Erica Chenoweth

So in other words, the episode of violence tended to have very little effect on base solidarity, but it had a pretty big effect on alienating potential third-party supporters of the movement that would have allowed it to expand its base.

And so I think the key takeaway of that study is that these types of incidents can be really risky for movements that are trying to expand their base of supporters.

And expanding the base of supporters is one of the key things that nonviolent resistance campaigns need to do to win.

They need to grow in number and in the diversity of their supporters and in the links that their supporters have to different pillars of support.

Yes, that's exactly how I would read kind of the state of the literature on this one, which is that it's a much more risky political move to do when a movement is very small and trying to expand its base than it is if a movement is already very large, enjoys a lot of popular support, and critically, the opponent is hated by lots and lots of people.

So if it's just a regime that's made so many...

and has shattered its own legitimacy to such a large extent that, you know, basically 90% of the population, one where the other wants change, you know, it may be less politically risky.

But there still are a lot of risks.

One of them is just the expansion of repression.

It's much more likely to be really intense and to expand indiscriminately when movements do begin to mix nonviolent and violent methods.

And that's in part why so many regimes

seem to try to deliberately provoke nonviolent movements into kind of breaking down their discipline because they know that it helps bolster their own legitimacy, their own calls for the need for law and order and the restoration of stability.

And they know that significant portions of the population will largely agree with that.

And so, you know, this is part of the reason, you know, why Agence Provocateur's

or incidents of repression meant to provoke people out of their discipline are such a ubiquitous part of the autocratic toolkit.

Yes, I think that's a fair comparison.

I also think that they're playing a similar game in the sense that they're both trying to divide and rule the other.

So the logic of nonviolent resistance is to grow the base in order to create these defections from the opponent's support base.

So basically, the movement is effectively trying to divide the opponent and dislocate it from its pillars of support.

And the regime is trying to do the same to the movement.