Nonviolent Revolutions Research Articles

Beyond nonviolent regime change: Anarchist insights

AbstractIn recent years, a major focus of research and campaigning on strategic nonviolent action has been on movements to oust authoritarian rulers. However, these “nonviolent revolutions” usually do not transform systems of economic and social domination. To motivate appreciation of what might be involved in a more far‐reaching social transformation, selected anarchist themes offer useful guides. The relevance of four principles of anarchist theory and practice—non‐hierarchy, self‐management, direct action, and prefiguration—is illustrated in the South African struggle against apartheid. Activists should consider how to use nonviolent strategies to move beyond systems of domination based on states and capitalism.

Breaking the Bonds of Segregation

Abstract This article uncovers the financial knowledge and bond market campaigns of the paradigmatic non-violent revolution of the twentieth century—the civil rights movement. It builds on an interpretation made by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) during the early 1960s: segregation was a national problem because it was financed through a network of bankers across the country who specialized in the business of debt; certified by prominent bond attorneys in New York City, Chicago, and elsewhere; and because investors from around the country collected tax-exempt interest payments from indebted southern segregated municipalities. By weaving the internal memos, protest ephemera, and legal strategies of civil rights activists together with the credit assessments, scheduled bond offerings, and perspectives of financiers, this article reconstructs the attempts to politicize bond market transactions and efforts to place the economic certainty of segregation in doubt. In so doing, it offers a fresh perspective on the so-called classic phase of the civil rights movement (1954–1965). More generally, it raises powerful questions about the dilemmas of investment-focused campaigns, and how finance capital compounds the difficulties of organizing against authoritarian regimes.

Divine violence as non-violent violence: A critique of Judith Butler

The question of violence and how society can emancipate oneself from it has occupied many philosophers. Walter Benjamin attempted to answer this question in 1920 through the notion of divine violence. This idea has recently been resurrected by philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, Jürgen Habermas, Slavoj Žižek and Judith Butler. Divine violence is turned to as a means of emancipating society from systemic oppression and coercive law. However, it is a notion that has been met by major critiques. Most notable is Jacques Derrida’s critique given in Force of Law: The Mystical Foundations of Authority. This article examines Judith Butler’s turn to divine violence in opposition to the critique of divine violence given by Derrida. Butler attempts to merge divine violence and non-violence to create a means of non-violent revolution capable of emancipating society from oppression and coercive law. However, to make this argument, Butler needs to overcome Derrida’s objection that suggests that divine violence is a dangerous notion with the potential to justify horrendous forms of political violence. Does Butler successfully create a non-violent divine violence capable of achieving this desired emancipation? Or does divine violence continue to be a notion with a dangerously destructive potential as Derrida suggests? These are the questions that this article attempts to answer through a detailed examination of both Butler’s and Derrida’s work on divine violence. Ultimately, it is established that divine violence should be jettisoned into the realm of the divine, rather than harnessed for political ends.

Ambivalent allies: How inconsistent foreign support dooms new democracies

Since the Cold War ended, foreign support has been identified as an important factor in facilitating democratization. However, in certain parts of the world Western enthusiasm for democratization has been highly uneven, particularly when regime change has been achieved through nonviolent revolutionary mobilization. This article introduces the concept of ‘ambivalent allies’ and argues that ambivalence may be highly detrimental to new democracies emerging from nonviolent resistance. Ambivalent allies signal public support for a democratic transition while remaining quietly skeptical about the desirability or viability of the new regime. These misleading signals cause democratic leaders to deprioritize the maintenance of their diverse coalitions, choosing instead an exclusivist approach that alienates their domestic partners. They therefore end up doubly exposed to counterrevolutionary threats, lacking both a broad domestic support base and strong foreign backers. The article illustrates this argument through an examination of Egypt’s 2011 revolution and 2013 coup, drawing on approximately 100 interviews with Egyptian political leaders and foreign diplomats. It shows that the USA’s ambivalence toward the transition contributed to the coup by giving the elected government headed by Mohamed Morsi a false impression that it had strong foreign backing, and that it could afford to marginalize the secularist wing of the original revolutionary coalition. Egypt’s experience is then compared to two cases in which new governments survived counterrevolutionary threats: Burkina Faso in 2014 and Madagascar in 2009. The study contributes to our understanding of how international support may facilitate or undermine democratic consolidation following nonviolent revolutions.

Virtuous Shirking and Social Distance: Concept Measurement in the Context of Militarized Response to Nonviolent Revolution

As a concept-measurement exercise, this article explores social distance in the context of confrontations between soldiers and pro-democracy protesters. While existing work has applied this concept in terms of structural, mostly static factors, this article explores the use of potential dynamic measures for this concept. To show these situational factors at work and highlight their potential contribution as new measures for social distance, this article uses a research design that holds relatively constant the traditional, structural measures while varying the social-distance outcome experienced in each campaign. The cases employed are East Germany 1989, Romania 1989, and South Korea 1980. The article particularly focuses on the protest tactics of fraternization and messaging, as well as regime tactics affecting opportunities for each, confirming both as useful additional measures of the concept of social distance. It also nominates other potential measures based on evidence that emerges inductively in the case reviews.

A dynamic model of nonviolent resistance strategy.

Why have some nonviolent revolutions succeeded even with modest participation numbers, while others have failed despite massive mobilization? We develop an agent-based model that predicts the outcomes of three well-known activism strategies. The first rapidly recruits a wide number of activists, which overwhelms the opponent’s support network and encourages large-scale defections. In the second, activists who have already mobilized remain committed to success and inspire other civilians to protest even when they are unable to protest themselves. In the third strategy, campaigns focus their energy and influence directly on the regime’s pillars of support. We find that this third strategy outperforms the others in generating defections, even when the size of the campaign is small. When activists have information about pillars’ levels of loyalty to the regime, they can target persuasion on the pillars most likely to defect. Importantly, for small or medium-sized movements, the strategy of focusing on pillars—especially the least loyal pillars—is more likely to yield success than relying on rapid mobilization and numerical advantage alone.

Sudan’s December revolution of 2018: the ecology of Youth Connective and Collective Activism

ABSTRACT Sudan experienced a nationwide nonviolent revolution between December 2018 and July 2019, which has remained underrepresented in communication studies literature. This study employs empirical data from personal interviews with Sudanese activists as well as a theoretical framework of social movements based on media ecologies. The study’s theoretical framework considers social movements in terms of their historical contexts and as a whole consisting of communication networks and interaction between various forms of communication and actors, particularly the entanglement of online and offline elements of activism. The research contributes to the body of knowledge on social movements and communication, particularly in Sudan. The findings of the study show that the media ecology approach provides a more comprehensive understanding of the interplay and intertwinement of human actors in social revolution, collective agency, and technologies than the one-medium biased approach used in previous studies on social movements, particularly in the Arab world.

Non-violent revolutions are believed to take place: A Discourse-Historical analysis of the Armenian Velvet Revolution in Armenian news media

The Velvet Revolution of Armenia, which took place in 2018, was an important event in the history of Armenia and changed the government peacefully by means of large demonstrations, rallies and marches. This historic event was covered by Armenian news media. Our goal here was to do a Discourse-Historical Analysis of the Armenian Velvet Revolution as covered by two Armenian websites: armenpress.am-the governmental website and 168.am-the non-governmental website. In our analysis we identified how the lexicon related to the Armenian Velvet Revolution was negotiated and legitimized by these media, and which discursive strategies were applied. We concluded that ‘Armenpress’ paid more attention to the government’s speeches, discussions, meetings and tried to impose the opinion of the government upon the people. In contrast, ‘168’ tried to present itself as an independent website with a neutral attitude toward the Velvet Revolution but, in reality, as we can conclude from the negative opinions about the Velvet Revolution in the coverage of ‘168’, it also represented the government’s interests. There was also a discursive struggle over the exact meaning of ‘revolution’ and the sense of ‘velvet’ in politics and the academic field that was to some extent introduced by these media.

Our Lower Courts Must Get in ‘Good Trouble, Necessary Trouble,’ and Desert Two Pillars of Racial Injustice — Whren v. United States and Batson v. Kentucky

This summer, following the senseless murder of George Floyd, America, once again, began to march and protest for Black Lives. All around the country and world, sports teams and leagues, businesses, universities, and other organizations issued statements or, better, started campaigns or reform efforts to address police violence against Black Lives. In taking a step beyond the four corners of the courthouse, multiple lower courts broke their silence and condemned the treatment of African Americans in our criminal justice system. One chief justice went so far as to state that “... black people are ostracized, cast out, and dehumanized.” While these statements, which, in the words of the Wall Street Journal, are a “break with tradition” and should be applauded, the lower courts must do more than make bold remarks. Our lower courts (and the Supreme Court) must reckon with their own reinforcement of systemic racism and act to dismantle oppressive precedents. As the late Representative John Lewis would suggest, the lower courts should get in “good trouble, necessary trouble.” They should begin their efforts by removing from the legal textbooks Whren v. United States and Batson v. Kentucky — both of these precedents reflect our courts’ destructive endorsement of colorblindness and racial bias. African Americans are disturbingly over-included as targets (defendants) and over-excluded as decision-makers (jurors) in our criminal justice system. In Whren v. United States, the Supreme Court unanimously granted license to disparately police communities of color through pretextual traffic stops at the unfettered discretion of law enforcement. Strong empirical data demonstrates the negative real-world consequences of Whren since its inception in the late 1990s. Further, Batson v. Kentucky created a race-neutral test for a predominantly race-neutral problem, and its progeny further exacerbated the vast disproportionate exclusion of African Americans from our juries. A recent study conducted by the Berkeley Law Death Penalty Clinic adds to the ever-growing literature illustrating this continued “whitewashing” of the jury box. This article is a call to the lower courts to abandon Whren and Batson by either overruling or “narrowing [them] from below” utilizing an analytical framework that draws upon Justice Kavanaugh’s recent concurrence in Ramos v. Louisiana, considers the actual, rather than perceived dangers, of Whren and Batson, and pays homage to the proficiency of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence. Statements by our lower courts during a time of great distress in our nation are welcomed, but it is their messages or actions (not mere isolated words) that will bring about the nonviolent revolution needed in our criminal justice system.

Reconceptualizing resistance organizations and outcomes: Introducing the Revolutionary and Militant Organizations dataset (REVMOD)

In recent years, scholars of various forms of conflict involving revolutionary and militant organizations (such as terrorism, civil war, and nonviolent contestation) recognized that arbitrary organizational categories and typologies often leave large-N studies incomplete and biased. In moving away from nominal categorical boundaries that produce such selection biases and looking to a more generalized conception of resistance organizations, I constructed an original dataset that aims to bridge the gap between conflict literatures. Transcending traditional classifications, the Revolutionary and Militant Organizations dataset (REVMOD) consists of over 500 resistance organizations operative sometime between the years 1940 and 2014 and includes a diverse array of types of resistance organizations – many of which utilize a multitude of tactics, operate in various conflict contexts, and/or confront numerous target types. The dataset documents organizational attributes, allies, and adversaries at annual intervals (organization-years), making reliable time-series analyses possible. Tracking variables like organizational outcome-goal type and degree of achievement, political capacity, leader/s, constituent identity group, violence and demonstration levels, size, organization aliases, and several others, REVMOD breaks new ground in the collection of information on resistance organizations and can spur countless studies. A preliminary data analysis demonstrates that differences in organizational political capacity explain variation in resistance outcomes generally and in particular contexts such as civil war, terrorism, and nonviolent revolutions. REVMOD provides a unique opportunity to develop a new research paradigm for resistance studies that employs large-N empirical analyses to uncover generalities between different forms of political contention in the contemporary era, as well as to better understand why and how distinct resistance processes may produce specific outcomes.

Концептуальная динамика современного марксизма (на примере социалистического и социал-демократического концептов)

The research discusses the dynamic conceptual changes in the social theory of Marxism by a case study of the theoretical transformation of socialist and social democratic concepts. A paradigm shift in the late 20th century led to the fact that the communist movement, which invaded half of the world, lost its significance and gave way to the socialist and social democratic tendencies. The sociological investigations of A. Giddens and H. Dieterich are of particular interest in this regard. In the Third Way/New Center concept, A. Giddens sees the socialist prospects for the consistent reform of the capitalist world. In Socialism of the 21st Century, H. Dieterich demonstrates that a non-violent revolution is a way to make Marxist transformations of society. Against the background of the decreasing influence of communist movements, these two concepts are the most productive ones for modern Marxism.

Folk Schools as Inspiration for Contemporary Democratic Peacebuilding

Cultivation of democratic culture is a potential antidote to radical disagreement, contradiction, and polarisation. Folk high schools (folkehøjskoles) emerged in Denmark following a nonviolent revolution from monarchy to democracy in 1849 and were founded as non-formal educational institutions for the cultivation of a pervasive democratic culture. The Scandinavian folk school tradition emerged in the US to meet diverse democratic needs for: adult education, community building, labour organising, and social movement leadership. The Highlander Folk School embodied the democratising leadership of the early Danish folk schools as it shaped the US labour, civil rights, and environmental movements. Folk schools as popular non-formal education hold promise for developing a culture of democratic preventative peacebuilding to foster individual and collective agency; advance a vital agonistic democracy; and counter the politics of fear, division, and polarisation.

Humour as indigenous liberation: A tattooed anus for world peace in Kisses in the Nederends

ABSTRACTThe novel Kisses in the Nederends, by the Tongan writer Epeli Hauʻofa, uses humour and a revised tātatau to reach an unusual new indigeneity. Moving past human fears and taboos is possible thanks to a tattooed anus, which leads from behind to create a non-violent revolution for world peace. Hauʻofa plays with the classic tātatau of Tonga – a sacred, full-body tattoo – reducing it to a single anal mark that expands exponentially to include Oceania and the planet. Countering views that see Pacific geography in terms of economic limitation and indigenous bodies as possessed or bound by logics of colonialism or capital, this particular indigenous anus saves the world. Hauʻofa emphasizes non-elite imagery and laughter to unleash the ongoing vitality of indigenous cultural expression, expanding into the world in ways that allow for signs, bodies, and indigeneities that are more than individual.

Capturing the Flag: The Struggle for National Identity in Nonviolent Revolutions

One goal of nonviolent resistance movements is to legitimize themselves in opposition to governments by undermining the latter’s leadership. We argue nonviolent groups that can ‘own’ the national identity are more likely to succeed, as they can assert the legitimacy of their vision for the state, and persuade other sectors of society to support their cause. Our argument is supported by the Arab Spring uprisings, where those resistance movements that were able to identify and claim ownership over a homogeneous national identity were more successful in pressing their claims. We view national identity as a component of symbolic power in both successful and unsuccessful nonviolent revolutions. We supplement our argument via a comparison of the Arab Spring uprisings featuring Egypt, Bahrain, and Libya, with nonviolent movements of the past: the ‘early’ cases (Northern Ireland, Iran, and the Philippines) and the color revolutions (Serbia, Georgia, and the Ukraine). We posit that the role of national identity, while not a determinant of success, can play an important role in the struggle for legitimacy, which may help determine the prospects of success for these movements.

Nonviolent Resistance and Peaceful Turnover of Power

AbstractPrevious research has shown that nonviolent resistance (NVR) campaigns are beneficial for democratization. However, research to date has not considered whether nonviolent revolutions succeed long term in bringing about democratic consolidation. In this paper, I address this gap by analyzing the effect of NVR on democratic consolidation, using data on Huntington’s consolidation criteria of two peaceful turnovers of power. The results suggest that initiating a democratic transition through NVR is not necessarily beneficial for achieving the first peaceful turnover of power. However, given that a democratic regime achieved a successful first turnover of power, NVR substantially increases the probability of completing democratic consolidation through a second peaceful turnover of power.

It’s Time to Get Serious About Saving the Planet from Destruction

It’s Time to Get Serious About Saving the Planet from Destruction

Politinio įvykio reprezentacija kine: dainuojanti revoliucija

The analysis presented in this article reveals the visual representation of non-violent revolutions of 1989 in the Baltic States in documentary films. The film is accepted as having an influence on people’s understanding of historical events and the formation of collective memory. Documentary films How We Played the Revolution (2011) and The Singing Revolution (2006) create a visual representation of a political event and become a source of collective memory. This liberation movement, a fight against communist regime, is represented as a historical epic where society becomes the main character of the film, and emotion-based images strengthen the identity of the group and collective pride.

Prophet of the Electric Age: Cultural Performativity as Nonviolent Revolution in the Lifework of Percy Bysshe Shelley

This article examines Percy Bysshe Shelley’s interest in contemporary possibilities of text dissemination in order to reconcile the normally opposing tendencies of gradualism (“slow reform”) and “violent” revolution in his life and writings. I offer a close reading of two parallel cultural events, both of which produced a national commotion that widely disseminated radical views—the “Peterloo” massacre at Manchester and Lord Eldon’s copyright rulings as Lord Chancellor. In both instances, the government’s attempts to control expression had the opposite effect due to the consequences of press coverage and political activism. In combination with nonviolent textual piracy, I argue that the circulation of the belief in poetry’s power concomitantly with the formation of a radical canon encouraged the latter’s circulation as propaganda, de facto establishing a common cultural heritage for the growing radical movement. Since Shelley’s writings became a fundamental component of the cultural glue that encouraged cohesion of the expanding radical class as soon as one decade after his premature death, I suggest that a reading of Shelley’s political strategies that moves beyond “ineffectualism” can highlight the continuing relevance of Shelley’s aesthetics and political thought.

Nonviolent Revolutions: Civil Resistance in the Late 20th Century

Nonviolent Revolutions: Civil Resistance in the Late 20^th Century

Response to Wendy Pearlman's review of Nonviolent Revolutions: Civil Resistance in the Late 20th Century

The study of nonviolent civil resistance is now in vogue. The American Political Science Association gave its best book award this year to Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, authors of Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. Additionally, in the last few years, there have been an unprecedented number of academic books, edited volumes, and journal special issues published on this topic, largely due to interest generated by the Arab Spring uprisings and the “color revolutions” in post-communist regions.