Civilian Resilience and Resistance: Integrating Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives with a Focus on Ukraine

In light of considerable and renewed interest in civilian resilience and resistance in the face of conflict, this article seeks to expand the set of analytical lenses available for understanding this complex set of issues. Following this introduction, Section 2 highlights the relevant insights from a broad problem set in international relations that can inform the research on civilian resistance efforts; this represents a high-level mapping of the issues and a scoping guide. Section 3 zeroes in on specific factors driving (or suppressing) civilian resistance, drawing on the latest studies in this specific field. Section 4 looks at several institutional and organizational state-level aspects of civilian resistance efforts in Ukraine seen since 2022. While many of the insights can be applied to both violent and nonviolent resistance activities, with the violent ones constituting a higher threshold and significantly higher stakes, Section 5 explores the aspects unique to nonviolent resistance in greater depth. Theoretical material is presented along with a review of public surveys on the willingness to engage in the spectrum of resistance activities. There is some inevitable structural overlap throughout the study, with certain academic insights discussed from multiple theoretical bases and the lessons to be drawn from the war in Ukraine featuring prominently as the most current example of civilian resistance efforts.

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About the Project
The Asymmetric Threat Analysis Center (ATAC), a joint program between START and UMD’s Applied Research Lab for Intelligence and Security (ARLIS), is funded by the Department of Defense under award no. HQ003421F0481. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Defense.