Achieving justice by starvation: a quantitative analysis of hunger strike outcomes

Abstract

This thesis analysis hunger strikes as a specific protest tactic and aims to contribute to the understanding of where, when and how hunger strikes are most likely to reach their intended goals. By using a dataset consisting of media-reported hunger strikes, it demonstrated that a combination of hunger strike-specific- and political context factors can to some extent determine the likelihoods of what is identified as four distinct hunger strike outcomes (concession, surrender, death and forced end). Various hypothesis on hunger strike outcomes have been tested against the dataset by applying the statistical method multinomial logit. Findings show that coalition governments are more willing to grant concessions to hunger strikers and that states are able to learn from previous hunger strikes in order to avoid deaths. The findings also shows that hunger strikes have slightly better chances of gaining concessions in non-democracies.