Non-Violent Conflicts: Causes, Strategies, and Outcomes

About the course

The aim of this course is to deepen students' understanding of the causes, dynamics, strategies, tactics, and outcomes of civil resistance / nonviolent conflicts. The focus is on large-scale campaigns against governments, for goals such as regime change, territorial change, or end of foreign occupation. The course provides an advanced introduction to the key questions and concepts in the study of strategic nonviolent conflict, including an overview the empirically based research on this phenomenon. The students are introduced to the process of nonviolent conflicts from mobilization to different types of outcomes. This includes exploring the tactical choices of movements, repression and resilience, and nonviolent discpline. In the course, students will enhance their academic insights concerning nonviolent conflicts as well as develop skills to analyse these conflicts independently using knowledge and methods that are anchored in contemporary research.