How Political Violence Works: Explaining Variation in Resistance Outcomes

To what extent are contemporary violent and nonviolent resistance organizations successful in achieving their core political ends or "outcome" goals, such as national self-determination, secession, overthrowing a government, or instituting vast social reforms? The logic put forth in much of the political bargaining literature argues that even in asymmetric contexts, political violence---due to the high costs it exacts from target populations---should work as an effective means of coercion. The opposing civil resistance literature argues that violence harms organizational efforts in asymmetric conflicts as the use of violence weakens mobilization. Contrasting both literatures, I theorize that in order to achieve victory organizations necessarily develop a supreme political command, which facilitates the strategic flexibility to pursue opportune violent or nonviolent pathways to outcome-goal success. Utilizing an original dataset that documents the attributes of over 500 resistance organizations (1980-2013), I analyze the comparative effectiveness of differing command infrastructures and strategic approaches. The results illustrate that successful organizations tend to establish a strong political command that seeks strategic advantages on both the political and military battlefields. Accordingly, differences in political infrastructure and command, more than other factors, explain variation in the achievement of contemporary resistance organizations.