Erica Chenoweth initially thought that only violent protests were effective. However after analyzing 323 movements the results were opposite of what Erica thought:
For the next two years, Chenoweth and Stephan collected data on all violent and nonviolent campaigns from 1900 to 2006 that resulted in the overthrow of a government or in territorial liberation. They created a data set of 323 mass actions. Chenoweth analyzed nearly 160 variables related to success criteria, participant categories, state capacity, and more. The results turned her earlier paradigm on its head — in the aggregate, nonviolent civil resistance was far more effective in producing change.
If campaigns allow their repression to throw the movement into total disarray or they use it as a pretext to militarize their campaign, then they’re essentially co-signing what the regime wants — for the resisters to play on its own playing field. And they’re probably going to get totally crushed.
I’m trying to find the data around the “data set of 323 mass actions. Chenoweth analyzed nearly 160 variables” and am not finding it. Closest I find is the excerpt from their book here https://muse.jhu.edu/article/760088 which tells a rather mixed story.
I understand this was posted within the context of ongoing events in LA. Of note in the research being shared here is the goal of “overthrow of a government or in territorial liberation” which I think is a very different scope. However, I would encourage reading their latest peer reviewed paper here which I believe does a better job of scoping the LA protests.
Of note is that it addresses the consistent conflating of “violent armed overthrow of the state” with “throwing rocks after getting shot at”.