Upping the ante without taking up arms: Why mass movements escalate demands
| Author | Sooyeon Kang |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00223433221137614 |
| Published date | 01 January 2023 |
| Date | 01 January 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
Upping the ante without taking up arms:
Why mass movements escalate demands
Sooyeon Kang
Mershon Center for International Security Studies, The Ohio State University
Abstract
One of the unresolved puzzles in the civil resistance and contentious politics literatures is why some movements that
begin seeking limited redress in a certain policy spaceescalate their claims to demand the ousting of a national leader or
the entire regime, a process the article terms ‘demand escalation’. For instance, inthe summer of 2019, thousands took
to the streets of Hong Kong to protestabout a proposed extradition bill that would allowcriminal suspects to be sent to
mainland China to face trial in courts controlled by the Communist Party. However, even after Hong Kong’s leader,
Carrie Lam, announced the formal withdrawal of the controversial bill,protests continued with some calling for greater
democracy andothers demanding Lam’s resignation. Whereas mostof the literature on civil resistancetreats demands as
fixed and focuses on different methods of struggle to pursue predefined ends, this article shows that demands can
change as a result of the state–dissent interaction. The article argues that movements are more likely to escalate their
demands when the state responds to the initial nonviolent action with a disproportionate use of force, because such an
action intensifies the grievances the protesters have against the state and betrays the remaining trust that people might
have had in the government. The analysis of a new quantitative dataset that catalogues both reformist and maximalist
opposition campaigns globally supports this claim. By incorporating non-maximalist campaigns into the analysis and
not treating demands as fixed, this article adds to our understanding of mass campaigns and highlights an overlooked
means by which nonviolent campaigns can up their ante without resorting to violence.
Keywords
backfire dynamics, conflict escalation, mass mobilization, nonviolent resistance, political violence, repression–dissent
nexus
Introduction
Not all revolutions demand revolutionary change from
the start. Even the French Revolution, one of the most
written about events in Western history and a ‘watershed
of the modern era’ was not necessarily predetermined to
be a revolution (Hunt, 2004: 3). Some of the earliest and
most significant events of the French Revolution were, in
fact, much more reformist
1
in nature than maximalist.
2
The high price and shortage of bread is often cited as the
‘common grievance’ of the French Revolution, and the
March on Versailles
3
on 5 October 1789, an early form
of mass mobilization campaign, was initiated by a group
of women in a Paris marketplace desperate for bread
(Packham, 2014). Although the French Revolution had
both social and intellectual origins,
4
in the early phases,
Corresponding author:
sooyeon.kang@du.edu
1
‘Reformist’ campaigns are sustained mass movements with demands
that concern certain policy areas and do not call for a change in
government authority (Chenoweth, Kang & Moore, in progress).
2
‘Maximalist’,‘regime change’, and ‘revolutionary’ campaignsare used
interchangeably to describe sustained mass movements that demand
change in government authority or territorial autonomy, similar to
Stephan & Chenoweth (2008) and Chenoweth & Lewis (2013).
3
Also known as the October March, the October Days, and the
Women’s March on Versailles.
4
For a synthesis on the social and intellectual origins of the French
Revolution, see Tarrow (2012).
Journal of Peace Research
2023, Vol. 60(1) 73–87
ªThe Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/00223433221137614
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