Review: Civil Resistance and Power Politics The Experience of Non-Violent Action from Gandhi to the Present

Abstract

CIVIL RESISTANCE AND POWER POLITICS The Experience of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to the Present Adam Roberts and Timothy Galton Ash, editors Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. 407PP, $52.50 cloth ISBN 978-0-19-955201-6Civil resistance can be a potent instrument with which to undermine the status quo. In the postwar period, popular nonviolent uprisings have succeeded to a surprising degree. We are, however, disinclined to be objective about civil resistance because it tugs at our emotions. We identify with courageous trade unionists, students, artists, academics, monks, and priests who pour into the streets, risking their livelihoods and often their lives to call a halt to oppression and, at the same time, refuse to resort to the crude and bloody tactics of their oppressors. Our instinct is to moralize about the subject.Adam Roberts and Timothy Garton Ash have effectively countered this attitude by laying bare the reality of civil resistance. The core of this enterprise is 19 studies, beginning with M.K. Gandhi's satyagrahas and including the struggle for civil rights in the United States, Northern Ireland between 1967 and 1972, Portugal's revolution of the carnations, the Iranian revolution, the removal of President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines in the 1980s, the overturning of the Pinochet regime in Chile, the anti- Apartheid movement in South Africa, Tiananmen Square, the abortive demonstrations in Burma in 2007, and nine uprisings in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union that heralded, propelled, or were precipitated by the end of the Cold War. An analysis ofthe literature on civil resistance is contributed by April Carter. Civil Resistance and Power Politics is the first product of the Oxford University project on civil resistance and power politics.Both Adam Roberts's introduction and Timothy Garton Ash's concluding article assert their central proposition: civil resistance is a form of power, to be evaluated alongside other forms of power. Their authors are unafraid to discuss the unpalatable aspects of nonviolent uprisings. We learn what goes on when vast popular movements take shape, begin to exert considerable power - sometimes to the amazement of their adherents - and raise the costs of maintaining an oppressive order so that its beleaguered defenders look for an out. The motives and actions of the resistors do not alone account for what happens when uprisings occur. Concurrent political, military, economic, and social developments may do as much or more to explain the result. The line between violence and nonviolence is frequently blurred and some resistance movements fail or go awry, although it may be a long time before we can make a conclusive assessment.Readers will be able to compare the nonviolent uprisings examined here in terms of origins, political contexts, leadership strategies, the role of external actors, and outcomes. Take, for example, leadership strategies. Where there were identifiable leaders with a deep understanding of their environment and the vulnerabilities of their adversaries, their strategy made an enormous difference but, not surprisingly, successful strategies varied considerably with the circumstances. …