From Repression to Participation?

A rapidly growing research field examines the conditions under which major nonviolent resistance campaigns – that is, popular-based nonviolent uprisings for regime or territorial change within a state – are successful. However, previous research has paid little attention to why nonviolent resistance campaigns are initiated in the first place. This study explains the onset of nonviolent conflict, comparing the determinants of nonviolent conflict onset with those of violent conflict. We argue that pre-existing, cross-cutting mobilization structures allow activists to overcome collective action problems and leverage the participation advantage of nonviolence and that this infrastructure is more likely to be present in states that depend upon organized labor for revenue. Global quantitative analysis of the onset of violent and nonviolent campaigns from 1960-2006 (NAVCO), and nationwide protest events in Africa from 1989-2009 (SCAD) show that states where manufacturing makes up a high proportion of GDP are more likely to witness nonviolent conflict onsets.

This study compared the effects of major violent and nonviolent opposition campaigns for regime change, on predicted life expectancy at birth. The study measured life expectancy five and ten years after the campaign ended, so that deaths which occurred during the campaign would not be included in the metric, and thus enabling the study of changes made in the state on the social determinants affecting longevity, after the campaign was over. Life expectancy is one of the best reported World Development Indicators and is considered to be a good indication of the overall health and general living conditions of the state and therefore is an ideal indicator to reflect the changes made in the state following a major campaign. The results of this analysis showed that states have a hard time recovering from a major opposition campaign and initially drop behind the growth trend in the world average for predicted life expectancy at birth. But, the type of campaign that was waged and whether it was successful, greatly affects the state’s ability to recover. Encouragingly by a decade after the campaign ends, states that experienced a nonviolent campaign that was successful had caught up to the world average and inched ahead of it. This shows that on this important development indicator, new governments that were ushered into power by nonviolent social movements, had made positive changes in the state that enabled it to surpass world averages.

Civil resistance is a powerful strategy for promoting major social and political change, yet no study has systematically evaluated the effects of simultaneous armed resistance on the success rates of unarmed resistance campaigns. Using the Nonviolent and Violent Conflict Outcomes (NAVCO 1.1) data set, which includes aggregate data on 106 primarily nonviolent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006 with maximalist political objectives, we find that contemporaneous armed struggles do not have positive effects on the outcome of nonviolent campaigns. We do find evidence for an indirect negative effect, in that contemporaneous armed struggles are negatively associated with popular participation and are, consequently, correlated with reduced chances of success for otherwise-unarmed campaigns. Two paired comparisons suggest that negative violent flank effects operated strongly in two unsuccessful cases (the 8-8-88 challenge in Burma in 1988 and the South African antiapartheid challenge from 1952 to 1961, with violent flanks having both positive and negative impacts in the challenge to authoritarian rule in the Philippines (1983–1986) and the South African antiapartheid campaign (1983–1994). Our results suggest that the political effects are beneficial only in the short term, with much more unpredictable and varied long-term outcomes. Alternately, violent flanks may have both positive and negative political impacts, which make the overall effect of violent flanks difficult to determine. We conclude that large-scale maximalist nonviolent campaigns often succeed despite intra- or extramovement violent flanks, but seldom because of them.

Between his first national exposure as a Brother in early 1970 and his violent death in August 1971, George Jackson achieved an almost unprecedented level of celebrity for an incarcerated person. In that age of political extremes and radical chic, it is not altogether surprising that Jackson achieve notoriety and acclaim. However, there has been little attention to the prison culture that helped shape Jackson's consciousness. In addition, the weeks and years that followed Jackson's death saw a remarkable series of protests where prisoners specifically memorialized Jackson. By placing Jackson's ideas, writings, and actions in the popular, political, and prison contexts, this article argues that Jackson was a key participant in debates over incarceration, colonialism, and racism. While he is often only remembered for the ideological extremes of his book of letters, Soledad Brother, and his violent tactics, George Jackson has not been recognized for his participation in an organized system of covert education that presaged theories of internal colonialism, his popularization of arguments about the political qualities of incarceration, and insistence that prisoners can contribute to movements for social change as symbols, intellectuals, and leaders. It is telling that the largest and most visible prison rebellion of the era occurred on the other side of the country only weeks after his death. While others have noted the connection between Jackson and Attica, the specific tactics and demands of the Attica Brothers have been described as strange or unrealistic. Once placed in the proper context of the prison culture of the 1970s, their calls for unity, amnesty, and removal to a neutral-i.e. postcolonial and Marxist-country seem far from outlandish. Rather, they seem like a claim very much situated in the political culture and climate of American prisons of the 1970s. George Jackson provided the inspiration for a generation of incarcerated intellectuals and writers to insist on the importance of their perspectives in shaping public debates over a host of key issues. Though it would be hard to overestimate the influence of Malcolm X and Angela Davis on the cultural and intellectual output of incarcerated people during the 1970s, the brief, intense, and uncompromising revolutionary life of Jackson made him the icon for a range of critics of the prison system. Jackson as Symbol Bertold Brecht's 1930 script for calls for the set to be hung with placards containing quotes by Marx and Lenin. In productions of the play between 1973 and 1975, the San Francisco Mime Troupe substituted quotes by George Jackson and Richard Nixon, personifications of the extremes of 1970s-era political activism. Troupe, founded in 1959, had a well-earned reputation for antiwar, feminist, and anticapitalist sentiments. Even if the audience members were unaware of the substitution, they would have easily seen the ideological and political message the Troupe sent. Where Brecht's notes called for a projection of Marx's Theory turns into a material force once the masses have understood it! Mime Troupe projected Nixon's Communism is evil because it defies God and denies man (Gordon 101). Where Brecht included Lenin's Prove that you can fight! the Mime Troupe substituted Louis Farrakhan's All of us are in prison. Those locked up are merely in solitary confinement. Where Brecht's script called for a repetition of Lenin's line later in the play, the Mime Troupe invoked a letter George Jackson wrote to his mother: You are free-to starve. Written during the Great Depression, The Mother dramatizes the political transformation of the mother of a communist. At the play's opening, she is an antagonist of revolution. At its end, she is a revolutionary. In the program notes, the Mime Troupe made clear their belief that Depression-era calls for revolution applied to the 1970s context: The San Francisco Mime Troupe decided to do because of the present crisis in America. …

A growing research field examines the conditions under which major nonviolent resistance campaigns—that is, popular nonviolent uprisings for regime or territorial change—are successful. Why these campaigns emerge in the first place is less well understood. We argue that extensive social networks that are economically interdependent with the state make strategic nonviolence more feasible. These networks are larger and more powerful in states whose economies rely upon organized labor. Global quantitative analysis of the onset of violent and nonviolent campaigns from 1960 to 2006 (NAVCO), and major protest events in Africa from 1990 to 2009 (SCAD) shows that the likelihood of nonviolent conflict onset increases with the proportion of manufacturing to gross domestic product. This study points to a link between modernization and social conflict, a link that has been often hypothesized, but, hitherto, unsupported by empirical studies.

Why do some non-violent uprisings escalate into armed violence while others do not? We suggest that horizontal polarisation contributes to the escalation of non-violent campaigns. We examine the effect of ethnic cleavages between the campaign and its opponent and movement cohesion as explanatory factors for escalation into civil war and non-state violence. Statistical analysis of all major non-violent campaigns (1970–2014) shows that non-violent conflicts with ethnic cleavages have a higher risk of escalating into armed violence in particular, when the conflict takes place over governmental aims. The results also indicate that movement cohesion alleviates the risk of armed escalation.

An emerging consensus holds that nonviolent resistance campaigns are more successful than violent campaigns, partly because they attract more participants. Yet, we lack an understanding of whether and why nonviolent tactics attracts support. We propose two motivational logics that can explain support for nonviolence: An instrumentalist logic, whereby nonviolent resistance is preferred based on cost-benefit considerations, and an intrinsic logic where nonviolent resistance is preferred because of perceived inherent moral worth. To investigate the motivational pull of these two logics, we conduct a pre-registered survey experiment among more than 5000 respondents across 33 countries in fall 2019. We find that nonviolent tactics strongly increase movement support relative to violent tactics, and that the preference for nonviolence is primarily driven by intrinsic commitments to the moral worth of nonviolent resistance, rather than instrumental considerations.

Public participation is a principle that has been given prominence in the Constitution of Kenya (2010). Participation should imbue all public affairs and be promoted by both genders acting in public interest. The Constitution sets key requirements for the legislature at both levels of government to provide frameworks for public participation in governance processes. The emphasis for feminist participation underscores the fact that the election of representatives does not negate the need for people to continuously be involved in governance processes. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of community awareness on public participation of women in the development planning processes in Awendo Sub County. The target population of the study was from the four administrative wards of Awendo Sub County, twenty (20) Religious leaders and local opinion leaders from each of the four wards selected randomly and four (4) members of County Assembly from Awendo Sub County. The target population was 57,724 participants. Using Krejcie& Morgan table, the sample size was three hundred and eighty two (382) people. Stratified sampling technique was used to partition the sample frame. Proportionate sampling was used to get the actual sample of each stratum relative to the overall sample size. Simple random technique was used to select the specific size from the strata of the target population. Both quantitative and qualitative data was collected, using interview schedules for key informants and questionnaires respectively. Data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics with the help of Statistical Package for Social Science (SPPS) version 22. Qualitative data was transcribed and reported according to emergent themes and narratives while Quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics. Data was presented by the use of tables.The study concluded that the level of public participation is highly dependent on level of public awareness and vice versa. Keywords: Women, Awareness, Community, Public participation, Development Planning DOI: 10.7176/PPAR/12-2-04 Publication date: April 30 th 2022

Protesting in post-apartheid South Africa is perceived as one of the significant democratic methods of participation and engagement with the government and its executive. As a result, since the early 2000s, community-led participation has been preferred over government-led forms of participatory methods, including mayoral forums and izimbizo (interactive dialogues between government officials and the people). However, the community-invented spaces of participation in the form of protests have been accompanied by violent tactics that have severely impacted infrastructure. The violent tactics used during protests related to service delivery have been more conspicuous in the local sphere of government, especially in places composed of informal settlements. Hence, Cato Manor has not been immune to this but continues to experience violence during service delivery protests, which causes damage to assets. This article explores the destruction of infrastructure in the quest for basic services in Cato Manor. A qualitative research design was adopted to guide the study, together with the displaced-aggression theory, as a theoretical lens to interpret the findings. The study used a purposive and snowball sampling method to recruit thirty-three participants. Thematic analysis facilitated by NVivo was adopted for data analysis purposes. Thus, the study’s findings illustrate that the damage to essential services in the quest for basic services emanates from the frustration of the local people due to the government’s inability to address the prevailing socioeconomic issues. The destruction of key infrastructure occurs when the primary cause of the frustration is not within the reach of the people.

The nonviolence so heralded in studies of protest has lost its strategic effectiveness; nonviolence has become, not a strategy in the pursuit of justice, but an end in itself, a telos. In order to better conceptualize violence and nonviolence in the contemporary rhetoric of social protest, this essay provides a review and critique of prominent rhetorical studies of protest violence that have placed violent tactics solely in the service of nonviolence. Rhetorical scholars are in a unique position to reconsider and reframe understandings of violence and nonviolence in social protest that persist both in rhetorical studies and in the popular imagination about how social change can and should happen. Violence and nonviolence have too often been divorced from the white supremacist history and context in which they operate, particularly in the United States—creating meaning structures that make the violent protest tactics deployed by non-dominant groups culturally illegible. This essay works to reframe the violent tactics most commonly deployed in the current moment by arguing that the looting, property destruction, and even the direct physical violence that is most often associated with various Leftist and anti-racist activists can work strategically to challenge the police-State's monopoly on violence. Drawing out the implications of these interconnected points, the essay provides a more nuanced understanding of violent tactics that can both help restore the disruptive function of protest rhetoric and better challenge white supremacy in the service of justice.

The purpose of the study was to evaluate public participation in the policy making process in Makueni County. This was so because, despite the Makueni County Government generally accepted framework for public participation, there is limited information on how that framework has impacted or been used in the policy making process. Specifically, the study sought to assess the extent of awareness by the residents of Makueni of their democratic right and opportunities to participate in the policy making process; analyzed the levels of citizens involvement in policy making processes in Makueni County; established the perception towards public participation in policy making process by residents and management in Makueni County; and determined the barriers to public participation in policy making process by residents and management in Makueni County. The study was anchored on Stakeholder Theory, Arnstein’s Ladder and the Multi Streams Model. The study was hinged on descriptive survey research design and targeted the 884,527 residents of Makueni and the 217 County Public service Departmental staff in Makueni County. Stratified sampling was used to delineate 117 staff in terms of their positions, whether management or operations excluding the subordinate staff. Simple random sampling was used to get 396 residents. Focus Group Discussions and questionnaires were the primary data collection instruments. Quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics in form of percentages and frequencies. Linear regression model analysis was also used to analyze data. The results established that the residents were unaware of their democratic right and opportunities for participation in policy making process in Makueni County. There were also low levels of citizens’ involvement in policy making processes in Makueni County. Further, perception about public participation by residents was both negative for those who felt let down by the county management and positive for those who mainly felt hopeful that despite those challenges, things improve for the better in terms of public participation in policy making process in Makueni County. Additionally, financial, physical resource, human resource and technological barriers were identified as having considerable negative impact on citizen participation in policy making process. The study thus recommends that Makueni County management should embark on renewed promotional strategies to create awareness among citizens of their democratic right and opportunities for participation in policy making process in Makueni County. Further, the citizens themselves should be proactive and employ necessary mechanisms of obtaining information from the county government and demand participation. The Makueni County management should on the other hand, formulate a framework that stipulates the measures to be applied towards fully involving the citizens. The Makueni County management should also be more transparent and accountable in order to help build a positive perception about public participation amongst the residents. Moreover, the Makueni County management should engage in robust resource mobilization of finances, physical, human and technological resources that advance public participation in policy making process. On a policy level, the County Assembly should amend existing public participation legislation to make it more responsive to the needs of citizens. The executive should on their part robustly implement public participation processes going forward.

Under what conditions do violent tactics receive public support? Focusing on the process of social influence, this article utilizes a survey on the 2019 Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Bill Movement to test how social interactions with people with different orientations toward the movement (opposing, neutral, supportive) relate to individuals’ tolerance of violent tactics. Social interactions with neutral people generated the largest effect, as such interactions made people particularly intolerant of violent tactics. Interactions with opposition networks also led people to disapprove of violent tactics, although the association is weaker than interactions with neutral people. Interactions with movement supporters did not make people condemn violent tactics but instead increased their tolerance. Additional analyses show that such interaction effects hold across political affiliations. We discuss the implications for public opinion and democracy.

Public participation plays an important role in the democratization of countries globally. The accomplishment of public participation process is determined by how well it is organized. This study sought to examine the effects of public participation on local legislation in Banadir region of Somalia. The study was guided by the following objectives, to investigate factors that led to public participation, examine the design of public participation mechanism; investigate the process of public participation and analyze the consequences of public participation. The research will employ a descriptive research design. The study population comprised all the stakeholders including the youth, elders, staff employed by the regional government, the clergy, politicians and the non-governmental organizations involved in public participation in Banadir region. Purposive sampling was done to come up with the sample size of the study. Regarding the variance among the target population, where a number of target population involved, the sample size of this study was 130 respondents. Eighty (80) of the respondents were community members including local politicians, clergies, traders, university lecturers, university students, farmers, chiefs and opinion leaders. Twenty (20) of the participants were management staff and heads of national civil labor departments. Thirty (30) respondents were also from the Local community elders who are engaged in public participation programs in Banadir Region. Both secondary and primary data was accessed for the study. Primary data was collected from the identified stakeholders using the questionnaires, while secondary data was obtained from books and journals from Kenyatta University Post Modern Library. The study used two theories: New public management theory and Cornwall’s Theory of Participation that describe the relevance of public participation public development. Data processing and cleaning was done; the descriptive statistics was utilized quantitative data. Statistical tables and graphs was present the result. Content analysis was used to analyze qualitative data. The study found out that the citizen’s attitude has an impact on public participation. When citizens have a positive attitude towards the local legislation services, there are high chances they will participate. The study also found out that public participation design and process have an influence on local legislation. Therefore, the study recommends that the government and other stakeholders should come up with various ways of ensuring that all citizens are informed about public participation. The study also recommended that public participation design and process should be improved with the aim of improving public participation.

This article introduces the Strategies of Resistance Data Project (SRDP), a global dataset on organizational behavior in self-determination disputes. This dataset is actor-focused and spans periods of relative peace and violence in self-determination conflicts. By linking tactics to specific actors in broader campaigns for political change, we can better understand how these struggles unfold over time, and the conditions under which organizations use conventional politics, violent tactics, nonviolent tactics, or some combination of these. SRDP comprises 1,124 organizations participating in movements for greater national self-determination around the world, from 1960 to 2005. Despite the fact that few self-determination movements engage in mass nonviolent campaigns, SRDP shows that more organizations employ nonviolent tactics at some point in time (about 40%) than employ violence (about 30%). Many organizations switch among tactics or use both at the same time. This dataset will allow analysts to examine the use of different combinations of tactics and patterns of change. We compare the data with the most-used dataset on nonviolence, the NAVCO 2.0 Data Project, to demonstrate what we gain by employing an organization-level dataset on tactics. We present a set of descriptive analyses highlighting the utility of the SRDP, including an examination of tactic switching. We show that more organizations change from violence to nonviolence than the reverse – challenging the widely held assumption that organizations ‘resort’ to violence. SRDP allows scholars to examine organizational choices about tactics, and trends in these tactics, with much greater nuance.

ABSTRACTPrevious research has argued that political inequality between ethnic groups increases the likelihood of both nonviolent and violent protest. In this study, I focus on civil resistance campaigns and argue that the probability that these large-scale, organized movements will take violent over nonviolent forms increases with the share of a country’s population that is excluded from political power on the basis of ethnic affiliation. I expect this to be so because ethnically exclusive regimes are more likely to counter political demands with violent repression, which increases the cost and decreases the anticipated success of nonviolent relative to violent resistance. I test this proposition in a global sample of countries for the period 1950–2006 and find, first, that high levels of ethnic exclusion make civil resistance campaigns more likely to occur violently than nonviolently. Next, to assess the mechanism at play, I conduct a mediation analysis and show that almost half of the effect of ethnic exclusion on violent campaign onset is mediated by the latent level of violent repression in a country. This result suggests that political authorities’ repressive strategies are key to explaining why regime opponents do not always opt for nonviolent forms of civil resistance.