Resisting Together : How and Why The Unforced Force of Inclsuive Civil Resistance Increase Democracy

Sammanfattning: Previous research has found that civil resistance has a positive impact on democratic development. Still, despite increased academic attention to how civil resistance affects democratization and democracy, no systematic study has yet examined how the nature of inclusion in a civil resistance impacts various elements of democracy. This study addresses this research gap by comparing how inclusive civil resistance and non-fully inclusive civil resistance uprisings between 1943-2013 affected the development of liberal, egalitarian, participatory, and deliberative democracy. Two theoretical arguments are presented for how the nature of inclusion in civil resistance affect its impact on democracy: one arguing that inclusion should generate higher levels of participatory democracy and another underlining how the nature of inclusion in civil resistance generates higher levels of deliberative democracy. The arguments are tested with a quasi-experimental difference-in-difference measure combined with a nearest neighbour matching propensity score method. The results give tentative support for that inclusive civil resistance compared to non-fully inclusive civil resistance increase democracy in general and deliberative democracy in particular up to five years after civil resistance ended. The impact of inclusion in civil resistance does however vary considerably, and further research is needed to strengthen the theory and generate more statistically significant results.