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What's New
Announcing a new ICNC Webinar
How People Fight and Win with Humor: Lessons of Creative Resistance from Belarus, Other Tyrannies and Failing Democracies
It has been both dismaying and inspiring to watch events in Belarus in recent months, with the continued violent repression of nonviolent resistance, that continues undimmed and undeterred. In their nonviolent struggle against brutal regime, Belarusian people resorted to various creative resistance actions that help engage people in mass noncooperation and disobedience against the regime, mock its ruler, mobilize others and peel off key regime supporters.
Steve Crawshaw, author of Street Spirit: The Power of Protest and Mischief (foreword by Ai Weiwei), looks at what the history of nonviolent resistance, in the immediate region and worldwide, teaches us about the prospects for a democratic change propelled by civil resistance in Belarus today.
Date: December 8, 2020
Learn More and Register!
Time: 1:00pm to 2:00pm (US Eastern Time) -
ICNC Research Fellow Wins Prize for Doctoral Work
The National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) and the University of Illinois Press have awarded their 2020 “First Book” prize to Domale Dube Keys for her dissertation on the Ogoni women and movement-building in Nigeria and abroad– work supported by ICNC.
Domale, who earned a doctorate in education from the University of California at Los Angeles, completed research and writing on her thesis as a 2016 ICNC Research Fellow. The published work is titled For the Survival of Ogoni People: Women’s Contribution to Movement-Building in Nigeria and the United States.
The prize committee noted Domale’s “rich ethnographic and historical detail” and said the manuscript will be significant resource in women and gender studies “by focusing on the transnational dimensions of Black women’s organizing and contributions African women specifically make to our global political landscape.”
The NWSA is a 43-year-old organization committed to promote, support and disseminate research about women and gender issues. It boasts more than 350 institutional members from around the world.
Read about Domale’s research and ICNC’s Doctoral, Post-Doctoral and Junior Faculty Research Fellowship program here.
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Three Chosen for 2020 ICNC Research Fellowships
Two PhD candidates and one post-doctoral scholar have been selected for ICNC’s 2020 Research Fellowships for doctoral, post-doctoral and junior faculty researchers.
Contributing to the growing scholarship on civil resistance topics, the new fellows are:
Ratanak Khun, a PhD student in political science at Northern Illinois University.His research topic is “Civil Resistance against Land Grabs and Forced Evictions: Cambodia’s Landless People Movements in Comparative Perspective.”
Sooyeon Kang, a PhD candidate at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. She is researching “From Reform to Resignation: Explaining Why Some Protest Movements Escalate Their Demands (Demand Escalation Database).”
John J. Chin, PhD, a fellow with the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Carnegie Mellon University. John’s topic is “Why Anti-Coup Civil Resistance Works.”Read more about the new Research Fellows, including abstracts of their projects, here.
Read more about the Doctoral, Post-Doctoral and Junior Faculty Research Fellowships here.
Learn more about other research and learning opportunities for scholars and students here.
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New Blog Post
‘Minds of the Movement’ co-editor Maciej Bartkowski writes:
Discipline is the aspect of our daily lives that helps us get things done, both personally and professionally. It is needed to be a successful doctor, lawyer, soldier or, for that matter, an effective activist or a seemingly almighty dictator.
Dictatorships project unwavering discipline when they exercise—or aspire to exercise—enduring control over their societies. In response, movements must work on honing and harnessing their own discipline. Being more disciplined than their opponents gives movements an edge in winning.
Discipline is a behavior that is learned and perfected through practice and training. It has less to do with command and control structures through which orders are given or punitive sanctions are exercised. Instead, such discipline has everything to do with willingly internalizing norms and codes of conduct.
This is important because in contrast to dictatorships, pro-democracy movements are voluntary endeavors, mostly or entirely unpaid, with informal structures and few resources for enforcement. They rely on the socialized behavior of their participants to instill discipline and apply it in their actions.
Dictators and aspiring autocrats fear disciplined civil resistance movements. They deploy mighty state resources and work hard to demoralize and disrupt the discipline of such movements. […]
Read more!
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For Activists & Organizers
ICNC provides practical, relevant information and educational opportunities about civil resistance to activists and organizers around the world.
Our view is that nonviolent struggle is a social science that can be studied and understood. Practitioners can increase their chances of success by learning lessons from each other as well as from cutting edge academic scholarship on this topic.
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New from ICNC Press
The Path of Most Resistance: A Step-by-Step Guide to Planning Nonviolent Campaigns by Ivan Marovic, 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.It is available for purchase or free download in English, Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese (Brazilian).
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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.
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
Civil resistance movements have a proven role in advancing human rights, democratic governance, and curtailing corruption. They are a critical factor in addressing root causes of human suffering and reducing deadly violence in the world.
It is incumbent for members of the policy community who care about these issues to understand how movements work; their historic record of making change; and when, how, and under what circumstances external actors can take actions that are helpful to movements.
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New 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, 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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Powering to Peace: Integrated Civil Resistance and Peacebuilding Strategies
by Veronique Dudouet
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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, in particular how they analyze primary causes of violence and how they respond to conflict. Drawing on a number of case studies, this report aims to help practitioners and scholars understand how integrating these strategies can help establish a path for “powering to peace.” -
A Movement-centered Support Model: Consideration for Human Rights Funders and Organizations
ICNC President 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 post
Abdourahman Mohamed Guelleh and Amber French write: “Abdourahman embarked on self-study of the strategy of nonviolent action in a repressive climate. He had just served four years in prison for participating in an opposition coalition meeting for which he was serving as secretary general at the time. Simply by typing “how to bring down a dictatorship without violence” into a search engine, he discovered some key texts on nonviolent resistance that had been translated into French and made available free of charge on the websites of CANVAS, ICNC, and other educational organizations. […]”
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Abdourahman Mohamed Guelleh et Amber French écrivent : “Abdourahman s’est lancé dans l’auto-apprentissage de la stratégie de l’action non violente dans un contexte très répressif. Il sortait de quatre mois de prison pour avoir participé à une réunion de crise de la coalition d’opposition. Simplement en tapant le terme « comment vaincre une dictature sans violence » dans un moteur de recherche, il a découvert quelques livres clés sur la résistance non violente, traduits en français et mis à disposition gratuitement sur les sites de CANVAS, d’ICNC, et d’autres organisations engagées dans l’éducation sur ce sujet. […]”
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Charmaine Willis writes: “The September 2020 pardon of U.S. Marine Joseph Scott Pemberton for the killing of a young Filipina transgender woman, Jennifer Laude, served as a public reminder that a U.S. military presence remains in the Philippines years after the last actual U.S. base was closed in 1992. Protests against the killing, led by local LGBTQ+ and women’s rights groups, erupted in the aftermath of both the original crime in 2014 and Pemberton’s recent pardon. This was the second known crime committed by a U.S. servicemember in the Philippines’ post-base era—the rape of a Filipina in 2005 was the first— and protests followed both incidents. […]”
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