Civil Resistance Research Articles

How Civil Resistance Improves Inclusive Democracy

When do political transitions lead to greater inclusion for groups historically excluded from power? Scholars and policymakers often assume the answer is simple: a transition will result in more inclusion when it ends in democracy. Yet this answer is incomplete at best, since many democracies systematically exclude women, particular ethnic groups, or lower economic classes from power. Using data on political transitions around the world from 1945 to 2014, this study shows that a political transition’s initiating force critically shapes post-transition political inclusion. When transitions are initiated through unarmed civil resistance campaigns they achieve greater advances in inclusion relative to other types of transition. We propose three mechanisms to explain this effect: civil resistance leads to greater continued mobilization and civic activism among the historically excluded, provides greater opportunities for elites from historically excluded groups to rise to positions of leadership in new regimes, and forges more pluralistic norms of political behavior.

Memory and protest in Belgrade: Remembering the 1990s in the mass demonstrations of 2023

The history of the 1990s and of political life in Serbia can be viewed as a history of protest. It was during this decade, in which Slobodan Milošević held power, that an entire generation of activists became part of a process of learning to engage in civil resistance. In waves of massive anti-regime protests as well as in smaller, yet persistent, anti-war protests, they asserted that ‘Belgrade is the World’. This article examines the ways in which practices and themes from these protests have resurfaced more recently, and how this activism is remembered and referenced in the 2020s. Based on data collected in Belgrade during anti-regime protests in 2023, which began as a movement ‘against violence’ (‘ protiv nasilja’), it traces how the memory of protest of the 1990s turned into memory in protest as it appeared in banners, chants, slogans and speeches, as well as in everyday conversation among citizens, some three decades later. Deploying the concept of the memory-activism nexus, the article analyses generational claims in Serbia, the practices of protesters, their hope in activism, their fear of cultivating false expectations and their continuing demands for a better future. It places cultural memory in Serbia in the context of a politics of disappointment, illustrating that memory in protest can function as both a mobilising force and a source of political paralysis.

Social and psychological portrait of the KGB agent

After 1953, the KGB faced new challenges. With the Soviet system gradually opening, ever more intense relations with the West in the fields of science, culture, industry and tourism were established, which was a certain challenge in protecting strategically important information and ensuring control of the territory. However, it was no longer possible to break civil resistance and the fight of ideas by means of brutal measures alone. Secret collaborators became an ever more important instrument in implementing the KGB tasks. The agent’s environment and in what way he could be of use to the KGB created the greatest value for the agent. Hence, not only professional experience and knowledge but also personal qualities became important. It was not only collection of information that prevailed during the fight against partisans but also the dissemination of certain ideas or rumours, observance and analysis of moods and principles of certain groups of society (the youth, the intelligentsia, representatives of culture, education and clergy), as well as performance of other tasks became of greatest importance in the agents’ work. Hence, the most significant feature in recruiting an individual became his age, education, duties and responsibilities, the social medium in which he worked and lived. The following groups of society are most often referred to in the KGB reports, which determined their choice: the cultural and academic, technical intelligentsia, (teachers, lecturers, physicians, artists, engineers, specialists), political prisoners (deportees), the clergy, the youth, workers (workers and collective farmers). Agents’ education and social situation, perhaps their age to a lesser degree, were determined, speaking in the KGB terms, by the operational situation of a city (region): the geographical location of the territory (e.g., the border), the city of Kaunas as the temporary capital of the interwar period, where there was a great concentration of the intelligentsia, young people, political prisoners and deportees who came back from places of imprisonment, objects of industry, science, education, culture located in other cities, certain social groups, such as the former political prisoners, deportees who maintained contacts with people living abroad and, of course, the factor of the clergy was of great significance. Though it was sought to have as many agents as possible among the young people, political prisoners and the clergy, the KGB reports show that the KGB efforts gave no desired results. The level of education and the social basis of the agency was an integral part of the portrait of the KGB agent. On the basis of the available information about the psychological characteristic of the KGB agents, it is difficult to draw conclusions about the agent’s portrait. However, the specificity of the agent’s activity that included concealing everything from the family, the surrounding people, specific tasks, how to collect and obtain certain information, approaching certain persons – required certain skills such as communicability, but, on the other hand, certain reticence, as well as flexibility and composure. However, the most valuable quality of the agent was the ability to come close to the people and information that were of use to the KGB.

Institutional effects of nonviolent and violent revolutions

This paper conducts a systematic review and comparative analysis of the institutional impacts of nonviolent versus violent revolutions. It examines sixty-six quantitative studies across disciplines on how revolutionary tactics affect post-conflict institutions. The analysis categorizes institutional outcome variables into five groups: democracy, military/police/courts, foreign relations, ethnicity/culture, and well-being. The comparative analysis finds a preponderance of evidence that nonviolent movements have more positive institutional effects than violent ones. Civil resistance is associated with democratization, reduced repression, loyalty shifts, human rights protections, inclusion of marginalized groups, and greater well-being compared to violent campaigns. The comparative analysis contributes strong cross-disciplinary evidence on the differential institutional impacts of revolutionary tactics.

Post-Political Governance and the Return of the Political: PROPER-rated Geothermal Enterprise, Environmental Problems, and Civil Resistance in Dieng Plateau, Central Java

The Industrial Environmental Rating Program (PROPER) from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry of the Republic of Indonesia has produced various outcomes. Many companies strive to meet the PROPER assessment criteria, earning ratings represented by colors ranging from black to gold. Unfortunately, the indicators set by PROPER, namely compliance and beyond-compliance assessment criteria, are limited to technical and managerial aspects rather than substantial ones. Consequently, the ratings often become a means for environmentally polluting companies to polish their public image and attract investment. PT Geo Dipa Energi (Persero), a state-owned geothermal enterprise, is one of many companies that have obtained a blue PROPER rating. This company's presence in Dieng, Central Java, has faced civil resistance due to the various pollution issues caused by their activities. The company uses the blue PROPER rating label to create a mechanism called “post-political governance” to discipline civil resistance. This mechanism refers to the process of repressing the political dimension in society by introducing apolitical mechanisms. These apolitical mechanisms are found in the values of good governance, such as participation, transparency, fairness, accountability, and public inclusion, which PROPER aims to implement. This research was conducted in Karang Tengah Village, Dieng, and remotely from different locations. The findings show that Dieng residents, whose political dimension is being disciplined, are able to reclaim their political agency through civil and discursive political resistance—a set of conditions that Wilson and Swyngedouw refer to as “the return of the political.” This research aims to present a critical perspective on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices by companies within the framework of PROPER, while also highlighting the role of the community as key actors in challenging the discourse of empowerment constructed by the company and PROPER policy.

Identification of the 18 World War II executed citizens of Adele, Rethymnon, Crete using an ancient DNA approach and low coverage genomes

In the Battle of Crete during the World War II occupation of Greece, the German forces faced substantial civilian resistance. To retribute the numerous German losses, a series of mass executions took place in numerous places in Crete; a common practice reported from Greece and elsewhere. In Adele, a village in the regional unit of Rethymnon, 18 male civilians were executed and buried in a burial pit at the Sarakina site. In this study, the first one conducted for a conflict that occurred in Greece, we identified for humanitarian purposes the 18 skulls of the Sarakina victims, following a request from the local community of Adele. The molecular identification of historical human remains via ancient DNA approaches and low coverage whole genome sequencing has only recently been introduced. Here, we performed genome skimming on the living relatives of the victims, as well as high throughput historical DNA analysis on the skulls to infer the kinship degrees among the victims via genetic relatedness analyses. We also conducted targeted anthropological analysis to successfully complete the identification of all Sarakina victims. We demonstrate that our methodological approach constitutes a potentially highly informative forensic tool to identify war victims. It can hence be applied to analogous studies on degraded DNA, thus, paving the path for systematic war victim identification in Greece and beyond.

Between 'flight' and 'fight': does civilian resistance against rebels work?

Understanding the dynamics of nonviolent action in situations of armed conflict has been labelled as the 'new frontier' in resistance studies. This paper assesses the growing body of literature on civilian resistance against rebel groups. Drawn from a systematic review of academic articles, book chapters, and policy documents, examples of civilian resistance are ordered in three distinct categories of unarmed action: deception; dissent; and defiance. This classification provides the conceptual framework to tackle the main research question: does civilian resistance against rebels work to protect unarmed populations from violence and harm? By scrutinising the effectiveness of civilian resistance, the paper seeks to provide a necessary corrective to the dominant view expressed in the literature, which, as argued, is overly optimistic regarding the prospects of wringing substantial concessions from armed groups via nonviolent action. The paper concludes with a discussion of policy implications, focusing on normative challenges facing external actors eager to support civilian resisters.

Resistance Among the Druze

Abstract The Syrian Druze in the Golan Heights have been resisting Israeli occupation for more than five decades. Their efforts in preserving their Arab-Syrian nationality and heritage against the “Israelization” of the Golan Heights have been widely undertheorized. The aim of this article is to study the types and methods of resistance that the Syrian Druze community in the Golan Heights have utilized in rejecting Israeli occupation. Apart from a brief incidence of military resistance by the Syrian Druze in the Golan Heights, which was quickly suppressed by Israel, the essence of the community’s anti-Israeli activities has been within the framework of civil resistance. This paper analyzes three types of civil resistance in the Golan Heights: political and identity-based, socio-economic, and environmental resistance. The paper links these types of civil resistance to Gene Sharp’s pragmatic approach to civil resistance and disobedience.

Organising Civil Resistance - Understanding the Effects and Dynamics of Organisational Structures on the Outcome of Civil Resistance Campaigns

Organising Civil Resistance - Understanding the Effects and Dynamics of Organisational Structures on the Outcome of Civil Resistance Campaigns

When Does Lethal Repression Fail? Unarmed Militancy and Backfire in Bolivia, 1982–2021

AbstractRepressive state violence, intended to tamp down collective mobilisation, sometimes inspires greater participation by protesters. When popular and/or elite reactions cause the repressing party to concede, civil resistance scholars define the failure of state repression as ‘backfire’. Some have proposed that movements’ nonviolent discipline is essential to backfire. This article demonstrates that movements that practise ‘unarmed militancy’ – forceful, combative tactics less damaging than armed violence – can also succeed through backfire, achieving policy concessions and even presidential resignations, and presents a qualitative comparative analysis of the outcomes of 48 protest events with multiple deaths in Bolivia between 1982 and 2019, and a case-based analysis of how either movements or repressors prevailed. Movements that confronted deadly repression succeeded in 57–8 per cent of cases. Whether or not protesters engaged in lethal defensive violence did not affect their likelihood of success. However, state repression of guerrillas and paramilitary groups, and during polarised partisan conflicts, was consistently successful. Current understandings of backfire need to be reconsidered in light of successful unarmed militant protest in Bolivia and numerous other locations worldwide.

Civil Resistance in Ukraine: Exploring the Dynamics and Impacts of Social Emancipation Forces to Counter the 2022 Russian Invasion

This essay examines the role of nonviolent civil resistance in Ukraine during the 2022 Russian invasion. Drawing from the notions of nonviolence strategy, resilience and people’s power, it illustrates how nonviolence can undermine an aggressor’s military and political objectives while strengthening the social emancipation forces. The essay is based on the analysis of 235 varied nonviolent actions from February to June 2022, seeking to understand key drivers, dynamics, and their influence in the Ukrainian context. It also emphasizes the impact of non-cooperation in occupied territories to prevent the institutionalization of repression and the importance of culture in safeguarding the value system of Ukrainians. The paper concludes that nonviolent strategies have significantly impeded Russian military objectives during the first phase of the invasion, contributing to the liberation of Kherson and strengthening Ukrainian social cohesion and national identity, thus contributing to the democratic state- and nation-building process.

State Silencing as a Tool to Suppress Russians’ Civil Resistance to the War with Ukraine

The 2022 full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine brought back to the main political stage questions about the state of Russian society. Research and history show that civil nonviolent resistance can change countries’ policies, overthrow authoritarian regimes, and stop wars, but Russians have not used it on a massive scale to try to stop Russia’s gross human rights violations in Ukraine. The question remains: Why? In this essay, I analyze the role of state silencing and Russians’ inability and/or unwillingness to resist the regime. Although silencing is not the only reason why Russians are not protesting against the war with Ukraine, it has greatly contributed to Russians’ civil indifference, especially because it has been used for many years, in different forms (the use of direct violence against people protesting against the war, systemic silencing through law and regulations, the use of propaganda and censorship, etc.) and at all levels of society. Understanding the effects of state silencing on Russians’ ability and willingness to resist may improve understanding of how to strengthen civil society so that it is resilient and able to resist injustice, wars, and harmful policies. It can also contribute to a difficult process of reconciliation between Russians and Ukrainians in the future.

Who Gains from Nonviolent Action? Unpacking the Logics of Civil Resistance

Who Gains from Nonviolent Action? Unpacking the Logics of Civil Resistance

3 Forgiving, listening, waiting: Ethics of solidarity in Kosova’s movement of civil resistance in the1990’s

3 Forgiving, listening, waiting: Ethics of solidarity in Kosova’s movement of civil resistance in the1990’s

Revolutionary resistance against full autocratization. Actors and strategies of resistance after the 2021 military coup in Myanmar

Resistance against autocratization is an important contemporary issue that calls for increased scholarly attention. The global wave of autocratization has generated a proliferation of research on the drivers of autocratization, but fewer studies on the possibilities, strategies, spatialities, and effectiveness of resistance. This article responds to these knowledge needs through a case study of revolutionary resistance against full autocratization in Myanmar after the 2021 military coup. The article examines the junta's strategies for autocratic control, trace the development of the resistance movement and analyze its strategies, spatialities and effectiveness. The article shows that the coup has been followed by a mass resistance movement that is remarkably successful in countering the regime strategies for authoritarian consolidation and survival. We argue that this effectiveness rests on the movement's ability to deploy mutually reinforcing strategies of economic, symbolic, political, and armed resistance to contest the military's claims on state authority, legitimacy, economic resources, and monopoly of armed force. The Myanmar case thus confirms the centrality of civil resistance under full autocratization, but also points to the importance of insurgent political institutions and armed resistance to counter authoritarian repression, legitimation, and co-optation strategies. The case study also shows that the spatialities of resistance strategies – being both embedded in places and territories and extended through spatial networks and scalar strategies – are key contributors to the effectiveness of the movement. This broad mobilization behind a common revolutionary goal offers the best prospect for defeating military dictatorship in Myanmar and provides relevant lessons for similar cases elsewhere.

Understanding non‐normative civil resistance under repression: Evidence from Hong Kong and Chile

AbstractThe present research examined the psychological processes underlying engagement in non‐normative forms of resistance and the role of repression. We conducted two studies in the contexts of two distinct social movements, both characterized by high levels of repression— the Anti‐Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement in Hong Kong and the “Chilean Spring” protests of 2019–2020. First, we tested whether non‐normative resistance was motivated by (1) moralization of non‐normative actions (moralization hypothesis), (2) perceived low efficacy of normative actions and lack of hope (nothing‐to‐lose hypothesis), or (3) perceived efficacy of non‐normative actions in achieving movement goals (strategic choice hypothesis). Our results provided converging evidence for the moralization and strategic choice hypotheses, but not the nothing‐to‐lose hypothesis. Furthermore, we proposed and provided evidence for a model of movement escalation, whereby experiences of police violence predicted stronger willingness to engage in future non‐normative actions via heightened motivations for non‐normative resistance and increased risk perceptions. Taken together, these findings illuminate that repression in the form of coercive police violence may be ineffective in quelling social unrest. Rather, it can contribute to the radicalization of protesters. Potential boundary conditions and cross‐contextual generalizability of the current results are discussed.

The Cross and/as Civil Resistance

We need a nonviolent soteriology that honors scriptural and theological traditions about enemy-love, suffering, sacrifice, and satisfaction and refuses to further harm victims of violence and oppression. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolence and Bernard Lonergan’s way of understanding Christ’s satisfaction by analogy with the sacrament of reconciliation disclose one way suffering can be redemptive: When nonviolent activists “present their very bodies,” they expose the violence latent in unjust situations. Similarly, when Christ presents his body, he exposes the violence at the heart of sin. Like Christ, activists “become sin” (1 Cor 5:21)—not because they take responsibility for the sin, but because sin becomes visible in the wounds it leaves on innocent bodies. Once visible, healing can begin. Further, both men argue for a proper unfolding of the extension of love to enemies, lest victims be further harmed and injustice ignored.

The 1990 Revolution on Granite: Lessons from the First Maidan

This article analyses the Ukrainian Revolution on Granite from two perspectives—on one hand as a starting point for Ukraine’s independence aspirations, and on the other as a prototype for subsequent Ukrainian revolutions. This Revolution constitutes an example of an event whose significance was discovered many years later. Although it was partially successful, and more importantly it should be treated as one of the milestones on the road to Ukraine’s independence, until the second decade of the twenty-first century it was assigned marginal significance and almost ignored as a research subject. This article searches for the basic factors of the Revolution’s success, based on the methodology provided by civil resistance theory and thus concentrating on its internal factors, especially on its objectives, strategy, and methods of struggle. One of the main purposes is to analyze the sources of experiences from which the leaders of the protests drew. The Revolution on Granite is also presented as the inaugural event of a new chapter in the tradition of protests in Ukraine by introducing new elements. Although later protests, especially the Orange Revolution (2003) and the Euromaidan (2013–2014), received inspiration from many symbols and experiences of other countries, the thread of the Ukrainian tradition became permanent, even though it was subject to changes.

Research Note Civil Resistance in the Streetlight: Replicating and Assessing Evidence on Nonviolent Effectiveness

Does civil resistance work? Research emphasizes the effectiveness of nonviolent resistance over violent resistance in achieving campaign goals, with the seminal study Why Civil Resistance Works (WCRW) by Chenoweth and Stephan being the main point of reference to date. I revisit this pivotal finding in three steps. First, I reproduce WCRW's results on nonviolent effectiveness. Second, I discuss how cases may have been over-looked due to a streetlight effect. Third, I quantify the results' sensitivity using simulations. I find that WCRW's main findings on nonviolent effectiveness are highly sensitive to variable selection, under-coverage bias, bootstrapping, and omitted variable bias. As a routine reference in scholarship and the public discourse, assessing the robustness of WCRW's findings is relevant to practitioners and researchers

On Resisting Extortion—From Everyday Resistance to Vigilantism

Abstract Resisting Extortion, by Eduardo Moncada, masterfully disentangles the logic and dimensions of criminal extortion, as well as the various ways in which communities seek to resist this and other forms of criminal activity. In this book, Moncada argues that criminals’ time horizons largely dictate the subsequent forms of civil resistance, which are simultaneously affected by the criminal capture of the police, as well as the prevailing relationships among local businesses and between businesses and political authorities. With major conceptual clarity, Moncada disentangles and reframes the complex phenomena that underlie extortion dynamics. Through careful comparative research, Moncada provides a new and fresh understanding of both extortion and collective action, across three different countries. Resisting Extortion is a major contribution at different levels, from theory development to comparative analysis, as well as a robust research design and extensive fieldwork. Readers across academic fields, along with activists and journalists, will benefit from the book’s insights on the effective organization and resistance strategies in the face of crime and insecurity.