Search Results

This chapter lays out the analytic framework for the study by introducing readers to theories of revolutions and strategic nonviolence. It reviews recent research on this topic, focusing on the factors that may shape the emergence and outcomes of armed and unarmed revolutionary movements. This chapter concludes with five questions that the author explores throughout the book: (1) Which forms of civil resistance have the greatest impact on regimes? (2) What strategies do rulers use to preserve their power? (3) What effect do international sanctions have? (4) Why do security force members defect or remain loyal? and (5) What factors can derail a well-planned nonviolent revolt?

This chapter provides an overview of the factors that distinguished the successful cases from the failed ones. Comparing the effects of various nonviolent techniques, this chapter emphasizes that one had the greatest impact on regimes: the undermining of regimes’ sanctioning power. In all three of the successful cases (East Germany, Chile, and the Philippines), soldiers defected, leaving the dictators impotent to impose their rule by force; in all of the failed cases (China, Panama, Kenya), troops largely remained loyal. This book suggests that soldiers are most likely to defect when they receive few to no benefits from the regime, when they share an identity with civil resisters, and when activists remain nonviolent, thereby making repression difficult to justify. This chapter also addresses other factors that can undermine nonviolent revolts, including internal movement divisions, the inability to maintain nonviolent discipline, and international sanctions. This chapter discusses the implications of these findings and sets forth policy considerations for civil resisters.

This chapter presents the results of two statistical analyses: one comparing transitions initiated by nonviolent resistance (civil resistance transitions) with all other types of political transitions from 1945 until 2011, and a second looking at the effects of the challenges of transitional mobilization and maximalism within civil resistance transitions. The analysis finds strong support for the book’s two key empirical claims: that civil resistance transitions are much more likely to end in democracy than other types of transition, and that high levels of mobilization and low levels of maximalism during civil resistance transitions are key in leading to this democratizing effect.

This concluding chapter addresses general questions raised by the events from 2010 onwards in countries of the Middle East and North Africa. How unified, or diverse, were the phenomena covered by the term ‘the Arab Spring’? How did power politics, within and beyond the region, affect outcomes? Why was democratization so difficult to achieve in so many of these postcolonial societies? Did civil resistance constitute a serious challenge to those advocating resort to political violence and terrorism? Did the Arab Spring contribute unintentionally to a revival of authoritarian ideas and practices in the region and elsewhere? What lessons can be learned about the possibilities of political change, and the capacity of civil resistance to achieve it?

What are the effects of nonviolent (civil) resistance on political transitions? This chapter examines what we know about the relationship between nonviolent resistance and political order and uses that established knowledge to argue for a novel theory of civil resistance transitions. Civil resistance gives countries a democratic advantage relative to other ways of initiating a political transition. But that advantage must be carried through the uncertainty of the transitional period. Two key challenges can undermine this advantage: a failure to maintain high levels of social and political mobilization and a failure to direct mobilization away from revolutionary maximalist goals and tactics into new institutional avenues. The chapter details the mechanisms of civil resistance transitions that these challenges undermine and the unique regime types that variation in these challenges leads to.

Critics have long been unable to square Henry D. Thoreau’s individualist philosophy with his intermittent political participation. In order to clarify Thoreau’s intentions, this chapter offers an explication of Thoreau’s defense of political indifference as a unique and challenging response to the United States’ political problems during the mid-nineteenth century. Paying particular attention to Thoreau’s reform papers, this chapter argues that Thoreau’s political participation is a deviation from his philosophical platform, and not an expression of that platform’s principles.

This chapter examines civil resistance in the Syrian Uprising, looking both at its consequences for the power struggle and its long-term likely effect on citizen participation in Syria. Non-violent resistance as a form of mass power can force an end to authoritarian governance provided that—as the transition paradigm from democratization studies argues—moderates on both regime and opposition sides marginalize hardliners. However, in Syria hardliners remained dominant, and new, fundamentalist hardliners such as Islamic State entered the scene. Thus transition failed, with the outcome being authoritarian resilience, violent revolution, and collapse into civil war. This chapter offers explanations of why mass mobilization took place and why it led to escalating conflict, detailing the sectarian violence and the domestic and international factors that led to descent into civil war. Yet peaceful civil resistance also precipitated a rise in associational activity that may have positive consequences in the long run.

Despite the autocratic nature of the Gaddafi regime in Libya, its weakness in Cyrenaica (Libya’s eastern province) became apparent in the 1990s. A series of protests there over specific issues—the deaths at Abu Salim prison in 1996, the children’s AIDS crisis in Benghazi, and the cartoons protest in 2006—allowed embryonic social movements using civil resistance to emerge. Regime attempts to suppress demonstrations linked to these events provoked a general uprising against it in Cyrenaica in mid-February 2011, which spread into Tripolitania and the Fezzan (the western and southern provinces respectively). Although civil society flourished after the removal of the Gaddafi regime, the failure of formal governance over the next four years led to extremist attempts to suppress any manifestation of civil resistance. The reasons for this are rooted in the nature of the previous regime as well as in the way in which the Libyan revolution evolved.

This chapter examines the relationship between civil society in Morocco and the emergence of new forms of civil resistance in the context of a hegemonic monarchical institution and fragmented political parties. The growing role of civil society actors in the 1980s, and the rise of the February 20 Movement in the context of the Arab Spring, were symptomatic of the weakness of political parties vis-à-vis the dominant role of the monarchy. These developments are seen as a form of ‘subaltern politics’, meaning a form of politics from below, outside formal political parties. They are also seen as part of what is termed here ‘dispersed solidarities’ meaning social activism focused on a variety of different causes without a sense of relating these causes to structural political obstacles. These developments encouraged the regime to make some reforms but did not push it onto a clear and meaningful democratic path.

The book’s opening chapter begins by establishing the emergence of unarmed revolution in the late twentieth century and depicts it as a distinct political phenomenon. The chapter then introduces the reader to the book’s central research question and offers a definition of what unarmed revolutions are. After a brief review of the existing scholarship on revolution and civil resistance, the chapter presents the book’s theoretical framework by putting forth the notion of the iron cage of liberalism. Finally, the book’s research design and approach is discussed, followed by an outline of the remaining chapters.

Western analysts have often treated the Middle East as a region of exceptional violence, attributing this to peculiarities of Arab or Muslim culture. This chapter shows that in fact the region has a rich tradition of non-violent resistance to arbitrary power, and that recent violent episodes (and their causes) are by no means unique to the region. It suggests demographic, economic, and cultural reasons (the role of new media) for the wave of protest that swept through the region in 2011, but then digs deeper into the historic pedigree of the forms this protest took. It notes that in the first phase of the protests violence was used almost exclusively by the regimes in power, but that revolutionaries had difficulty in sustaining non-violent strategies beyond their initial success. It concludes that in future such movements will need to be more strategic in choosing both their objectives and their methods.

This chapter examines the roots and course of non-violent political action in Yemen from the mid-twentieth century to the 2011 uprisings and beyond. As the overwhelming majority of Yemenis are armed and firefights are daily occurrences, there was widespread fear that a peaceful movement would be impossible. However, peaceful resistance started way back in Yemen’s history. The 2011 movement had its immediate roots in 2007, when southern military personnel, forcibly retired after 1994, started to demonstrate peacefully for the restoration of their rights, despite the regime responding to their demonstrations with the force of arms. The chapter focuses on the evolution of the civil resistance movement from 2011 onwards, the resignation of President Saleh, the National Dialogue Conference of 2013–14, and events since then, in a situation characterized by violence from the authorities as well as fundamentalist militias.

This chapter analyzes the liminal time of the war as a critical interstice of creative pluralism, and explores the various meanings of democracy that emerged from the transformative experiences of Italians in the years 1943–5. The chapter criticizes the rationalist approaches that distinguish between beginning and end, between clear-cut positions either in terms of party allegiance, institutional affiliation, or ideological commitment. It examines the argument for what had been called the “grey zone” of the fluid, unfinished, chaotic, and bewildering. Furthermore, it explores the strategies of resistance formulated by subordinate groups, the very important case of the role of women, and the heightened sense of social equality that developed during and despite the war. It makes the case for the foundation of democratic politics in the individual and collective experiences of undergoing social dramas and being forced to make political and existential choices.

The book’s final chapter summarizes the study’s central findings and restates its theoretical argument. The chapter concludes that friendly international relations between democratic states and authoritarian regimes make the latter vulnerable to unarmed revolutions through the imposition of the iron cage of liberalism. The chapter assesses the implication of the theoretical framework for theories of revolution and civil resistance, and ponders the causal argument’s wider applicability and generalizability. Finally, it speculates about the future of unarmed revolutions, proposing that such revolutions are likely to remain the most common type of revolution in the foreseeable future, and that success and failure will likely continue to depend on international factors.

From January 2011 Jordan witnessed both an acceleration of existing processes of civil resistance and the emergence of entirely new forms of activism. Inspired by events abroad, the increased popular mobilization—known as hirak, or ‘movement’—was also informed by local identities and priorities, and a specifically Jordanian historical landscape of resistance. The result was a contentious campaign of civic action, from demonstrations and sit-ins to strikes and boycotts. Protests were small in comparison to those seen elsewhere, but were constant. Activists’ demands were self-limiting, but still taboo-smashing. In turn, a restrained regime response locked both sides in a closely fought contest for the ‘red lines’ of acceptable expression in the post-2011 climate. Although, by early 2015, the hirak had not achieved its reform goals, it nevertheless represented a sea change in opposition discourse, political engagement, and cross-communal cooperation among Jordanians, pointing to the liberating potential of non-violent action.