13:15 - 15:30
Thursday-Panel
Chair/s:
Meri Dankenbring
Discussant/s:
Constantin Ruhe
Meeting Room P

Andreas Juon
Inclusion, recognition, and inter-group comparisons: The effects of power-sharing institutions on grievances

Marina Petrova
Civil Society Organizations and Protests' Escalation to Civil War in Non-Democracies

Benoit Siberdt
State Dissolution and Societal Breakdown: Exploring Onset and Violence in Civil War

Meri Dankenbring
Occurrence of Extremist Religious Ideologies in Civil War
Civil Society Organizations and Protests' Escalation to Civil War in Non-Democracies
Marina Petrova
Bocconi University

Civil society organizations (CSOs) facilitate mobilization for nonviolent protests, yet protests sometimes go on a very violent trajectory, precipitating the onset of civil war. This paper studies the effect of CSOs on protests' escalation to civil war. It argues that while CSOs can facilitate the occurrence of protests, CSOs can have a mediating role in preventing the onset of civil war once protests take place. The facilitating and mediating role of CSOs is conditional on their capacity, which is a function of two dimensions: participation and autonomy from the state. Importantly, CSOs cannot substitute facilitation for mediation before protests occur as the mediating role works only if conflict is not latent. I test the proposition that higher capacity CSOs facilitate the occurrence of protests, but once protests take place, higher capacity CSOs mediate conflict, thereby decreasing the probability of civil war onset as a protests' trajectory. The findings from an empirical investigation with global panel data from 1990 to 2018 show support for this proposition.