Education and Revolutions: Why do Revolutionary Uprisings Take Violent or Nonviolent Forms?

Abstract

Is there a relationship between education and the type of revolutionary action – violent or nonviolent? Past studies found a positive relationship between the education and nonviolence, but the influence that education produces on the form that revolution takes has not yet been explored. We show several possible mechanisms that push the educated population to choose nonviolent tactic: (1) education changes people’s preferences toward peaceful solutions and increases support for civil liberties; (2) it enhances human capital that makes it feasible to use unarmed tactics successfully and (3) it increases the relative costs of engaging in armed action. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that the higher education in a country, the higher the probability that revolution will be nonviolent. This paper examines it at a cross-national level with an analysis of 470 NAVCO ‘maximalist campaigns’ and 265 revolutionary events recorded between 1950 and 2020. Overall, we find robust evidence that the higher the level of education in a country, the lower chance that the revolution there would take a violent/armed form.