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New Publication for
2025 Copenhagen People Power ConferenceTowards a People’s Peace
This April, ICNC Press has released a collection of framing essays for the 2025 Copenhagen People Power Conference, in collaboration with ActionAid Denmark. This book brings together cutting-edge research and first-person accounts from activists and peacebuilders on the frontlines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Sri Lanka, alongside insights for a global solidarity movement from activists in Palestine, Ukraine, and Lebanon. It offers a bold vision for how movements can shape peace and security, and practical lessons for policymakers and allies committed to supporting peace from below.
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Webinar:
How Polish Judges Fought to Keep Their Independence
with Dr. Marcin Mrowicki
and panelists Elizabeth A. Wilson and Doug ColtartThis webinar explores the ways in which the legal community can draw practical lessons from the Polish judiciary’s resistance to authoritarian pressures under the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS). It delves into the tactics judges employed to safeguard their independence, from subtle acts of defiance within courtrooms to collective public resistance.
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Recent Publication:
All Rise: Judicial Resistance in Poland
All Rise: Judicial Resistance in Poland by Dr. Marcin Mrowicki investigates the strategic and organized resistance of Polish judges against the authoritarian encroachments on judicial independence by the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party from 2015 to 2023. Under the leadership of Jarosław Kaczyński, PiS systematically targeted key judicial institutions like the Constitutional Tribunal and the Supreme Court, implementing reforms to undermine judicial autonomy. This assault sparked an unprecedented resistance movement among Polish judges, who employed legal and extralegal tactics to defend the rule of law.
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Recent Publication:
Fostering a Fourth Democratic Wave: A Playbook for Countering the Authoritarian Threat combines insights on civil resistance, democratic waves, autocratization, democratic backsliding, international law, and other disciplines to advance a foreign policy approach that supports and enables pro-democracy and human rights movements.
Watch the promotional video and download the publication:
Download a Free Copy
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For Activists & Organizers
How Agent Provocateurs Harm Our Movements
by Steve Chase
History shows us that peoples’ movements are more likely to succeed when they have unity among supporters, widespread participation, strategic planning, and nonviolent discipline. Unsurprisingly, movement opponents use agent provocateurs—fake activists working undercover—to behave in counterproductive ways that undermine these four keys to success.
Drawing from international examples, and an in-depth case study of the US Black Liberation Movement, this volume explores how agent provocateurs—and agent provocateur-like behavior—make movements smaller, weaker, and easier to defeat. It also offers some ideas for how activists can inoculate their movements against such harms and increase their chances of success.
• Download
• Purchase
• Watch the webinar presentation by the author
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Second edition of :
The Path of Most Resistance: A Step-by-Step Guide to Planning Nonviolent Campaigns
by Ivan Marovic
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.
The Second Edition released in March 2021 includes chapters on tactics and running a tactical planning workshop, and a Foreword by Hardy Merriman.
Free Download:
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• Second edition: English
• First edition: Catalan | French | Polish | Portuguese (Brazilian) | Spanish | Urdu -
Visit our full resource library to find hundreds of resources on civil resistance in English and over 70 languages.
Or, if you are interested in civil resistance and don’t know where to start, we’ve made a list of general introductory resources–many of them short articles–to introduce you to the field. See our list of ten key resources for activists and organizers.
Visit the Resource Library -
ICNC Translations Program
Translating civil resistance literature into diverse languages is one of the most powerful ways to spread knowledge and increase the effectiveness of nonviolent movements struggling for rights, freedom, and justice. Learn more about our translations program or read our glossary of key terms.
We also currently host resources on civil resistance in over 70 languages and dialects on our website.
Find Translated Resources
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For Scholars & Students
The discipline of civil resistance has developed enormously in recent years, driven by new quantitative and qualitative scholarly research, as well as by numerous nonviolent movements around the world.
ICNC runs a number of grant-supported academic and educational programs to meet the growing demand for cutting edge research, applied knowledge and practical skills in this field. Look at our research, writing, teaching and other educational offerings and review current calls for proposals or applications.
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Academic Online Curriculum
ICNC’s Academic Online Curriculum on Civil Resistance (AOC) is an online resource to advance curriculum development, teaching, and research on civil resistance. It offers an extensive and regularly updated set of resources in this field, organized into clearly structured topics and case studies, and drawn in part from content that we and various academic collaborators developed for the ICNC university seminars we’ve led since 2009.Anyone can register to use the AOC at any time and it is free to use.
Topics on the AOC include:
– Civil Resistance: Nature, Ideas and History
– Strategic Considerations in Civil Resistance Struggles
– Types of Civil Resistance StrugglesAnd more!
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Calls from ICNC Academic Initiatives
Throughout the year, ICNC is offering a number of academic opportunities, resources, and support that it makes available to scholars and students. The field of civil resistance has grown immensely and these academic programs aim to respond to the growing demand for knowledge and skills and contribute to expanding the quality of education, research, and curriculum related to civil resistance. This page includes the current and past calls for the ICNC’s educational and research programs, such as learning opportunities, curriculum support, and research grants.One of our calls, the Rapid Field Research and Data Collection Program, accepts applications on a rolling basis and interested applicants can apply for the program throughout the year.
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New from ICNC Press:
Preventing Mass Atrocities: From a Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) to a Right to Assist (RtoA) Campaigns of Civil Resistance
by Peter Ackerman and Hardy Merriman
Available in: English, Arabic, and SpanishEvents of the last decade demand new approaches to atrocity prevention that are adaptable, innovative and independent of a state-centered doctrine. With the aim of reducing risk factors such as civil war, we argue for a new normative framework called The Right to Assist (RtoA). […]
See ICNC Press Publications
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For the Policy Community
New Publication:
Fostering a Fourth Democratic Wave:
A Playbook for Countering the Authoritarian Threat
Fostering a Fourth Democratic Wave combines insights on civil resistance, democratic waves, autocratization and democratic backsliding, international law, and other disciplines to advance a foreign policy approach that supports and enables pro-democracy and human rights movements. It:
1. Proposes new approaches and tools to support civil resistance movements
2. Advances a new international norm — the “Right to Assistance”
3. Develops strategic and tactical options to constrain authoritarian regimes and drive up the cost of their repression
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ICNC Releases Major Study on International Support to Nonviolent Campaigns
ICNC is proud to present the newest addition to its popular Monograph Series, The Role of External Support in Nonviolent Campaigns: Poisoned Chalice or Holy Grail? by Drs. Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, authors of the groundbreaking civil resistance classic, Why Civil Resistance Works.
Published by ICNC Press, this new report employs original, qualitative, and quantitative data to examine the ways that external assistance impacted the characteristics and success rates of post-2000 revolutionary nonviolent uprisings.Download the full monograph for free here.
Watch the March 3 webinar with the renowned authors here.
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Minds of the Movement Blog
Minds of the Movement is a blog for those interested in the ideas and experiences of people on the front line of civil resistance, and those who seek to understand the art and science of nonviolent struggle.
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NEW BLOG POST
Amber French writes: “The Russian invasion of Ukraine. The rise of Russian-style hybrid warfare. General receptivity to the idea of nonviolent civilian-based defense in Latvia, one of the two Baltic states that share a border with Russia, has never been lower. It was the US Special Operations Forces and NATO that succeeded in drawing the Latvian state’s attention back to civilian-based defense, presented as an integral part of national defense. The question of how to implement this concept, known as “comprehensive defense”, remains rather delicate in Latvia to this day—with the exception of a very convincing defense education project. […]”
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Brian Hioe writes: “Civil defense—a type of generalized, nonmilitary action against occupation and various societal threats—has partly risen recently in Taiwan out of efforts for civilians to have a greater say over defense against the Chinese threat. But civil defense efforts are importantly an outgrowth of Taiwan’s rich history of civil society and social movement activism, as expressed in historical moments such as the 2014 Sunflower Movement or the 1990 Wild Lily Movement, both primarily student-led. […]”
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Mariam Azeem writes: “As the recent tensions with India left many of us on edge—emotionally, physically, spiritually—I saw something beautiful rise from the cracks: humor that cuts through fear, creativity that brings color to our wounds, and a kind of shared care that reminds us we are never alone. Neighbors making jokes over chai, artists sketching satire onto Instagram reels, children reenacting peace talks in schoolyards, and mothers cracking the kind of jokes only grief can shape. […]”
Read more!