Why Civil Resistance Works

Why Civil Resistance Works
Author: Erica Chenoweth
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 451
Release: 2011-08-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0231527489

For 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.

When to Talk and When to Fight

When to Talk and When to Fight
Author: Rebecca Subar
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2021
Genre: Political participation
ISBN: 9781629638362

When to Talk and When to Fight is a conversation between talkers and fighters. It introduces a new language to enable negotiators and activists to argue and collaborate across different schools of thought and action. Weaving beautiful storytelling and clear analysis, this book maps the habits of change-makers, explaining why some groups choose dialogue and negotiation while others practice confrontation and resistance. With lucid charts and graphs by Rosi Greenberg, When to Talk and When to Fight is a brilliant new way of talking about how we change the world.

Civil Resistance

Civil Resistance
Author: Erica Chenoweth
Publisher: What Everyone Needs to Know(r)
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2021-03-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0190244399

Exploring both historical cases of civil resistance and more contemporary examples such as the Arab Awakenings and various ongoing movements in the United States, Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know® provides a comprehensive and engaging review of the current field of knowledge.

Civil Resistance Tactics in the 21st Century

Civil Resistance Tactics in the 21st Century
Author: Michael Beer
Publisher:
Total Pages: 114
Release: 2021-02-23
Genre:
ISBN: 9781943271405

Civil Resistance Tactics in the 21st Century belongs on the virtual bookshelf of anyone who is studying or practicing nonviolent action. Scholars: Explore updated categories and tactics that respect and expand on Gene Sharp's landmark work. Teachers & Trainers: Give your participants a brief overview of the whole range of nonviolent tactics used around the world, when and how those tactics work, and how nonviolent tactics differ from, or combine with, other types of civil resistance. Activists: Use this concise guide to expand your toolbox and sharpen your analytical tools for selecting powerful strategies for your campaigns. This book dovetails with two huge online sources (Nonviolence International's Nonviolent Tactics Database and Organizing & Training Archive) so that you can move seamlessly between strategy and implementation.

Getting to Yes

Getting to Yes
Author: Roger Fisher
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 242
Release: 1991
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780395631249

Describes a method of negotiation that isolates problems, focuses on interests, creates new options, and uses objective criteria to help two parties reach an agreement.

Civil Resistance and Power Politics

Civil Resistance and Power Politics
Author: Sir Adam Roberts
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2011-09-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0191619175

This widely-praised book identified peaceful struggle as a key phenomenon in international politics a year before the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt confirmed its central argument. Civil resistance - non-violent action against such challenges as dictatorial rule, racial discrimination and foreign military occupation - is a significant but inadequately understood feature of world politics. Especially through the peaceful revolutions of 1989, and the developments in the Arab world since December 2010, it has helped to shape the world we live in. Civil Resistance and Power Politics covers most of the leading cases, including the actions master-minded by Gandhi, the US civil rights struggle in the 1960s, the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, the 'people power' revolt in the Philippines in the 1980s, the campaigns against apartheid in South Africa, the various movements contributing to the collapse of the Soviet Bloc in 1989-91, and, in this century, the 'colour revolutions' in Georgia and Ukraine. The chapters, written by leading experts, are richly descriptive and analytically rigorous. This book addresses the complex interrelationship between civil resistance and other dimensions of power. It explores the question of whether civil resistance should be seen as potentially replacing violence completely, or as a phenomenon that operates in conjunction with, and modification of, power politics. It looks at cases where campaigns were repressed, including China in 1989 and Burma in 2007. It notes that in several instances, including Northern Ireland, Kosovo and, Georgia, civil resistance movements were followed by the outbreak of armed conflict. It also includes a chapter with new material from Russian archives showing how the Soviet leadership responded to civil resistance, and a comprehensive bibliographical essay. Illustrated throughout with a remarkable selection of photographs, this uniquely wide-ranging and path-breaking study is written in an accessible style and is intended for the general reader as well as for students of Modern History, Politics, Sociology, and International Relations.

Powering to Peace

Powering to Peace
Author: Veronique Dudouet
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2017-04-24
Genre:
ISBN: 9781943271320

This report explores the complementary ideas and practices that civil resistance and peacebuilding approaches present, each from different points along the conflict transformation spectrum. Both strategies oppose violence in all its forms, and seek to pursue just peace by peaceful means. However, they take different approaches to conflict transformation, both in their analyses of the primary causes of violence and how they respond to conflict. The report then describes how civil resistance and peacebuilding can work in tandem throughout the four stages of transformation of asymmetric conflicts. Concrete examples are provided to illustrate the respective functions of constructive conflict (through civil resistance) and conflict mitigation (through peacebuilding) in transitions from latent to overt conflict, from resistance to dialogue and negotiation, and from conflict settlement to sustainable peace. It highlights in particular: the crucial importance of civil resistance as a violence prevention/mitigation instrument and as a pre-negotiation strategy for oppressed groups, enabling them to wage necessary conflicts through nonviolent means, thereby putting pressure on incumbent elites to redistribute power equitably; the usefulness of peacebuilding's conflict mitigation methods to translate civil resistance gains into mutually acceptable negotiated outcomes and to reconcile polarized relationships in the wake of nonviolent struggles; and the need for sustained civil resistance in post-conflict or post-war societies in order to prevent and oppose autocratic backlashes, to resist anti-emancipatory, and 'neoliberal' tendencies within post-war peacebuilding operations, or to put pressure on all stakeholders to implement their commitments to progressive state reforms and social justice. The conclusion highlights takeaways for researchers, nonviolent activists and educators, peacebuilding practitioners and international agencies seeking to support constructive, effective conflict transformation.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

Letter from Birmingham Jail
Author: Martin Luther King
Publisher: HarperOne
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2025-01-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780063425811

A beautiful commemorative edition of Dr. Martin Luther King's essay "Letter from Birmingham Jail," part of Dr. King's archives published exclusively by HarperCollins. With an afterword by Reginald Dwayne Betts On April 16, 1923, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., responded to an open letter written and published by eight white clergyman admonishing the civil rights demonstrations happening in Birmingham, Alabama. Dr. King drafted his seminal response on scraps of paper smuggled into jail. King criticizes his detractors for caring more about order than justice, defends nonviolent protests, and argues for the moral responsibility to obey just laws while disobeying unjust ones. "Letter from Birmingham Jail" proclaims a message - confronting any injustice is an acceptable and righteous reason for civil disobedience. This beautifully designed edition presents Dr. King's speech in its entirety, paying tribute to this extraordinary leader and his immeasurable contribution, and inspiring a new generation of activists dedicated to carrying on the fight for justice and equality.

Breaking Laws

Breaking Laws
Author: Isabelle Sommier
Publisher: Protest and Social Movements
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019
Genre: Civil disobedience
ISBN: 9789089649348

This book questions the complex relationship between social movements and violence, and shows how and why violence occurs or does not, and what different meanings it can take.

The Path of Most Resistance

The Path of Most Resistance
Author: Ivan Marovic
Publisher:
Total Pages: 134
Release: 2021-02-11
Genre:
ISBN: 9781943271375

The Path of Most Resistance: A Step-by-Step Guide to Planning Nonviolent Campaigns is a practical guide for activists and organizers of all levels, who wish to grow their resistance activities into a more strategic, fixed-term campaign. It guides readers through the campaign planning process, breaking it down into several steps and providing tools and exercises for each step. Upon finishing the book, readers will have what they need to guide their peers through the process of planning a campaign. This process, as laid out in the guide, is estimated to take about 12 hours from start to finish. The guide is divided into two parts. The first lays out and contextualizes campaign planning tools and their objectives. It also explains the logic behind these tools, and how they can be modified to better suit a particular group's context. The second part provides easily reproducible and shareable lesson plans for using each of those tools, as well as explores how to embed the tools in the wider planning process.