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New Monograph:
Resource Mobilization in Palestinian Nonviolent Campaigns
This new monograph from ICNC Press analyzes how Palestinian grassroots activists, popular resistance committees (PRCs), and popular resistance networks (PRNs) secured, managed, and used material and non-material resources to wage sustained and successful nonviolent campaigns in Area C of the occupied West Bank.
It offers specific recommendations and lessons learned from the investigated cases for various actors—including activists, allies that want to support grassroots campaigns, and researchers interested in furthering the study of the role and impact of resources in nonviolent organizing and their successful acquisition by local organizers.
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New Special Report:
Dollars and Dissent: Donor Support for Grassroots Organizing and Nonviolent Movements
Drawing on in-depth interviews and surveys with donors and grantees, this report outlines trends in donor support and details how donors’ values, organizational structures, and perceptions of risk affect their support for the work of grassroots organizers and nonviolent social movements. Furthermore, this report assists donors seeking to deepen their understanding of whether, when, where, and how to provide this support.Watch the webinar with author Benjamin Naimark-Rowse.
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The Checklist to End Tyranny
by Peter Ackerman
The Checklist to End Tyranny enables dissidents to become more strategic in their thinking and more skillful in their quest to win civil resistance campaigns in the 21st century.
Over a century of data shows that civil resistance campaigns—employing strikes, boycotts, mass protests, and many other nonviolent tactics—are the most powerful means for societies to confront authoritarians and achieve democracy and human rights.
• Free Download: English | Arabic | Chinese | Farsi | Korean | Polish | Spanish | Turkish
• Request a complimentary copy
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New Project:
Fostering a Fourth Democratic Wave
Protesters brave heavy rain as they march against the 2019 Hong Kong extradition bill on Sunday, August 18, 2019. Source: Studio Incendo, CC BY 2.0.
Fostering a Fourth Democratic Wave is a joint project between the Atlantic Council and ICNC, aimed at catalyzing support for nonviolent pro-democracy movements fighting against authoritarian rule.
The project recognizes that civil resistance movements are one of the most powerful forces for democracy worldwide and therefore central to reversing the last fifteen years of democratic recession. It will result in a publication titled Defeating the Authoritarian Threat: A Playbook for Democratic Resurgence that centers on steps the United States and its allies can take to support these movements. The Playbook will:
1. Propose new approaches and tools to support pro-democracy civil resistance movements.
2. Advance a new international norm — the “Right to Assist” pro-democracy movements — and identify steps to advance and implement it.
3. Develop strategic and tactical options to constrain authoritarian regimes and drive up the cost of their repression.
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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!
Register Now! -
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
Fostering a Fourth Democratic Wave
Protesters brave heavy rain as they march against the 2019 Hong Kong extradition bill on Sunday, August 18, 2019. Source: Studio Incendo, CC BY 2.0.
Fostering a Fourth Democratic Wave is a joint project between the Atlantic Council and ICNC, aimed at catalyzing support for nonviolent pro-democracy movements fighting against authoritarian rule.
The project recognizes that civil resistance movements are one of the most powerful forces for democracy worldwide and therefore central to reversing the last fifteen years of democratic recession. It will result in a publication titled Defeating the Authoritarian Threat: A Playbook for Democratic Resurgence that centers on steps the United States and its allies can take to support these movements.
Learn More -
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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From ICNC Press:
Preventing Mass Atrocities: From a Responsbility to Protect (RtoP) to a Right to Assist (RtoA) Campaigns of Civil Resistance
by Peter Ackerman and Hardy Merriman
Available in: English, Arabic, French, 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)….
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A Movement-centered Support Model: Consideration for Human Rights Funders and Organizations
ICNC Senior Advisor Hardy Merriman writes: “What makes civil resistance movements effective? If funders and human rights organizations can identify key factors that answer this question, then their efforts can be oriented towards trying to support the development and growth of those factors. […]”
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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 et Olga Sagaidak écrivent: “J’ai rencontré Olga Sagaidak en mai dernier au Centre culturel ukrainien de Paris, en France. Dans le grand salon où j’ai mené notre entretien, les murs étaient tapissés du sol au plafond de photographies stupéfiantes de destructions de guerre et d’œuvres d’art de rue protestant contre l’invasion de l’Ukraine par Poutine. Mon estomac s’est noué lorsque, me penchant vers l’avant pour voir de plus près un dessin anti-guerre, j’ai réalisé qu’il avait en fait été dessiné par la main d’un enfant ukrainien. […]”
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NEW BLOG POST
Benjamin Naimark-Rouse writes: Why does such a small percentage of human rights funding support grassroots organizing and nonviolent movements? Why and how have some donors chosen to support the work of grassroots organizers and nonviolent social movements? What can we learn from their experiences?
A forthcoming, ICNC-supported special report, Dollars and Dissent opens the black box of donor decision-making. It brings to light common tensions donors have faced when considering support for grassroots organizing […]”
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Amos Oluwatoye writes: On May 12, 2022, some students of Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto State, Nigeria, killed a Christian teenager, Deborah Samuel, for alleged blasphemy of Prophet Mohammed. Deborah had complained through a voice note in her class WhatsApp group about how some of her colleagues were posting about religious issues in the group, which she regarded as nonsense, because the initial agreement was that the group should be used for academic updates.
A fellow student responded that Deborah had blasphemed Prophet Mohammed […]”
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