The issue, as I understand gjm, is whether there's a confounding factor.
Treating the correlation between choosing nonviolence (call that N for short) and succeeding in a political campaign (call that S) as accurately representing causality works if one assumes causation runs exclusively as N → S. gjm observes that expected probability of success (P) could be a confounding factor: maybe we have the extra causal arrows N ← P → S, as well as N → S.
According to her blog comment, Chenoweth did try to tackle this by establishing that there's no N ← P causal arro...
Interesting, haven't seen anything data-driven like this before...
Civil resistance and the 3.5% rule.
https://rationalinsurgent.com/2013/11/04/my-talk-at-tedxboulder-civil-resistance-and-the-3-5-rule/
"no campaigns failed once they’d achieved the active and sustained participation of just 3.5% of the population—and lots of them succeeded with far less than that."
"Then I analyzed the data, and the results blew me away. From 1900 to 2006, nonviolent campaigns worldwide were twice as likely to succeed outright as violent insurgencies. And there’s more. This trend has been increasing over time—in the last fifty years civil resistance has become increasingly frequent and effective, whereas violent insurgencies have become increasingly rare and unsuccessful."
Data viz:
http://www.navcodata.org/
Interesting strategic viewpoint
http://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2016/11/15/how-can-we-know-when-popular-movements-are-winning-look-to-these-four-trends/
1. Size and diversity of participation.
2. Nonviolent discipline.
3. Flexible & innovative techniques. switching between concentrated methods like demonstrations and dispersed methods like strikes and stay-aways.
4. Loyalty shifts.
if erstwhile elite supporters begin to abandon the opponent, remain silent when they would typically defend him, and refuse to follow orders to repress dissidents, or drag their feet in carrying out day-to-day orders, the incumbent is losing his grip.
(observations from article above)
"The average nonviolent campaign takes about 3 years to run its course (that’s more than three times shorter than the average violent campaign, by the way)."
"The average nonviolent campaign is about eleven times larger as a proportion of the overall population as the average violent campaign.
"Nonviolent resistance campaigns are ten times more likely to usher in democratic institutions than violent ones."
original overview and links article:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/01/worried-american-democracy-study-activist-techniques
and a training site that has some exercises in group cohesion and communication tech, from Guardian.
https://www.trainingforchange.org/tools
edit: The article that got me looking, how to strike in a gig economy, and international reach
http://www.transnational-strike.info/2017/02/01/how-do-we-strike-when-our-boss-is-a-machine-a-software-or-a-chain-struggles-in-the-gig-economy/