Mapping the Road to democracy
A global dataset of overturning attempts and organizations in civil resistance transitions
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24225230 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Naela Elmore (0000-0002-8905-6806, School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX), Kashmiri Medhi (0000-0002-1606-6691, School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX), Giuseppe Peressotti (0009-0001-2692-5728, School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX), Jonathan Pinckney (0000-0002-8427-7423, School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 63 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 495-503 |
| Publication date | 2026-06-20 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Peace Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-3433 • E-ISSN: 1460-3578 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jopres/xjag002 |
| OpenAlex | W7134823140 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 38 |
Who attempts to overturn nonviolent revolutions? And when do they succeed? There is a strong correlation between transitions initiated through primarily nonviolent civil resistance and democratization. However, in several prominent cases, civil resistance transitions have been overturned, resulting in new authoritarian regimes. Little research has examined when and how overturning occurs, and which organizations perpetrate it, in part because no data exists that comprehensively examines overturning in civil resistance transitions. In this article we present the Resistance Overturning Attempts Dataset (ROAD), a dataset of overturning attempts and the organizations participating in and resisting them in every civil resistance transition from the beginning of the Third Wave of democratization to the present. We describe the variables and data collection process, and present descriptive statistics to illustrate the data’s utility. These descriptives reveal several important areas for future research, perhaps most surprisingly that the most effective tactic for safeguarding civil resistance transitions appears to be armed violence.
armed violence · authoritarian backsliding · authoritarian regimes · Democratization · nonviolent resistance · nonviolent revolution · third wave of democratization · Peacebuilding and International Security · Political Conflict and Governance · Political Theory and Democracy
Organizations as pivotal actors in conflict processes
Fading voices
Beyond the movement
The Revolutionary City
Democracy and Development
The democratization process
From Dissent to Democracy
Life after Dictatorship
Competitive Authoritarianism
Democracy and Redistribution
The Long March
How Civil Resistance Improves Inclusive Democracy
Non-violent resistance and the quality of democracy
Social Conflict in Africa
Tactics of resistance and post-conflict judicial independence
Autocratic Breakdown and Regime Transitions
The Two-step Model of Clustered Democratization
Disaggregating Repression
The Varieties of Coups D’état
A Complete Data Set of Political Regimes, 1800–2007
Inequality and Democratization
Patterns of Regime Breakdown Since the French Revolution
Critical Junctures
Don't Call It a Comeback
Close but not too close
Introducing the UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset
Fresh carnations or all thorn, no rose? Nonviolent campaigns and transitions in autocracies
Days of rage
Updating nonviolent campaigns
Introducing the Strategies of Resistance Data Project
Words and deeds
Introducing Acled
The Semblance of Democratic Revolution
Revolutionary Violence and Counterrevolution
Unreported Realities
Sticks, Stones, and Molotov Cocktails
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |