Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent ConflictFor more than a century, from 1900 to 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts in achieving their stated goals. By attracting impressive support from citizens, whose activism takes the form of protests, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other forms of nonviolent noncooperation, these efforts help separate regimes from their main sources of power and produce remarkable results, even in Iran, Burma, the Philippines, and the Palestinian Territories. Combining statistical analysis with case studies of specific countries and territories, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan detail the factors enabling such campaigns to succeed and, sometimes, causing them to fail. They find that nonviolent resistance presents fewer obstacles to moral and physical involvement and commitment, and that higher levels of participation contribute to enhanced resilience, greater opportunities for tactical innovation and civic disruption (and therefore less incentive for a regime to maintain its status quo), and shifts in loyalty among opponents' erstwhile supporters, including members of the military establishment. Chenoweth and Stephan conclude that successful nonviolent resistance ushers in more durable and internally peaceful democracies, which are less likely to regress into civil war. Presenting a rich, evidentiary argument, they originally and systematically compare violent and nonviolent outcomes in different historical periods and geographical contexts, debunking the myth that violence occurs because of structural and environmental factors and that it is necessary to achieve certain political goals. Instead, the authors discover, violent insurgency is rarely justifiable on strategic grounds. |
Contents
1 | 33 |
introduction to the case studies | 87 |
table a 1 | 185 |
case study summary | 192 |
ePilogue | 229 |
notes | 243 |
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activists activities adversary Aquino argue armed struggle backfire Beit Sahour Boudreau Burma Burmese civil resistance civilian conflict democracy democratic demonstrations diverse East Timor economic effective elections elites endogeneity ethnic factors failure failure failure groups guerrilla inside the occupied inTernaTional sancTions intifada Iran Iranian Iranian Revolution Islamic Islamists Israel Israeli Khomeini Kurzman large numbers leaders leadership liberal loyalty shifts Marcos regime Marcos’s martial law mass mobilization military Model movement Ne Win nonviolent and violent nonviolent campaigns nonviolent resistance nonviolent resistance campaigns number of participants occuPation occupied territories opponent opposition organized outcomes paigns Palestinian Palestinian Territories percent Philippines political population protestors protests regime repression regime’s revolution Schock scholars security forces Shah Shah’s SLORC strategic strike succeed success failure failure success Partial success success success success successful nonviolent tactics target Tatmadaw tion violent and nonviolent violent campaigns violent insurgencies violent resistance West Bank