conflict, and Change, the European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, and Interface, among other journals and edited volumes and has a forthcoming book on the role of international networks in women’s nonviolent peace movements.

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