Why civil resistance works
by Erica Chenoweth, Maria J. Stephan · first published 2011
38% recommend63% neutral
For more than a century, from 1900 to 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts in achieving their stated goals. By attracting impressive support from citizens, whose activism takes the form of protests, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other forms of nonviolent noncooperation, these efforts help separate regimes from their main sources of power and produce remarkable results, even in Iran, Burma, the Philippines, and the Palestinian Territories. Combining statistical analysis with case studies of specific countries and territorie
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…effective tool. There are academic studies done on it [1] and how it is actually more effective than violent protest - it has real efficacy. It's not merely "virtue signaling". [1] https://www.amazon.com/Why-Civil-Resistance-Works-Nonviolent...
on “Lyft surges to the top 10 on App Store following the “DeleteUber” campaign” ↗…autocratic regimes when they did. Non-violent movements succeeded about twice as often, and generally resulted in non-autocratic systems afterwards (main exception probably being Iran). See the book Why civil resistance works by Chenoweth which does a review of the literature.
on “Guns, Privacy, and Crime” ↗Ah, ok. There's a whole body of literature here that I think divides our opinions. I would recommend "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (Columbia Studies in Terrorism and Irregular Warfare)" to start. The history of effective change in the face of organizations acting in bad faith may not be…
on “Scientists ejected from diabetes conference for distributing journal reprints” ↗The thresholds are lower than you think. In "Why Civil Resistance Works" Erica Chenoweth calls it the 3.5% rule - basically that there's a really low threshold for change. Here's a WaPo article summarizing it: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/11/05...…
on “Cops: We Need Rights More Than You, Citizen” ↗…reform movements” (p. xx). It took them two years to put the data set together, but it was well worth it – after analyzing those data, in 2011 they published their results in their highly acclaimed book, Why Civil Resistance Works, which received the prestigious Woodrow Wilson Prize of the American Political Science Association. Chenoweth and Stephan found that “[m]ore than half of the campaigns that relied primarily on nonviolent…
on “Gandhi's Letter to Hitler (1940)” ↗The ER founders chose nonviolent civil disobedience (which of necessity 'inconveniences' people) following decades of empirical research (eg. http://cup.columbia.edu/book/why-civil-resistance-works/9780...) claiming to show that it's the most effective strategy for effecting fast & large-scale social change. I don't know the research well enough to assess it, but I'd trust it over lay guesswork…
on “Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release” ↗It only takes 3,5 % of people to overthrow a dictator https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35... https://cup.columbia.edu/book/why-civil-resistance-works/978... Trump cutting the military and changing sides + reducing pensions for people should be enough by rough calculations ( 1 million active and 3,5 million active in 1968 ) is more than 3,5%. I don't…
on “US cuts off intelligence sharing with Ukraine” ↗…nonviolent resistance. In part because violent resistance helps the government consolidate power over its own violence apparatus in a way nonviolent protest inhibits. [1] https://cup.columbia.edu/book/why-civil-resistance-works/978... [2] https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr/publications/questi...
on “14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal” ↗