Bombs and Banners: Battlefield Dynamics and Armed Groups’ Use of Nonviolent Tactics in Civil War

Under what circumstances do armed insurgents divert scarce resources to nonviolent tactics? Despite extensive research on the causes and consequences of civil wars and resistance campaigns, our understanding of when rebel organizations add nonviolent tactics to their repertoire is limited. Moving beyond traditional explanations of nonviolent resistance campaigns, we hypothesize that rebel organizations use nonviolent tactics–such as strikes and protest–to capitalize on successes on the battlefield. Rebels have many incentives to use nonviolent tactics, but their opportunity to do so typically depends on their ability to mobilize civilians. Military successes help pave the way for mobilization by shifting civilians’ expectations about the prospects for victory and repression. Using cross-national data on rebel nonviolent contention, including original data on nonviolent tactics in struggles for control over the central government, we find robust support for our argument. Probing potential scope conditions, we show that the association is strongest among rebel organizations with civilian wings and for rebels fighting for control over the government. Our findings provide new insight into the full array of tactics that insurgents deploy, beyond variations in armed activity. They contribute to our understanding of the many forms that contentious action can take, even amidst a backdrop of violence.