Unarmed Insurrections: People Power Movements in Nondemocracies (Spanish)

Language: English, Spanish

Pinpoints reasons for successes and failures of nonviolent protest movements.

In the last two decades of the twentieth century, a wave of “people power” movements erupted throughout the nondemocratic world. In South Africa, the Philippines, Nepal, Thailand, Burma (Myanmar), China, and elsewhere, mass protest demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other nonviolent actions were brought to bear on a rigid political status quo.

Kurt Schock compares the successes of the antiapartheid movement in South Africa, the people power movement in the Philippines, the pro-democracy movement in Nepal, and the antimilitary movement in Thailand with the failures of the pro-democracy movement in China and the anti-regime challenge in Burma. Schock develops a synthetic framework that allows him to identify which characteristics increase the resilience of a challenge to state repression, and which aspects of a state’s relations can be exploited by such a challenge.

By looking at how these methods of protest promoted regime change in some countries but not in others, this book provides rare insight into the often overlooked and little understood power of nonviolent action.

--Taken from the publisher

"For too long the study of nonviolence has been oddly disconnected from the broader study of social movements and revolutions. With this smart, admirably empirical book Kurt Schock has joined the two, greatly enriching both in the process."

--Doug McAdam, Stanford University

"An important contribution to the crucial, but little understood, dynamics of nonviolent action."

--Lester Kurtz, University of Texas, Austin

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

1. From “People’s War” to “People Power”?

2. Political Process and Nonviolent Action Approaches to Political Contention

3. People Power Unleashed: South Africa and the Philippines

4. People Power Suppressed: Burma and China

5. Challenging Monarchies and Militaries: People Power in Nepal and Thailand

6. Trajectories of Unarmed Insurrections

Notes

Works Cited