Mapping the ROAD to democracy: A global dataset of overturning attempts and organizations in civil resistance transitions

Abstract

Who attempts to overturn nonviolent revolutions? And when do they succeed? There is a strong correlation between transitions initiated through primarily nonviolent civil resistance and democratization. However, in several prominent cases, civil resistance transitions have been overturned, resulting in new authoritarian regimes. Little research has examined when and how overturning occurs, and which organizations perpetrate it, in part because no data exists that comprehensively examines overturning in civil resistance transitions. In this article we present the Resistance Overturning Attempts Dataset (ROAD), a dataset of overturning attempts and the organizations participating in and resisting them in every civil resistance transition from the beginning of the Third Wave of democratization to the present. We describe the variables and data collection process, and present descriptive statistics to illustrate the data’s utility. These descriptives reveal several important areas for future research, perhaps most surprisingly that the most effective tactic for safeguarding civil resistance transitions appears to be armed violence.