Why nonviolent resistance beats violent force in effecting social, political change
news.harvard.edu
Harvard Professor Erica Chenoweth discovers nonviolent civil resistance is far more successful in effecting change than violent campaigns.

Erica Chenoweth initially thought that only violent protests were effective. However after analyzing 323 movements the results were opposite of what Erica thought:

For the next two years, Chenoweth and Stephan collected data on all violent and nonviolent campaigns from 1900 to 2006 that resulted in the overthrow of a government or in territorial liberation. They created a data set of 323 mass actions. Chenoweth analyzed nearly 160 variables related to success criteria, participant categories, state capacity, and more. The results turned her earlier paradigm on its head — in the aggregate, nonviolent civil resistance was far more effective in producing change.

If campaigns allow their repression to throw the movement into total disarray or they use it as a pretext to militarize their campaign, then they’re essentially co-signing what the regime wants — for the resisters to play on its own playing field. And they’re probably going to get totally crushed.

  • M0oP0o@mander.xyzEnglish
    19·
    2 days ago

    …all violent and nonviolent campaigns from 1900 to 2006 that resulted in the overthrow of a government or in territorial liberation. They created a data set of 323 mass actions.

    323, in over 100 years. And they are exuding campaigns that did not work? I would assume there have been 10s of thousands of protests in that time that where non-violent and also ineffective. Why are they not included? What would make a campaign go from non-violent to violent? What constitutes a campaign, is it non-violent in whole or only part? I would check but I need to buy their book.

    I can not even think of any movement that resulted in territorial or government change that did not involve some form of violence. This study does not seem to pass the sniff test.

    • cecinestpasunbot@lemmy.mlEnglish
      10·
      2 days ago

      Yeah honestly, if you’re only looking at the campaigns that led to overthrow of the government or territorial liberation then it should be somewhat self evident that nonviolent campaigns have better outcomes. They lead to less death and less destruction of infrastructure which is desirable for whatever comes next. Unfortunately, that’s not always an option for people seeking liberation.

      • M0oP0o@mander.xyzEnglish
        7·
        2 days ago

        And wildly dishonest to try and spin every campaign as having some choice on whether or not to deploy violence. To top it off, the flat out writing off of all unsuccessful non-violent campaigns as if they don’t matter (even though most failed campaigns of these types result in people in cells regardless of if violence was employed or not)