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Comparing Civil Resistance: Nonviolent vs. Violent Movements, Lecture notes of Logic

The success rates and implications of nonviolent resistance movements against authoritarian regimes, using data from thousands of sources. The authors find that nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to succeed as violent ones and increase the chances of peaceful democratic transition. The text also discusses the strategic advantages of civil resistance and the role of external support in promoting nonviolent movements.

What you will learn

  • How does civil resistance impact the chances of peaceful democratic transition?
  • Which tactics are most effective in nonviolent resistance campaigns?
  • What are the success rates of nonviolent resistance movements compared to violent ones?
  • What are the strategic advantages of civil resistance?
  • What role does external support play in promoting civil resistance?

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ERICA CHENOWETH is an Associate Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International
Studies at the University of Denver and an Associate Senior Researcher at the Peace
Research Institute Oslo. Follow her on Twitter @EricaChenoweth.
MARIA J. STEPHAN is a Senior Policy Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and a Nonresi-
dent Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. Follow her on Twitter @MariaJStephan.
They are the authors of Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent
Conflict.
94 foreign affairs
Drop Your Weapons
When and Why Civil Resistance Works
Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan
Over the past three years, the world has witnessed a surge of
nonviolent resistance movements. Pictures of huge demonstra-
tions in public squares have become a staple of international
news broadcasts, and Time named “the protester” as its Person of the
Year for 2011. These days, it seems that at any given moment, thousands
of people are mobilizing for change somewhere in the world.
But these movements have varied widely in terms of their duration,
their success, their ability to remain nonviolent, and their cost in
terms of human life. Building on years of intermittent protests and
strikes, Tunisians toppled Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the dictator who
had ruled their country for 23 years, after a sustained period of
28 days of protests beginning in December 2010. Between 300 and
320 Tunisians civilians died in the upheaval, all of them killed by
police or security forces. Weeks later, Egyptians ended Hosni Mubarak’s
three-decade reign after a decade of lower-level opposition and civil
resistance culminated in 18 days of nonviolent mass demonstrations—
but Mubarak’s security forces killed around 900 people in the process.
In Libya, scattered protests against Muammar al-Qaddafi that began
in February 2011 quickly became an armed rebellion. Nato soon inter-
vened militarily, and within nine months, Qaddafi was dead and his
regime demolished, but between 10,000 and 30,000 Libyans, according
to various estimates, had lost their lives. In Syria, Bashar al-Assad
brutally cracked down on mostly nonviolent demonstrations against
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ERICA CHENOWETH is an Associate Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and an Associate Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Follow her on Twitter @EricaChenoweth. MARIA J. STEPHAN is a Senior Policy Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and a Nonresi- dent Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. Follow her on Twitter @MariaJStephan. They are the authors of Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. 94 f o r e i g n a f fa i r s

Drop Your Weapons

When and Why Civil Resistance Works

Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan

O

ver the past three years, the world has witnessed a surge of nonviolent resistance movements. Pictures of huge demonstra- tions in public squares have become a staple of international news broadcasts, and Time named “the protester” as its Person of the Year for 2011. These days, it seems that at any given moment, thousands of people are mobilizing for change somewhere in the world. But these movements have varied widely in terms of their duration, their success, their ability to remain nonviolent, and their cost in terms of human life. Building on years of intermittent protests and strikes, Tunisians toppled Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the dictator who had ruled their country for 23 years, after a sustained period of 28 days of protests beginning in December 2010. Between 300 and 320 Tunisians civilians died in the upheaval, all of them killed by police or security forces. Weeks later, Egyptians ended Hosni Mubarak’s three-decade reign after a decade of lower-level opposition and civil resistance culminated in 18 days of nonviolent mass demonstrations— but Mubarak’s security forces killed around 900 people in the process. In Libya, scattered protests against Muammar al-Qaddafi that began in February 2011 quickly became an armed rebellion. Nato soon inter- vened militarily, and within nine months, Qaddafi was dead and his regime demolished, but between 10,000 and 30,000 Libyans, according to various estimates, had lost their lives. In Syria, Bashar al-Assad brutally cracked down on mostly nonviolent demonstrations against

Drop Your Weapons July/August 2014 95 his rule between March and August 2011, killing thousands and setting in motion a civil war that has since resulted in over 150,000 deaths and the displacement of around nine million people. Most recently, in February, Ukrainians ousted President Viktor Yanukovych after three months of mass civil resistance and occasionally violent protests. Around 100 Ukrainian protesters died during the clashes between demonstrators and riot police—fewer than in most of the confrontations of the Arab Spring in 2011. But Russia’s response to Yanukovych’s overthrow—seizing the Ukrainian territory of Crimea and attempting to destabilize the eastern parts of Ukraine—has created the most danger- ous and unpredictable security situation Europe has seen in decades. The basic trajectory of these recent movements—each successive one seemingly more violent and more geopolitically charged—has encouraged skepticism about the prospects for civil resistance in the twenty-first century. Such doubts are understandable but misplaced. A longer view is required to see the real potential of nonviolent resistance, which is evident in a historical data set that we assem- bled of 323 campaigns that spanned the twentieth century—from Mahatma Gandhi’s Indian independence movement against British colonialism, which began in earnest in 1919, to the protests that removed Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra from power in

  1. This global data set covers all known nonviolent and violent campaigns (each featuring at least 1,000 observed participants) for self-determination, the removal of an incumbent leader, or the ex- pulsion of a foreign military occupation from 1900 to 2006. The data set was assembled using thousands of source materials on protest and civil disobedience, expert reports and surveys, and existing records on violent insurgencies. Between 1900 and 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance against authoritarian regimes were twice as likely to succeed as violent movements. Nonviolent resistance also increased the chances that the overthrow of a dictatorship would lead to peace and democratic rule. This was true even in highly authoritarian and repressive countries, where one might expect nonviolent resistance to fail. Contrary to conventional wisdom, no social, economic, or political structures have systematically prevented nonviolent campaigns from emerging or succeeding. From strikes and protests to sit-ins and boycotts, civil resistance remains the best strategy for social and political change in the face of oppression. Movements that opt for violence often unleash

Drop Your Weapons July/August 2014 97 Broad-based support for a resistance movement can also weaken the loyalty of economic elites, religious authorities, and members of the state media who support the regime. When such figures defect to the opposition, they can sometimes force the regime to surrender to the opposition’s demands, which is what happened with the Philippines’ People Power movement of 1983–86. Broad movements also enjoy a tactical advantage: diverse, nonviolent campaigns that include women, professionals, religious figures, and civil servants—as opposed to violent ones comprised of mostly young, able-bodied men trained to become militants— reduce the risk of violent crackdowns, since security forces are often reluctant to use violence against crowds that might include their neighbors or relatives. And even when governments have chosen to violently repress resistance movements, in all the cases under review, nonviolent campaigns still succeeded in achieving their goals almost half the time, whereas only 20 percent of violent movements achieved their goals, because the vast majority were unable to produce the mass support or defections necessary to win. In cases in which the security forces remain loyal to the regime, defections among economic elites can play a critical role. In South Africa, boycotts against white businesses and international divestments from South African businesses were decisive in ending the apartheid regime. But civil resistance requires more than just mass participation and defections; it also requires planning and coordinated tactics. Success- ful nonviolent campaigns are rarely spontaneous, and the seemingly rapid collapse of the Ben Ali and Mubarak regimes shouldn’t fool observers: both revolutions were rooted in labor and opposition move- ments going back nearly a decade. Indeed, between 1900 and 2006, the average nonviolent campaign lasted close to three years. As Robert Helvey, a retired U.S. Army colonel who organized civil resistance workshops in Myanmar (also called Burma), the Palestinian territories, and Serbia in the 1990s and the early years of this century, told activists during his workshops: if they wanted their campaign to succeed in one year, they should plan as if the struggle would last for two. During the 1980s in the United States, Helvey worked closely with the scholar Gene Sharp, who has identified 198 different tactics that

Nonviolent campaigns

against authoritarian

regimes are twice as likely

to succeed as violent ones.

Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan 98 f o r e i g n a f fa i r s nonviolent resistance movements employ. These include various methods of protest, persuasion, noncooperation, and what Sharp calls “nonviolent intervention”—all of which have worked in various contexts. Tech-savvy scholars, such as Patrick Meier and Mary Joyce, have updated Sharp’s list to include tactics linked to new technologies, such as using social media to report repressive actions in real time and even using small drones to monitor police movements. Even campaigns that possess the holy trinity of features—mass participation, regime defections, and flexible tactics—don’t always succeed. Much depends on whether state authorities can outmaneuver the protesters and sow division in their ranks, perhaps even provoking nonviolent resisters to abandon their protests and strikes, lose their discipline and unity, and take up arms in response to repression. But even when nonviolent campaigns fail, all is not lost: from 1900 to 2006, countries that experienced failed nonviolent move- ments were still about four times as likely to ultimately transition to democracy as countries where resistance movements resorted to violence at the outset. Nonviolent civic mobilization relies on flexibility and coalition building—the very things that are needed for democratization. Of course, nonviolent revolutionaries are not necessarily equipped to govern during a political transition. In Egypt, for example, the young secular activists who filled Tahrir Square in January and February of 2011 have failed to organize effective political parties or interest groups. Nonviolent mass uprisings cannot always resolve systemic governance problems, such as co-opted institutions, entrenched corruption, and a lack of power sharing between a regime’s military or security forces and the civilian bureaucracy. But revolutionary campaigns can still maximize their chances of achieving more representative government—of bringing the successes of the street into the halls of power—if they develop so-called parallel institutions during the course of their struggles. Poland offers one of the best examples. In 1980, after some 16,000 workers launched a strike at the Gdansk shipyard, Polish labor groups, which had already been fomenting resistance to the Soviet-backed communist regime in Poland for a decade, formed Solidarity, a trade union that morphed into a civil resistance movement and gradually eroded the communist authority’s grip on the country. Solidarity published underground dissident newspapers, organized demonstrations and radical theater

Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan 100 f o r e i g n a f fa i r s nonviolent resistance. But a closer look at these five cases actually reinforces why people power is still the most effective method of political change, even in highly repressive countries. Despite setbacks last year, including the assassinations of two prominent liberal politicians by Islamist militants, Tunisia still looks like the bright spot among all the countries shaken up by the Arab Spring. Indeed, Tunisia’s revo- lution most closely resembles earlier examples where civil resistance suc- ceeded, such as the Philippines and Poland. The country stands a good chance of completing a full transition to democracy within the next five years. This positive trajectory is in large part a product of how Tunisians organized against Ben Ali. Massive numbers of Tunisians partici- pated in a sustained series of public protests, and the demonstra- tions included a diverse set of citizens: women helped lead them, and members of labor unions marched alongside lawyers, profes- sors, and students. When it came to tactics, the protesters mostly improvised, but they also relied on a wide range of techniques, al- ternating between demonstrations and crippling national strikes organized by labor unions. The regime’s repressive countermeasures, such as lethal security crackdowns, backfired, drawing more people into the streets and encouraging defections from the military and among regime loyalists. After the Islamist party Ennahda swept the first post–Ben Ali elections, in 2011, power struggles between the Islamists and their secular rivals, amid flare-ups of protests and political violence, eventually yielded to compromise and a power- sharing deal late last year. The country’s trade unions, notably, played a key role in brokering that deal. Egypt’s telegenic uprising, like Tunisia’s, illustrated the potential of nonviolent resistance. Protesters employed a wide range of tactics, from occupying major public squares to organizing large labor strikes. Activists found allies in the Egyptian army, which refused to open fire on the crowds and abandoned Mubarak, lead- ing to a victory for civil resistance in 2011. But it soon became clear that the popular refrain “The army and the people are one hand” was a hollow slogan: the Egyptian military (unlike its Tunisian

Rather than illustrate the

limits of nonviolent

resistance, Syria shows how

devastating the choice of

violence can be.

Drop Your Weapons July/August 2014 101 counterpart) intended to hold on to power at all costs. Last year, after the army toppled the democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, the military-backed government turned on the same activists who had organized the first protests against Mubarak in Tahrir Square, throwing many of them in jail. With the military’s power firmly intact—and its former chief, Field Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, expected to win a presidential election in late May—Egypt provides ample proof that a successful nonviolent campaign that manages to oust an authoritarian ruler cannot necessarily guarantee greater freedom and stability in the period that follows. Nevertheless, had the Tahrir Square protests turned violent, the situation in Egypt might well have been far worse than it is today. Armed uprisings tend to reinforce the power of the military even more quickly, discouraging defections. Moreover, they tend to initi- ate mass atrocities against civilians on a scale much larger than non- violent action does. Armed revolts rarely succeed, and when they do, they almost never bring about greater stability. When thousands of Ukrainians mobilized in late 2013, calling for Yanukovych to resign, it appeared to be a vindication for the promise of popular nonviolent resistance. Although most of the international media focused on Kiev as the hub of the protests, people actually rose up in many cities and towns across the coun- try. As in Tunisia and Egypt, the resistance made use of a variety of tactics. People boycotted consumer goods from businesses linked to Yanukovych; in Kiev, a mass car pool ensured that protesters could move in and out of the city’s main square. The demonstra- tors also exhibited a high degree of commitment to the cause: in one instance, civilians lay down across railroad tracks outside the city of Dnipropetrovsk to prevent a train carrying 500 elite riot police from entering Kiev. The movement was diverse, including men and women from different political groupings, classes, and ages. Its inclusiveness encouraged regime officials and security forces to switch sides in cities and throughout the countryside. Of course, soon after Yanukovych fled Ukraine, in late February, the victory of civil resistance was undermined by geopolitics, as Russia reacted to the pro-European momentum in Kiev by seizing Crimea and fomenting instability in eastern Ukraine. But none of that changes the fact that it was mostly nonviolent popular protests, and not armed revolution, that brought down Yanukovych.

Drop Your Weapons July/August 2014 103 on neighbors at the behest of one of the many security branches, discouraged trust among the protesters and undermined collective action. Yet during the nonviolent phase of the uprising, some mem- bers of the Syrian security forces still defected to the opposition, and the movement featured moderate levels of domestic support. But taking up arms against the Assad regime’s inevitable brutality destroyed any chance of maintaining the open support for the Syrian opposition on the part of significant numbers of Alawites, Christians, and Druze—minorities who were represented among the nonviolent movement and were crucial to any inclusive, successful civil resis- tance. The subsequent civil war has alienated many former partici- pants in and supporters of the revolution, and in many ways, it has fortified the regime. And the costs have been enormous. From March to September 2011, when the uprising was mostly nonvio- lent, the Assad regime killed an estimated 1,000 people a month and reportedly arrested thousands more. But the ensuing civil war has claimed around 5,000 lives a month, and one-third of the Syrian population are now refugees. If the Syrian case follows historical precedent, the rebels’ future looks gloomy. Even with support from outside states, violent campaigns from 1900 to 2006 had less than a 30 percent chance of succeeding. The successes include dubious cases, such as the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in 1975 and the mujahideen of Afghanistan in the 1980s. The failures include the Shiite uprising against Saddam Hussein in Iraq in the early 1990s, after the Gulf War. And as bad as the situation in Syria is, it could get worse. Since 1900, the average civil war has lasted over nine years. Even if the rebels win in the end, their victory will likely not satisfy the opposition’s original hope for more freedom. Less than four percent of rebel victories in armed resistance struggles from 1900 to 2006 ushered in democracy within five years; nearly half relapsed into civil war within ten years. The odds were probably against any opposition campaign in Syria, nonviolent or violent, given the brutality of the regime. But as counterintuitive as it might seem, civil resistance was working in Syria and would have had a greater chance of success than armed struggle. Indeed, rather than illustrate the limits of nonviolent resistance, Syria’s path shows how devastating the choice of violence can be. It has played to Assad’s strengths while making the opposition

Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan 104 f o r e i g n a f fa i r s wholly reliant on external armed intervention. Although entirely understandable given the scale of repression, engaging Assad on his own violent terms has had tragic—yet predictable—consequences. YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION Comparing these cases brings out a few key points. First, nonviolent campaigns attracted far more diverse participation than armed ones, which increased the chances of defections among security forces and other regime elites. There is, in fact, safety in numbers, especially when protesters represent a cross section of society. Second, the non- violent campaigns that succeeded used a variety of tactics. In Syria, on the other hand, nonviolent activists tended to rely solely on dem- onstrations and occupations, which are among the riskiest methods of civil resistance. Attempted strikes, boycotts, and other forms of mass noncooperation were weak, localized, and lacked support. Third, although the protests of the Arab Spring inspired one an- other and were united by a similar, iconic slogan that was first chanted in Tunisia—“The people want the fall of the regime!”— they were hardly all the same. In fact, the different outcomes in each country underscore why nonviolent groups must resist the temptation to replicate a mass demonstration in another country without a broader strategy of their own, especially when that mass demonstration represents the endgame of a much longer nonviolent campaign. Fourth, in addition to killing more unarmed civilians and undermining participation, armed resistance makes rebel groups dangerously dependent on outside support. In both Libya and Syria, that total reliance made the rebels more vulnerable to accusations that they were agents of foreign enemies. Moreover, international support for armed groups is usually conditional and fickle, subject- ing rebel groups to the whims of their sponsors (as Washington’s reluctance to follow through on its pledges of significant help for the Syrian rebels shows). During last year’s un General Assembly meeting, U.S. President Barack Obama spoke to a roundtable about the essential role that civil society has played in nearly every major social and political transformation of the last half century, from the civil rights movement in the United States, to the fight against communism in Eastern Europe, to the antiapartheid struggle in South Africa. The right of peaceful assembly and association, Obama said, is “not a Western

Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan 106 f o r e i g n a f fa i r s Policymakers should prioritize a “responsibility to assist” non- violent activists and civic groups, rather than only seeking to protect civilians through military force, as in nato’s Libya intervention. Of course, civil resistance campaigns are and must remain homegrown movements. But in recent years, the international community has done much to undermine civil resistance by quickly and enthusiasti- cally supporting armed actors when they arrive on the scene. Syria’s tragedy is a case in point. Although regime repression, supported by Iran and Russia, undoubtedly helped turn a principally nonviolent uprising into a civil war, external actors could have done more to aid civil resistance and prolong the original nonviolent uprising. They could have helped encourage, coordinate, and exploit for political gain regime defections (including from key Alawite elites); demanded that Assad allow foreign journalists to remain in the country; accel- erated direct financial support to grass-roots nonviolent networks and local councils; and provided more information to Syrian activists about what it takes to remain nonviolent under highly repressive conditions. Instead, the international community provided political recognition and sanctuary to armed actors, supplied both nonlethal and lethal aid to them, and helped militarize the conflict, undermin- ing the momentum of the nonviolent movement. There was no silver bullet for effectively aiding the nonviolent Syrian opposition. But speed and coordination on the part of external actors, particularly early on in the revolution, were lacking. Syria highlights the moral and strategic imperative of developing more flexible, nimble ways to support nonviolent resistance move- ments. The local champions of people power will continue to chart their own future. But outside actors have an important role to play in assuring that civil resistance has a fighting chance.∂