External support to various actors involved in nonviolent campaigns can affect the trajectory of a nonviolent struggle. This monograph evaluates which external support to civil resistance campaigns is efficacious as well as the cumulative impact of these forms of external support on campaign outcomes. Nonviolent campaigns usually take place in complex domestic settings. We develop a strategic approach to external assistance, arguing that nonviolent campaigns tend to benefit the most from external assistance that allows them to generate high participation, maintain nonviolent discipline, deter crackdowns, and elicit security force defections. But various forms of external assistance have mixed effects on the characteristics and outcomes of nonviolent campaigns. In this study, we use novel qualitative and quantitative data to examine the ways that external assistance impacted the characteristics and success rates of post-2000 maximalist uprisings.

Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan