We are in one of the largest waves of nonviolent resistance in history. Even the COVID-19 pandemic could not stop massive uprisings in Thailand, Belarus, Myanmar, and elsewhere as ordinary citizens use nonviolent tactics to challenge entrenched authoritarians and demand reform. Yet, even as more and more people have hit the streets to push for change, the Varieties of Democracy project reports that global democracy has never been weaker and the long trend of growing autocracy has only accelerated. What can be done to turn this around? […]

The history of nonviolent action is rich, diverse, and dates to ancient times. Yet despite its historical and at time revolutionary significance over centuries and across continents, the academy with its universities, the news media, institutes of diplomacy and international relations, and policy makers have neglected the study of the social power and dynamics of civil resistance. In many societies, including the United States, the history of their wars is emphasized, while the successes of their nonviolent struggles are not taught to schoolchildren. […]

Training activists is now widely considered a foundational movement activity. But what about implementation? If you don’t yet have a movement, or your movement lacks the capacity to hold workshops, where and how do you start to apply this insight?

“In the face of rising authoritarianism, people worldwide are increasingly turning to civil resistance to fight for their rights. This is an empowering choice, but it can also feel overwhelming for those involved. When people who seek to build or maintain a movement, the first big question is often: Where and how should we start? […]”

Estamos en una nueva fase de activismo con grandes fuerzas ejerciendo presión sobre todos nosotros. Aquellos que buscamos justicia y el fin de la violencia policial que mata personas negras desarmadas, aquellos gravemente golpeados por la pandemia de COVID-19, aquellos cuyos pequeños negocios han sido destruidos y saqueados y aquellos simplemente demasiado asustados para hacer cualquier movimiento en este momento. […]

On June 6, 2019, the Peace and Security Council of the African Union suspended the Sudanese government from the activities of the African Union. The suspension was a reaction to the unconstitutional change of government in Sudan. However, the coup d’état against long-time dictator Omar Al-Bashir had already occurred two months earlier on April 11, 2019, when members of the Sudanese Armed Forces removed Al-Bashir from office against the backdrop of a country-wide nonviolent movement. […]

English language terminology in the field of civil resistance is like a garden of wildflowers, shaped by sometimes competing forces. On the one hand, the garden reflects locally rooted ideas and cultures: vibrant, natural, and defying simple efforts to constrain it. It’s an outgrowth of various micro-climates. Over time, some flowers (key terms) get more sunlight than others. New flowers also emerge, brought in on the wind from elsewhere. The garden evolves, as does the soil from which it grows. […]

The COVID-19 crisis fundamentally altered the conditions in which activists organized in 2020, yet we still observed widespread political mobilization in 2020 as a result of nonviolent movements. Perhaps then there is some silver lining in this crisis—we are reminded that repression and other unfavorable conditions (read: physical constraints) do not doom movements to failure. Activists and movements develop skills that enable them to overcome challenging social and economic conditions. […]

In the past two decades, autocracies have been on the rise and aspiring autocrats in democracies have been gaining in numbers and strength. The 2020 democracy report by the V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute noted that by 2020, autocracies have formed a clear majority for the first time since the beginning of 2000, constituting 92 countries with 54% of the global population or 4.2 billion people. Furthermore, 35% of the world’s population, an additional 2.7 billion people, live today in countries that are experiencing a significant decline in their democracy index and that are often headed by elected anti-democratic demagogues. This is colloquially known as the third wave of authoritarianism, or “autocratization” […]