Breaking the Conflict Trap: Nonviolent Mobilization and the Recurrence of Civil War

Abstract

We argue that large-scale nonviolent mobilization in post-civil war settings reduces the likelihood of conflict recurrence by diffusing a pluralist political culture and by incentivizing governments to respect political civil liberties, a process conceptualized here as horizontal democratic norm diffusion and vertical democratic norm change, respectively. Using causal mediation analysis and an instrumental variable approach with data from V-Dem and the Phoenix Historical Event Dataset, this study shows that post-conflict nonviolent mobilization lowers the risk of civil war recurrence through its positive effects on societal pluralism and governmental respect for political civil liberties. These findings contribute to the literatures on nonviolent resistance and peacebuilding by demonstrating the peace-promoting potential of nonviolent mobilization in post-civil war contexts and by clarifying the mechanisms through which it influences the recurrence of armed conflict.