This thesis presents a quantitative study that aims to investigate whether Brian Martin is right in his theory about how more powerful actors have a greater capacity to prevent outrage and anger after opressions and thus suffer less from political jiu-jitsu, a process in which oppression becomes counterproductive. This is done by looking at whether more powerful regimes getaway more easily with repressing nonviolent campaigns. By designing a measuring scale for the scope of political jiu-jitsu, the connection between the scope and three different aspects of power - national capacity, wealth and state oppression - is investigated. The results shows that the more powerful the oppressive states are in terms of national capacity and wealth, the less extensive political jiu-jitsu. On the other hand, a higher degree of state oppression results in more extensive political jiu-jitsu. The results linked to the degree of staterepression are statistically significant and it can thus be said that the differences in the extent of political jiu-jitsu are not due to chance. The results indicate that more powerful states getaway with repressing nonviolent campaigns more easily, if power is measured in terms ofnational capacity or wealth. If, on the other hand, power is measured in the amount of noppression, it is more costly for the states that exercise more oppression.

This thesis aims to investigate if state oppression towards independence movements affects their chosen strategies for achieving autonomy, as well as examine whether the state oppression results in political jiu-jitsu and/or backfire for the state. In recent years there have been more studies regarding state oppression towards non-violent movements examining in what ways this affects the non-violent movements, as this has been seen as unjust methods. Furthermore, it has been examined in relation to political jiu-jitsu and backfire, however not specifically regarding independence movements in a qualitative study. The study is based on the theoretical framework political jiu-jitsu by Gene Sharp and the backfire framework by Brian Martin. This has been done with a qualitative comparative case study through a process tracing method with the independence movements UCK and ETA as analytical units. The result from the study firstly indicates that there is a connection between the experience of state oppression and the prominence of political jiu-jitsu and backfire for states - that states experience political jiu-jitsu and backfire when choosing oppressive methods towards non-violence movements. Second, the independence movements are likely to choose violence as methods to achieve their political goals. These results are of importance to understand how violence can affect non-violent movements and how states using oppression can end up suffering from it - acknowledging it may not be the way to go.