Civil Resistance and Dynamics of Nonviolent Conflict
Delivered in partnership with the United States Institute of Peace, Civil Resistance and the Dynamics of Nonviolent Conflict is an in-depth and multi-disciplinary perspective on civilian-based movements and campaigns to defend and obtain basic rights and justice around the world. The 2010 course brought together 25 participants from diverse backgrounds to investigate the role of nonviolent movements in addressing issues of governance, civil society, media, democracy promotion, and human rights.
Jack DuVall President International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
The modern practice of civil resistance sprang from ideas about the underlying nature of political power that began to be framed about 150 years ago. As pioneered by Gandhi and adopted by scores of movements and campaigns for rights and justice in the 20th century, strategies of civil resistance have exhibited a common dynamic, propelled historic changes -- and imparted certain political and social properties to the societies they often transformed. The record of the effectiveness of these nonviolent strategies in liberating oppressed people, when compared to that of violent insurgency or revolt, has been remarkable -- and suggests why political violence could largely be displaced in the future.
Dr. Maciej Bartkowski Senior Director, Education and Research International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Daryn Cambridge Director, Knowledge & Digital Strategies International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Strategic planning and tactical choice are essential considerations in effective civil resistance. This session will offer a strategic framework with which to analyze civil resistance movements. It will also examine the diversity of tactics available to civil resisters, and explore issues involved in tactical choice, success and failure.
In this webinar, Mary Joyce, Executive Director of the Meta-Activism Project, and Stephanie Rudat, co-founder of the Alliance for Youth Movements, discuss the emerging role of digital tools and new media in organizing social movements and waging nonviolent civil resistance. Participants will be able to ask questions online via text and audio, or via their telephone.
Dr. Boaz uses frame analysis to analyze some of the common ways in which mainstream media coverage of nonviolent struggles and civil resistance tends to reinforce key distortions in knowledge about these struggles and even defaults to the perspective of the oppressor. She also makes suggestions for ways in which conscious citizens, activists, and media audiences can help counter these misconceptions. Key case studies are Iran's "Green Revolution" and Burma's "Saffron Revolution."
Shaazka Beyerle Senior Advisor International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Extreme political violence, such as bombings and assassinations carried out by domestic insurgents or by transnational terrorists, is socially destabilizing and indiscriminate in its harm to civilians, yet it is a common tool to wage struggles against real or imagined oppression. Why does extreme violence continue to be a tactical choice of some conflict protagonists? How can radical militancy be channeled instead into political action? How can the practice and knowledge of civil resistance and bottom-up civilian mobilization and participation help to separate political radicalism from violent extremism?
Issues of corruption within societies can lead to the deprivation of basic needs, fundamental rights, and the safety of citizens. Corruption can also enable state capture and the emergence of crime syndicates, narco trafficking, and repressive power structures. Around the world, anti-corruption campaigns and movements have been utilizing the power of nonviolent action to create greater transparency, demand greater accountability, and pressure governments to meet the needs of the citizens.
Over the course of the twentieth century nonviolent resistance developed into a powerful and widespread strategy for promoting political change. Yet our understanding of its dynamics is underdeveloped. One crucial yet under-studied aspect is the impact of simultaneous violent campaigns on the outcomes of campaigns of nonviolent resistance. That is, does a violent movement operating at the same time and in the same country as a nonviolent one increase or decrease the likelihood of success of the nonviolent resistance movement? We analyze this phenomenon in a cross-national quantitative study using the Nonviolent and Violent Conflict Outcomes (NAVCO) data set, which includes aggregate data on 323 primarily violent and nonviolent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006.
Today, international NGO’s, human rights organizations and various governments provide assistance to indigenous groups that engage in dissent or resistance to autocracy. Russian and other critics of the "color revolutions" have denounced this as foreign interference, but democracy promotion has been going on for decades. This session will explore such questions as: What are its chief methods and effects today, in the context of the needs and opportunities of groups using civil resistance? How do diaspora-based dissidents and nonviolent opposition groups help foster nonviolent resistance to oppression? How should diplomats offer support to nonviolent campaigns for rights and justice?
Dr. Erica Chenoweth, Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University looks at the strategic advantage of nonviolent struggle and civil resistance. Armed insurgency may have triumphed in the Algerian war of independence, the Chinese Revolution, and the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. These cases, among others, have convinced many observers that violent insurgency is likely to succeed. Moreover, insurgents often claim that they turn to violence as a last resort, having exhausted all other methods of seeking redress for their grievances. Professor Chenoweth challenges both claims, arguing that nonviolent resistance has actually been more effective in the 20th century than violent resistance. She presents a new data set, which provides robust statistical evidence of the strategic superiority of nonviolent resistance, even in cases where the opponent regime is brutal. The research implies that violent resistance is seldom necessary, as many insurgents claim. Rather, civil resistance can be an effective substitute for insurgency in civil wars.
