Potential Fighting Capability and State Concessions: A Study of Violent Rebellion and Nonviolent Resistance
Journal: CU Scholar (University of Colorado Boulder)
Year: 2015

This dissertation examines the reasons that some non-state actors choose to engage in nonviolent resistance while others, with similar goals, engage in violent rebellion. I then look why, among groups that do use violence, some see longer and more intense conflicts than others. I argue that the variance in the potential that these groups have to grow in strength during the process of fighting has an impact on all three of these variables, with groups that have less potential being more likely to