Civil resistance versus revolution


Sometimes people who get frustrated by deep injustices in democratic societies seem to give up on their governments doing the right thing and start to consider the possibility of violent revolution as the only way to get any meaningful change. Andrew Marantz writes about an empirical study by Erica Chenoweth, the Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, to try and address empirically the question of which kind of effort, mass civil rights struggle or revolution, is more likely to produce the results sought.

During the next five years, Chenoweth and Stephan built a database called Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes, or navco. It aimed to account for every attempted revolution worldwide, between 1900 and 2006: the Carnation Revolution, in Portugal; the Blancos rebellion, in Uruguay; the Active Voices campaign, in Madagascar; and three hundred and twenty others. “I took for granted, as did all the political scientists I was familiar with, that the serious thing, the thing you do if you’re a rebel group that really wants results, is you take up arms,” Chenoweth told me. “Then I ran the numbers.” Much of Chenoweth’s career since then has consisted of interpreting and explaining what those numbers showed.

In 2011, Chenoweth and Stephan published their findings in a book called “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict.” It included detailed narrative case studies in which the authors hypothesized about why, say, the Philippine People Power movement of 1986 achieved its goals whereas the Burmese uprising of 1988 did not… In the database, Chenoweth and Stephan condensed each campaign’s months or years of struggle into a binary line of code: violent or nonviolent, success or failure.

Chenoweth and Stephan selected only “maximalist” resistance campaigns—big movements, with a thousand or more participants, that sought to fundamentally alter a nation’s political order, either by seceding or by overthrowing a foreign occupier or a head of state. The American civil-rights movement of the nineteen-sixties was not included in the navco data; although there were secessionists and insurgents within the movement, its main demands were reformist, not revolutionary. Moreover, campaigns were counted as successful only if their goals were achieved within a year of peak activity, without an unrelated intervention. The Greek resistance to the Nazis was coded as a failure, because although the movement contributed to the Nazis’ retreat from Greece, Allied troops seemed to contribute more. The Indian independence movement, the popular archetype of nonviolent insurrection, was classified as a partial success—for one thing, the British did eventually quit India, but not within a year.

Many of Chenoweth’s articles are quantitative and technical, but the upshot is simple enough: civil-resistance movements prevail far more often than armed movements do (about 1.95 times more often, according to the most recent version of the data). This seems to hold true across decades and continents, in democracies and autocracies, against weak regimes and strong ones.

As with all such statistical results, it can never be totally prescriptive. Even if on average civil resistance movements are more successful in achieving maximal goals, that does not imply that that is the best course of action for any given situation in any given country. But it does mean that one should not give up on the civil rights option too quickly.

Comments

  1. says

    Sometimes people who get frustrated by deep injustices in democratic societies seem to give up on their governments doing the right thing and start to consider the possibility of violent revolution as the only way to get any meaningful change

    Why did you feel obligated to frame your posting as applying to democratic societies? Is it more proper to consider violence if the society is undemocratic?

    I happen to think that is the case, but I’d like your opinion.

    Undemocratic societies have deliberately seized control of the body politic, and are essentially (per Rousseau) an occupying power, not a legitimate government. Thus, I would support Nat Turner’s rebellion, or John Brown’s insurgency, which were striking against an oppressive power that was not going to disempower itself if asked politely. The same applies to India, for another example -- Ghandi himself said that he chose non-violent resistance because the people whose support he had, were not going to be strong enough to fight the British anyway. Perhaps non-violent resistance is the last resort of the disempowered? That’s what a Maoist would say, or a Girondin. I have to admit that I’m more a Girondin than a Jacobin, in this hotbed of liberalism, here.

  2. Pierce R. Butler says

    Chenoweth and Stephan condensed each campaign’s months or years of struggle into a binary line of code: violent or nonviolent, success or failure. … The Indian independence movement… was classified as a partial success …

    A binary framework seems useless at best in assessing anything so complex. Did any such campaign win all its goals? Maybe a few were utterly crushed without related reforms; all else would fall in-between.

  3. garnetstar says

    @1, “Why did you feel obligated to frame your posting as applying to democratic societies?”

    Because that is what is happening in the US right now. People who have given up on the (allegedly) democratic government doing the right thing, i.e., preserving white supremacy, are turning to violent revolution as the means to accomplish that.

  4. Mano Singham says

    Marcus @#1,

    With democratic societies, there is always the possibility of achieving change without violence, though sometimes the institutions of democracy have become so hollowed out that it is a democracy in name only.

    Also, with a revolution you always risk putting in place an authoritarian system. That risk my seem more worthwhile if you already have an authoritarian system in place.

  5. mnb0 says

    “seem to give up on their governments doing the right thing and start to consider the possibility of violent revolution”
    The big problem is that violent revolutions never achieve their goals, on the contrary. A relatively recent revolution that did succeed was the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974 indeed (yes, Pierce RB, it did achieve its goals -- American ignorance -- like this time yours -- remains remarkable). It was according to the definition given on Wikipedia more than just a mass civil rights struggle: “a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government.”

    “that does not imply that that is the best course of action for any given situation in any given country.”
    To me this is like kicking in an open door. Non-violent protests are no guarantee for success at all. However violent revolutions almost always guarantee failures. In case someone brings up the American Revolution as a counterexample: ask the Afro-American slaves and the Indians.

    “That risk my seem more worthwhile if you already have an authoritarian system in place.”
    No matter how understandable, it hardly ever is.

  6. mnb0 says

    One example of a successfull revolution with violence involved is South Africa. However ANC’s violence always was highly limited.

  7. sonofrojblake says

    The difficulty you’re always going to have is convincing the people who want to rise up violently, but not for the reasons you might. Non-violent resistance doesn’t sound like any fun.

  8. sonofrojblake says

    Interesting to compare:

    civil-resistance movements prevail far more often than armed movements do (about 1.95 times more often, according to the most recent version of the data)

    source: Erica Chenoweth, the Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School.

    and mnb0, 5:

    violent revolutions never achieve their goals, on the contrary

    source: a yahoo who can type.

    So… the carefully collated data analysed by a professional shows that revolutions, violent OR non-violent, simply always fail, then? (Since 1.95 times never is never…). Fascinating.

  9. says

    I think “succeded” or “failed” looks a bit simplistic. What about, for example, the Haitian and Cuban revolutions, or even the Russian revolution -- after the revolution, other nations adopted policies of making sure the revolution failed. Or the French recolution, in which the French adopted policies to make sure the revolution failed.

    I’ve written about this a few years ago. The problem is that it’s comparatively easy to get people to agree that the government must go -- and a lot harder for them to agree afterward how to replace it. That almost always results in things getting really Darwinian really fast, selecting for the sneakiest, most vicious bastards not necessarily the best leaders.

  10. says

    Mano Singham@#4:
    With democratic societies, there is always the possibility of achieving change without violence, though sometimes the institutions of democracy have become so hollowed out that it is a democracy in name only.

    That seems right, to me. It would also explain the rise of pseudo-democracies such as Zurich and its “little committee”, Athenian democracy (admittedly: a test run) and of course the US. The more extreme examples like the “Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea” aren’t worth considering.

  11. says

    One question that doesn’t appear to be asked or answered: How many only took up armed resistance after peaceful means didn’t produce results? Palestinian and Basque resistance didn’t resort to force until after years of trying by peaceful means, while the Red Brigade, Baader–Meinhof and FLQ were violent from the beginning.

  12. John Morales says

    IMO, the Basques are a bit like the Kurds; more than one regional national-state includes part of their territory. The Spanish side gives them some semblance of autonomy (but rides them hard), the French side doesn’t (but goes easier on them). Go figure.

    As to the post itself, it should be titled civil resistance vs. martial resistance, since that’s the actual topic.

  13. John Morales says

    (can’t resist)

    With democratic societies, there is always the possibility of achieving change without violence, though sometimes the institutions of democracy have become so hollowed out that it is a democracy in name only.

    Sure; with democratic societies, there is always the possibility of voting themselves out of existence without violence.

    (Also, cf. Alexander Fraser Tytler)

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