As part of the 2010 Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict, former ICNC chair Jack DuVall looks at how the modern practice of civil resistance sprang from ideas about the underlying nature of political power that began to be framed about 150 years ago. As pioneered by Gandhi and adopted by scores of movements and campaigns for rights and justice in the 20th century, strategies of civil resistance have exhibited a common dynamic, propelled historic changes, and imparted certain political and social properties to the societies they often transformed. The record of the effectiveness of these nonviolent strategies in liberating oppressed people, when compared to that of violent insurgency or revolt, has been remarkable — and suggests why political violence could largely be displaced in the future.

Jack DuVall