Introducing the Nonviolent Action in Violent Contexts (NVAVC) dataset
| Published date | 01 March 2019 |
| Author | Erica Chenoweth,Cullen S Hendrix,Kyleanne Hunter |
| Date | 01 March 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343318804855 |
| Subject Matter | Special Data Feature |
Special Data Feature
Introducing the Nonviolent Action
in Violent Contexts (NVAVC) dataset
Erica Chenoweth
Harvard Kennedy School & Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University
Cullen S Hendrix
Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver & Peterson Institute for International
Economics
Kyleanne Hunter
Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver & Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
Abstract
Scholarship on civil war is overwhelmingly preoccupied with armed activity. Data collection efforts on actors in civil
wars tend to reflect this emphasis, with most studies focusing on the identities, attributes, and violent behavior of
armed actors. Yet various actors also use nonviolent methods to shape the intensity and variation of violence as well as
the duration of peace in the aftermath. Existing datasets on mobilization by non-state actors – such as the Armed
Conflict Events and Location (ACLED), Integrated Conflict Early Warning System (ICEWS), and Social Conflict
Analysis Database (SCAD) – tend to include data on manifest contentious acts, such as protests, strikes, and
demonstrations, and exclude activities like organizing, planning, training, negotiations, communications, and
capacity-building that may be critical to the actors’ ultimate success. To provide a more comprehensive and reliable
view of the landscape of possible nonviolent behaviors involved in civil wars, we present the Nonviolent Action in
Violent Contexts (NVAVC) dataset, which identifies 3,662 nonviolent actions during civil wars in Africa between
1990 and 2012, across 124 conflict-years in 17 countries. In this article, we describe the data collection process,
discuss the information contained therein, and offer descriptive statistics and discuss spatial patterns. The framework
we develop provides a powerful tool for future researchers to use to categorize various types of nonviolent action, and
the data we collect provide important evidence that such efforts are worthwhile.
Keywords
Africa, civil war, mobilization, nonviolent action, protest, violence
Scholarship on civil war is often preoccupied with the
actions of armed groups, especially government forces,
rebel organizations, and non-state paramilitary actors
such as self-defense forces and private security firms.
Data collection efforts on civil wars tend to reflect this
emphasis, with most studies focusing on the identities,
attributes, and violent behavior of armed actors (Cun-
ningham, Gleditsch & Salehyan, 2009; Carey, Mitchell
& Lowe, 2013; Pettersson & Wallensteen, 2015). Yet
civilian groups, labor unions, local and transnational
companies, local and transnational nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs), rebel groups, and international
organizations (IGOs) also use nonviolent methods in
ways that shape conflict dynamics (Dorff, 2015), affect-
ing both the intensity and variation of violence in con-
flicts (Kaplan, 2017) as well as the duration of peace in
the aftermath (Nilsson, 2012).
Corresponding author:
erica_chenoweth@hks.harvard.edu
Journal of Peace Research
2019, Vol. 56(2) 295–305
ªThe Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343318804855
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