The Influence of Political Power in Predicting the Outcome of Revolutions

MARIA GLENNA
American University
In the wake of the Arab Spring revolutions their causes and success factors receive renewed interest. The different outcomes of the revolutions question why some revolutions succeed while others fail. What is the effect of the international communitys support or lack of support for a revolution? This paper presents a quantitative analysis of revolutionary campaigns in the period 1992-2006. The dependent variable in this study is failure of revolutions while the key independent variables are condemnation of the revolution in the UN Security Council resolutions, oil production during the revolution, and international sanctions targeting the regime. My hypothesis is that greater political support will increase the likelihood of a revolutions success. The main findings of the paper are that condemnation in Security Council resolutions, oil production, and international sanctions are not significant predictors for the failure of revolutions in the period 1992-2006.

INTRODUCTION
Revolutions, their causes, and success factors have been debated by scholars and policymakers for decades. Today, these issues receive renewed interest in the wake of the revolutions that have occurred in the Arab world. As of April 2012 the uprisings have succeeded in overthrowing four heads of state, while protests and struggles to bring change continue in other countries, particularly in Syria, Bahrain and Yemen. Scholars

have debated the outcomes of the different revolutions and why some have succeeded while others fail. By comparing the case of Syria with other successful revolutions in the Middle East, different commentators have claimed that the revolution in Syria has not succeeded in bringing change because the international community does not have an interest in a successful revolution in Syria. This claim raises several questions about why some revolutions succeed while others fail. First of all, what is the effect of the

international communitys support or lack of support for a revolution? Moreover, how important are international sanctions and oil production for the outcome of a revolution? Traditionally, the concept of revolution is described as a fundamental change in power structures that takes place in a short period of time, for example, through a replacement of the government. In this paper the term is defined as a popular revolt or uprising that aims to change certain aspects of the community where it takes place. Such a change may happen through violent or nonviolent means. In general, few quantitative studies examine the different success factors for revolutions. The existing studies tend to focus on specific revolutions rather than extensive studies on the theories behind the success of a revolution. In explaining the outcome of the revolutions, these studies highlight support and influence by international actors, international trade, sanctions, and the wealth of the country where the revolution is unfolding. A noteworthy exception is a study by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan that examines the relationship between the success of a revolution and the use of nonviolent versus violent tactics.1 In this paper I will to examine the influence of political support from the UN Security
Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, Why civil resistance works : the strategic logic of nonviolent conflict (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).
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Council on the outcome of the revolution as well as the role of oil production during the revolution and of international sanctions. In addition to my key variables, I will examine certain control variables that are used in the literature on revolutions. My hypothesis is that greater political support will increase the likelihood of a revolutions success. Conversely, the lack of support in form of condemnation by the Security Council will decrease the probability of success. Correspondingly, I predict that if the international community impose sanctions on the regime, the revolution is more likely to succeed. On the other hand, I also predict that oil production will have a negative effect on the outcome of a revolution because revenue states may be less dependent on a functioning society and tax income, and can more easily repress the revolution.

LITERATURE
The literature on revolutions indicates that the probability of a successful revolution is generally higher if the revolutionary campaign is backed by certain powerful countries. In contrast, the probability is lower if the campaign lacks such support or when the government is supported. For example, in Nicaragua and the Philippines the revolutions succeeded when the US supported them morally, military, or even through interventions.2 Conversely, if the powerful country had a political interest in the status quo, the revolt did not succeed or was faced strong opposition, such as, in Poland, El Salvador, and partly Iran.3 In general, most of the studies on revolutions examine cases during the Cold War. In this period the United Nations Security Council (SC) seldom agreed on resolutions in
Robert A. Pastor, "Preempting Revolutions: The Boundaries of U.S. Influence," International Security 15, no. 4 (1991).; Michael Tien-Lung Liu, "States and Urban Revolutions: Explaining the Revolutionary Outcomes in Iran and Poland," Theory and Society 17, no. 2 (1988).
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support or condemnation of a revolution because of the deadlock between the Soviet Union and the US. Since the end of the Cold War the international community has to a greater extent used the Security Council as a forum to address revolutionary campaigns and support or condemn them. Because most of the literature on revolutions deal with

campaigns before the end of the Cold War, there is a gap in the literature on the effect of political support through the Security Council. This study attempts to bridge this gap by looking at the relationship between the outcome of revolutions and support and condemnation in the Security Council resolutions. In a more recent study, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan examine 323 violent and nonviolent campaigns between 1899-2006 which all had the goal to overthrow their regimes.4 They tested a number of factors effect on the success rate including size, security force defections, international sanctions, and violent regime repression of nonviolent campaigns. According to Chenoweth & Stephan the most statistically significant factor for the probability of a revolutionary campaign was the size of the campaign (number of participants) as well as whether the campaign was using nonviolent methods to achieve its means. Chenoweth & Stephan also include the effect of international sanctions, but focus on the prospects that the international community will impose sanctions in a conflict where the revolutionary campaign uses nonviolent methods. This study will

include the size of the campaign and the use of nonviolent methods as control variables, and will look at the effect of international sanctions on the outcome of the revolution.

BACKGROUND ON DATA AND METHODS

The unit of analysis is revolutions or campaigns against a regime between 1992 and
Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, Why civil resistance works : the strategic logic of nonviolent conflict (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).
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2006. The majority of the data in this study is taken from a dataset made by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan published as a replication dataset (WCRW)5 for their book Why Civil Resistance Works.6 Their data builds on the NAVCO1 (Nonviolent and Violent Conflicts and Outcomes) dataset 1.0 that was developed by the same authors. The WCRW dataset includes 323 revolutionary campaigns between 1899 and 2006, and attempts to cover all campaigns in this period. This study is limited to revolutions that started after the Cold War because the Security Council seldom agreed on the support of a revolution prior to the end of the Cold War as a result of the deadlock between the Soviet Union and the US. This limitation is also chosen because of the amount of work needed to collect data from the Security Council resolutions. Chenoweth and Stephan categorize the outcome as success, limited success, or failure. I used several variations of these categories in my initial analysis. Because the Security Council has not supported one single successful revolution since the end of the Cold War, I decided to examine the failure of revolutions rather than the successes. I developed the Security Council resolution variable by going through all the Security Council resolutions addressing conflicts between 1992 and 2006 and looked at the language in the texts. I initially used three different variables to describe how the Security Council

addresses the revolution and the regime: Condemnation of the regime, condemnation of the revolution as well as neutral or balanced resolutions where both the parties were mentioned. However, the Security Council has been hesitant to support any party to a revolution in its resolutions. All in all, the Security Council very seldom actively supports a revolution.
5 6

For these reasons I chose to examine the effect of condemnation of a

Replication data available at http://echenoweth.faculty.wesleyan.edu/wcrw/ Chenoweth and Stephan, Why civil resistance works : the strategic logic of nonviolent conflict.

revolution. If any resolution regarding a conflict pointedly criticizes the revolution, I have chosen to categorize the resolutions for the conflict in question as condemnation of the revolution unless there is no other resolution that equally criticizes the regime. The reason is that most of the resolutions consequently mention both parties, and such a categorization would increase variation in the data. Moreover, if some resolutions focus on one party to the conflict, they will usually refer to both or all parties in later resolutions. In order to facilitate further variation in the data the threshold for condemnation of the revolution is therefore low. As mentioned, the WCRW dataset includes data on international sanctions and in which conflicts the international community have authorized such restrictions. This study will include a variable that indicates if the regime has been targeted of international sanctions for its behavior against the revolutionary campaign. Chenoweth and Stephan found that the number of known participants in the revolutionary campaign and to which extent the campaign has been primarily nonviolent were statistically significant predictors of a campaigns success.7 In order to examine the effect of the size of the campaign relative to the size of the population Chenoweth and Stephan use the log of the number of participants in the revolutionary campaign divided by the log of the population in the relevant country. I will use these three variables, the number of participants, nonviolence, and relative size of campaign as control variables. In addition to the data from the WCRW dataset, this study uses data on oil production. This information is taken from Index Mundi, an online database that compiles information from

Ibid.

the United States Energy Information Administration.8 In order to analyze my data I will first present the univariate statistics and then proceed to analyze the bivariate comparison of my variables. Finally, I will conclude with a multiple logistic regression. Since all of my variables are binary, except for the number of participants in a revolution, I will use logistic regressions to calculate the regression analysis.

ANALYSIS
Table 1. Descriptive statistics for analysis of predictors of failure of revolutions
N Failure of revolution SC condemns revolution Oil production Target of international sanctions Nonviolent campaign N participants in revolution Log of participants/log of population 48 48 48 48 48 44 33 Minimum 0 0 0 0 0 350 0.58 Maximum 1 1 1 1 1 1,000,000 1.68 Mean 0.33 0.08 0.58 0.057 0.073 143223,86 1.0672 Std. Deviation 0.476 0.279 0.498 0.394 0.505 270,132.464 0.23936

Table 1 contains the minimums, maximums, means and standard deviations for all the variables in my analysis. In addition, I present the descriptive statistics of the outcome of revolutions and support in the Security Council resolutions in order to illustrate some key variables. My study contains 48 countries for all my variables, except for the number of known participants (44 countries) and the log of members in the revolutionary campaign divided by the log of population. The number of cases is limited by the available data in the WCRW dataset. 16 of the studied revolutions failed while the missing revolutions achieved a partial
Index Mundi, World Crude Oil Production per Year, available at http://www.indexmundi.com/energy.aspx?product=oil&graph=production
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or full success. The Security Council only condemned 4 of the revolutions (8,3 %), 2 of the regimes and issued neutral or balanced resolutions in 42 cases (87.5%). These numbers illustrate that there is only a minor variance in the variable on Security Council condemnation and show that most of the Security Council resolutions are neutral or balanced. The Security Council has imposed sanctions in 9 situations which reveal that a balanced language in the resolutions does not exclude that the international community imposes sanctions. Moreover, the data show that in 28 of the 48 cases (almost 60 %) the country where the revolution took place produced oil. This corresponds with the total amount of oil producing countries in the world (around 65 %).9

BIVARIATE ANALYSIS
Figure 1. Percentage of failed revolutions condemned by the UN Security Council

CIA Factbook, Country Comparison, Oil Production, available at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2173rank.html

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To begin my bivariate analysis, I illustrate the relationship between my dependent variable and condemnation by the Security Council. Figure 1 demonstrate that the Security Council has condemned only a few of them. However, as mentioned above the Security Council has only condemned a few revolutions (8,3 % of the cases), and Figure 1 shows that in all those cases the revolution failed. This illustration supports my hypothesis that if the Security Council condemns a revolution, the revolution is less likely to fail. Continuing the bivariate analysis, the correlation matrix (Table 2 below) illustrates the relationship between the dependent, independent, and control variables. Surprisingly, the condemnation by the Security Council has a weak positive relationship with the failure of revolutions and is not statistically significant. Only two of the control variables are at the p < 0.05 level. The variables for nonviolent means and the log of participants in the campaign relative to the population both have a negative relationship with the failure of a revolution. This correlation indicates that if the revolutionary campaign uses nonviolent means and the participants in the campaign is high compared to the population, the revolution is less likely to fail and more likely to succeed. Interestingly, nonviolent

campaigns have a negative correlation with condemnation of the revolution. This indicates that the Security Council is less likely to condemn a revolution if it is nonviolent. In accordance with the findings of Chenoweth and Stephan nonviolent campaigns are correlated with the number of participants, both absolute and in relation with the population.10 In addition, production of oil has a weak, negative relationship with

condemnation from the Security Council and is almost statistically significant (the Pearson correlation is 0.165). This variable could support the hypothesis that oil production

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Chenoweth and Stephan, Why civil resistance works : the strategic logic of nonviolent conflict.

predicts failure of revolutions because the government is not economically dependent on tax income. Table 2. Correlation matrix for key variables in analysis of predictors of failure of revolutions

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Failure of revolution SC condemns revolution Oil production Target of international sanctions Nonviolent campaign N participants in revolution Log participants/ Log population

Pearson Correlation Pearson Correlation Pearson Correlation Pearson Correlation Pearson Correlation Pearson Correlation Pearsons Correlation

1. 1 0.107 0.149 0.113 -0.501** -0.178 -0.445**

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

1 -0.204 -145 -0.289* -0.137 -0.152 1 0.081 0.134 0.102 -0.078 1 -0.140 0.010 0.587 1 0.526** 0.587** 1 0.439* 1

** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). * Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

LOGISTIC REGRESSION
I used several models in my logistic regression because including more variables would influence the accuracy of the regression in such a small sample. The variables for condemnation by the Security Council, oil production and international sanctions all had a positive relationship with failure of revolutions. However, consistently with the

correlation matrix these variables were not statistically significant. Only the variables for nonviolent campaigns and log of number of participants in relation to the population were 10

significant on a p < 0.05 level. The odds ratio for the nonviolence variable in Model II indicates that if the revolutionary campaign uses nonviolent methods, the odds that the revolution will succeed increase with 52 %, controlling for the other variables in the model. Table 3. Odds ratios from logistic regressions predicting failure of revolutions
I SC condemns revolution Oil production Target of international sanctions Nonviolent campaign N participants in revolution Log participants/log population N Nagelkerke R2 48 0.058 48 0.078 48 0.401 44 0.351 2.991 2.273 II 3.441 2.234 1.940 III 1.124 3.991 0.888 0.52** 0.039** 1.000 0.000 1.000 0.000* 33 0.637 IV V

** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). * Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

Surprisingly, the odds ratio for nonviolent methods declined greatly in model IV. In model V the odds ratios indicate that the use of nonviolent means had no effect on the failure of revolutions, and the variable was not statistically significant. Similarly, log of participants in relation to the population was significant, but had no influence. These findings are even more puzzling seen in connection with the Nagelkerke value. The Nagelkerke R Square indicates that a large percentage of the variance in failure of revolutions is explained by the variables in model III-V. Particularly in model IV and V, the variables have no relationship with the failure of revolutions, and only the log of participants in relation with the population is statistically significant. The decrease in relevance of use of nonviolent means in revolutions in model IV and V correspond with the 11

decrease in number of cases and indicates that the sample is too small.

CONCLUSION
The analysis of my data does not support my hypothesis that the more political support one of the actors to the conflict has, the more likely it is that they will succeed and their adversary would fail. There are several possible explanations for this conclusion. First of all, the number of cases used in this study may be too small to support my hypothesis. This claim is particularly supported by the change in the control variables which came out as statistically significant and influential in the correlations matrix as well as in one of the models in the regression analysis. As mentioned, the three control variables, use of nonviolent methods in revolutions and the absolute and relative number of participants in the campaign, were the most significant factors in Chenoweth & Stephans study. The fact that these variables were not consistently significant in the logistic

regressions supports the assumption that the sample of this study was too small. However, the conflicting results may also stem from a difference in influence for the observed time period. The use of nonviolence and the absolute and relative number of participants may have been important for the 323 campaigns between 1899 and 2006 that Chenoweth & Stephan studied. However, these variables may be less influential for campaigns between 1992 and 2006. Another possible explanation is that the political support in the Security Council resolutions as well as international sanctions and production of oil are not influential on the success of revolutions. As previously noted the Security Council has not condemned the regime in one single resolution where the revolution succeeded. Although all the cases where the Security Council has condemned a revolution, the campaign has failed, this 12

variable was not statistically significant in my analysis. Finally, political support in the Security Council resolutions can be ineffectual in predicting the outcome of revolutions because the political will may not be expressed in the resolutions. As previously noted, the Security Council seldom condemned only one of the parties in the revolutions. Instead most of the resolutions (87.5 %) condemns all parties and calls on them equally to refrain from violence. To find out if political support is a predictor in the outcome of revolutions one may have to research other political instruments expressing the real political will. Such political will may, however, be difficult to quantify for quantitative research.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chenoweth, Erica, and Maria J. Stephan. Why Civil Resistance Works : The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict [in English]. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Liu, Michael Tien-Lung. "States and Urban Revolutions: Explaining the Revolutionary Outcomes in Iran and Poland." Theory and Society 17, no. 2 (1988): 179-209. Pastor, Robert A. "Preempting Revolutions: The Boundaries of U.S. Influence." International Security 15, no. 4 (1991): 54-86. Index Mundi, World Crude Oil Production per Year (2012), available at http://www.indexmundi.com/energy.aspx?product=oil&graph=production CIA Factbook, Country Comparison, Oil Production (2012), available at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-worldfactbook/rankorder/2173rank.html

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