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Rebellion, uprising, or insurrection is a refusal of obedience or order. It refers to the open resistance against the orders of an established authority.

A rebellion originates from a sentiment of indignation and disapproval of a situation and then manifests itself by the refusal to submit or to obey the authority responsible for this situation.
Rebellion can be individual or collective, peaceful (civil disobedience, civil resistance, and nonviolent resistance) or violent (terrorism, sabotage and guerrilla warfare).

In political terms, rebellion and revolt are often distinguished by their different aims. While rebellion generally seeks to evade and/or gain concessions from an oppressive power, a revolt seeks to overthrow and destroy that power, as well as its accompanying laws. The goal of rebellion is resistance while a revolt seeks a revolution. As power shifts relative to the external adversary, or power shifts within a mixed coalition, or positions harden or soften on either side, an insurrection may seesaw between the two forms.

Classification

An armed but limited rebellion is an insurrection, and if the established government does not recognize the rebels as ''belligerents'' then they are ''insurgents'' and the revolt is an insurgency. In a larger conflict the ''rebels'' may be recognized as ''belligerents'' without their government being recognized by the established government, in which case the conflict becomes a ''civil war''.

Civil resistance movements have often aimed at, and brought about, the fall of a government or head of state, and in these cases could be considered a form of ''rebellion''. In many of these cases, the opposition movement saw itself not only as nonviolent, but also as upholding their country's constitutional system against a government that was unlawful, for example, if it had refused to acknowledge its defeat in an election. Thus the term ''rebel'' does not always capture the element in some of these movements of acting to defend the rule of law and constitutionalism.

There are a number of terms that are associated with ''rebel'' and ''rebellion''. They range from those with positive connotations to those with pejorative connotations. Examples include:

*Boycott, similar to civil disobedience, but it simply means a separation, primarily financial, from the system that is being rebelled against. This entails refusing to participate in the monetary system, limiting consumption, or ignoring notions of property rights (AKA squatting, simple living).
* Civil resistance, civil disobedience, and nonviolent resistance which do not include violence or paramilitary force.
* Coup, an illegal overthrow of a government, usually carried out by the military or other politicians.
* Mutiny, which is carried out by military or security forces against their commanders
* Armed resistance movement, which is carried out by “freedom fighters”, often against an occupying foreign power
* Revolt, a term that is sometimes used for more localized rebellions rather than a general uprising
*Revolution, which is mostly carried out by radicals and frustrated citizens, usually meant to overthrow the current government
*Riot, a form of civil disorder involving violent public disturbance
*Subversion, which are covert attempts at sabotaging a government, carried out by spies or other subversives
*Terrorism, which is the use of intentional violence by non-state actors, typically against civilians, to affect political, social, cultural, religious and/or economic change.

Causes

Macro approach

The following theories broadly build on the Marxist interpretation of rebellion. Rebellion is studied, in Theda Skocpol's words, by analyzing "objective relationships and conflicts among variously situated groups and nations, rather than the interests, outlooks, or ideologies of particular actors in revolutions".

Marxist view

Karl Marx's analysis of revolutions sees such expression of political violence not as anomic, episodic outbursts of discontents but rather the symptomatic expression of a particular set of objective but fundamentally contradicting class-based relations of power. The central tenet of Marxist philosophy, as expressed in ''Das Kapital'', is the analysis of society's mode of production (societal organization of technology and labor) and the relationships between people and their material conditions. Marx writes about "the hidden structure of society" that must be elucidated through an examination of "the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers". The conflict that arises from producers being dispossessed of the means of production, and therefore subject to the possessors who may appropriate their products, is at the origin of the revolution. The inner imbalance within these modes of production is derived from the conflicting modes of organization, such as capitalism emerging within feudalism, or more contemporarily socialism arising within capitalism. The dynamics engineered by these class frictions help class consciousness root itself in the collective imaginary. For example, the development of the bourgeoisie class went from an oppressed merchant class to urban independence, eventually gaining enough power to represent the state as a whole. Social movements, thus, are determined by an exogenous set of circumstances. The proletariat must also, according to Marx, go through the same process of self-determination which can only be achieved by friction against the bourgeoisie. In Marx's theory, revolutions are the "locomotives of history" because revolution ultimately leads to the overthrow of a parasitic ruling class and its antiquated mode of production. Later, rebellion attempts to replace it with a new system of political economy, one that is better suited to the new ruling class, thus enabling societal progress. The cycle of revolution, thus, replaces one mode of production with another through the constant class friction.

Ted Gurr: Roots of political violence

In his book ''Why Men Rebel'', Ted Gurr looks at the roots of political violence itself applied to a rebellion framework. He defines political violence as: "all collective attacks within a political community against the political regime, its actors ..or its policies. The concept represents a set of events, a common property of which is the actual or threatened use of violence". Gurr sees in violence a voice of anger that manifests itself against the established order. More precisely, individuals become angry when they feel what Gurr labels as relative deprivation