Three central mechanisms help explain the turn to violent resistance: emotional mechanisms (fear and anger as motivation for self-defense and revenge, respectively), material mechanisms (“the availability of weapons”), and practice mechanisms (“previous experience, training, and organizational capabilities in violence”).
A cohesive national identity may be necessary for nonviolent movement success but does not itself fully explain why some such movements succeed while others fail.
The success or failure of a civil resistance movement is best understood within a dynamic framework that can account for the interactions between movement activists and the regime, particularly the bearing their respective tactics have on the unity and coherence of the other side.