ICNC Monograph Series
The ICNC Research Monograph Series aims to connect research and practice. Drawing on scholarly literature and high quality analytical and empirical analyses equal to that of a serious academic publication, monographs aim to enrich public discourse by expanding scientific knowledge in the field of civil resistance and providing general and specific recommendations for practitioners such as activists, organizers, journalists, and members of INGOs and the policy community.
ICNC monographs:
- enrich scholarly understanding and knowledge of specific phenomena and case studies of civil resistance and nonviolent movements and campaigns;
- enhance the strategic practice of civil resistance by elaborating on a topic of relevance to activists and organizers;
- improve understanding of civil resistance by members of the policy and development community;
- provide insight into popular media coverage of civil resistance to improve media literacy and reporting by journalists;
- develop robust conceptual frameworks for understanding the nature, dynamics, power and impact of civil resistance movements.
Scholars as well as practitioners with expertise in the field of civil resistance are encouraged to apply and submit their proposals in response to the call. All monographs published from 2016 onward are peer-reviewed by at least two external reviewers.
Digital monograph copies are available free of charge on the ICNC website and print and e-book copies can be ordered on demand online via an international provider. We price monographs at-cost to maximize their availability and affordability.
The Editor of the ICNC Monograph Series is ICNC’s Senior Director for Education and Research, Dr. Maciej Bartkowski
To learn more about past monograph awardees, see recipients in 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014.
Published Monographs
When Civil Resistance Succeeds: Building Democracy After Popular Nonviolent Uprisings
By: Jonathan Pinckney
Series Editor: Maciej Bartkowski
Volume Editor: Amber French and Julia Constantine
Date of publication: October 2018
Why do some nonviolent revolutions lead to successful democratization while others fail to consolidate democratic change? And what can activists do to push toward a victory over dictatorship that results in long-term political freedom?
Several studies show that nonviolent revolutions are generally a more positive force for democratization than violent revolutions and top-down political transitions. However, some nonviolent revolutions, such as the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt, do not seem to fi t this pattern. This study takes on this puzzle and reveals that the answer lies in large part in the actions of civil society prior to and during transition. Democracy is most likely when activists can keep their social bases mobilized for positive political change while directing that mobilization toward building new political institutions.
Civil Resistance against Coups: A Comparative and Historical Perspective
By: Stephen Zunes
Series Editor: Maciej Bartkowski
Volume Editor: Amber French
Date of publication: December 2017
Nations are not helpless if the military decides to stage a coup. On dozens of occasions in recent decades, even in the face of intimidated political leaders and international indifference, civil society has risen up to challenge putschists through large-scale nonviolent direct action and noncooperation. How can an unarmed citizenry mobilize so quickly and defeat a powerful military committed to seizing control of the government? What accounts for the success or failure of nonviolent resistance movements to reverse coups and consolidate democratic gains?
This monograph presents in-depth case studies and analysis intended to improve our understanding of the strategic utility of civil resistance against military takeovers; the nature of civil resistance mobilization against coups; and the role of civil resistance against coups in countries’ subsequent democratization efforts (or failure thereof). It offers key lessons for pro-democracy activists and societies vulnerable to military usurpation of power; national civilian and military bureaucracies; external state and non-state agencies supportive of democracy; and future scholarship on this subject.
People Power Movements and International Human Rights: Creating a Legal Framework
By: Elizabeth A. Wilson
Series editor: Maciej Bartkowski
Volume editor: Amber French
Date of publication: July 2017
International human rights law did not come into existence top-down, out of the benevolent intentions of states, even though states eventually began to recognize that large-scale human rights abuses could pose a threat to the international order. Rather, it came into existence from the bottom-up efforts of ordinary people in civil society to ally with each other in solidarity and demand their rights, often through organized nonviolent campaigns and movements that pressured elites and powerholders to recognize or grant individual rights (freedom for slaves, women’s rights, labor rights, and children’s rights, to name a few). Unlike international law generally, the real source of international human rights law has been the coordinated, organized and nonviolently forceful efforts of individuals—in other words, what one can refer to as people power.
Making or Breaking Nonviolent Discipline in Civil Resistance Movements
By: Jonathan Pinckney
Series editor: Maciej Bartkowski
Volume editor: Amber French
Date of publication: October 2016
How can we understand when nonviolent movements will stay nonviolent? When are they likely to break down into violence? In this 
monograph, Jonathan Pinckney analyzes what promotes and undermines nonviolent discipline in civil resistance movements. Combining quantitative research on thousands of nonviolent and violent actions with a detailed comparison of three relevant case studies of civil resistance during the “Color Revolutions,” Pinckney’s analysis provides important lessons for activists and organizers on the front lines, as well as for practitioners whose work may impact the outcomes of nonviolent struggles. We learn how repression consistently induces violence, as do government concessions. On the flip side, we see that structuring a campaign in an inclusive and non-hierarchical way is conducive to greater nonviolent discipline.
The Tibetan Nonviolent Struggle: A Strategic and Historical Analysis
By: Tenzin Dorjee
Series editor: Maciej Bartkowski
Volume editors: Hardy Merriman, Amber French, Cassandra Balfour Date of publication: September 2015
Contrary to a perception — fueled by Chinese propaganda during the 2008 Tibetan uprising that the Tibetan struggle is heading toward extremism, this study shows that the movement has since the 1950s moved toward a tighter embrace of nonviolent resistance. The study traces this evolution, analyzing the central themes, purposes, challenges, strategies, tactics and impacts of three major Tibetan uprisings over the past six decades.
Tibetans are now waging a quiet, slow-building nonviolent movement, centered on strengthening the Tibetan national and cultural fabric via what the author refers to as transformative resistance. This is happening in an immensely repressive political environment, which shows that there is a way to mobilize people power against even one of the most ruthless regimes in the world.
Download this monograph in Tibetan
The Power of Staying Put: Nonviolent Resistance Against Armed Groups in Colombia
By: Juan Masullo
Series editor: Maciej Bartkowski
Volume editor: Amber French
Date of publication: August 2015
Confronted with civil war, local civilians typically either collaborate with the strongest actor in town or flee the area. Yet civilians are not stuck inexorably within this dichotomous choice. Collectively defying armed groups by engaging in organized nonviolent forms of noncooperation, self-organization and disruption is another option. This monograph explores this option through sustained and organized civil resistance led by ordinary peasants against state and non-state repressive actors in Colombia’s longstanding civil war: the case of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó.
Forthcoming Monographs
Revisiting the Methods of Nonviolent Action (tentative title)
By Michael Beer, 2018
Abstract: Revisiting the Methods of Nonviolent Action adds new methods of nonviolent action to the classic list of 198 methods categorized by Gene Sharp in 1973 in his book, The Methods of Nonviolent Action. This monograph maintains that nonviolent action encompasses a large category of human activity and that new and old tactics are employed daily. It also analyzes strengths and weaknesses of Dr. Sharp’s typologies, proposes helpful new categories of nonviolent action, and documents additional methods of nonviolent action and new scholarship from the fields of civil resistance, human rights defense, and social change.
The monograph concludes with a summary of lessons learned and how they are relevant for practitioners, educators, and scholars of civil resistance. Recommendations are made for further application and research.
Prison Hunger Strikes as Civil Resistance: A Global Perspective on Political Resistance in Prisons (Tentative Title)
By Malaka Shwaikh & Rebecca Ruth Gould, 2018
This monograph examines six different global contexts wherein prison hunger strikes have been used as a tool of civil resistance, with a specific focus on hunger strikes among Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails from 1948 to the present. Drawing on first-hand interviews, archival research, and primary and secondary research in many languages, the authors examine how hunger strikes have generated solidarity among prison populations from Palestine, South Africa, and Northern Ireland to Iran, Turkey, and the United States. They offer an innovative typology for the effectiveness of hunger strikes and other forms of civil resistance across the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and North America that foregrounds the differences and similarities between prison strikes in regimes of occupation and apartheid and within liberal democracies. Addressed to both academics and practitioners, this is the first monograph to offer a comparative account of prison hunger strikes on a global scale, and to incorporate findings from international law, legal anthropology, political theory, and sociology into a broad theory of the capacity of nonviolent civil resistance to bring about measurable political change.
Agents Provocateurs, Violent Flanks, and Nonviolent Movements: A Historical and Strategic Perspective (Tentative Title)
By Tom Hastings & Adam Vogal, 2018
When governments and opponents infiltrate civil society resistance campaigns, organizations, or movements, what do they do and what are the effects of such covert operations? These questions are not well understood and not studied systematically in relation to known and rumored cases of state infiltration in civil society resistance movements with the goals ranging from gathering intelligence to discrediting a movement to inducing shifts in their nonviolent tactics in favor of violence. This study attempts to provide a framework for understanding the strategic implications for activists of the use of agents provocateurs and other forms of covert action.