Why join the protests? A joint international research project on Nepal's 2006 nonviolent uprisings
Project overview
Project Leader
Project Period
- 2016-2021
Other Project Employees
- Karen Brounéus
- Charles Butcher (NTNU, Norway)
- Prakash Bhattarai (Centre for Social Change, Kathmandu)
Project Description
This research collaboration focuses on Nepal’s 2006 nonviolent uprising. Popular nonviolent uprisings have been a powerful force of change in many developing countries around the world. Yet, the dynamics of nonviolent uprisings are poorly understood, especially in comparison to violent insurgencies. In particular, we do not yet know what drives people to actually participate in the uprisings. This project sets out to conduct a survey of 1,200 participants and non-participants in the 2006 nonviolent uprisings, with the aim to try to identify the micro-foundations for nonviolent mobilisation. The research is embedded in a larger institutional exchange. By way of its focus, it will for the first time bring Nepal’s experiences of nonviolent uprisings to the fore, but also contribute to understanding the conditions under which individuals join nonviolent uprisings. A further aim of this collaboration project is to strengthen the institutional establishment of peace and conflict research in Nepal. In this project, we seek to combine the experiences of Swedish peace research with the local competence and contextual knowledge of our Nepali colleagues to establish a firmer basis for empirically oriented peace research in Nepal.