How nonviolence succeeds.

• Author: Pal, Amitabh
• Position: Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict - Book review

Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict

By Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan

Columbia University Press. 296 pages. $29.

The Arab Spring has made even more urgent the question of whether nonviolence can work against repressive regimes. The events of this year--breathtaking in their momentousness--have been maddeningly complicated. In two countries (Egypt and Tunisia), mainly nonviolent mass movements have succeeded in toppling autocracies. In another (Libya), the uprising had to arm itself--and be aided by outside intervention--before it ousted the country's dictator. In yet others (such as Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain), the rebellions--varying combinations of peaceful protest and violence--have been stymied for now, at least.

So, what works better, nonviolent resistance or violent revolution? A new book by two scholars, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, attempts to answer this once and for all.

They analyzed an astonishing 323 campaigns over the past century. The book is an expansion of a paper that the authors wrote for the journal International Security in 2008 that caught the attention of many, since it was the first definitive study of its kind. (I cited the article in my book on Islam and nonviolence.)

"The most striking finding is that between 1900 and 2006, nonviolent resistance campaigns were nearly twice as likely to achieve full or partial success as their violent counterparts," the authors write in their book.

Nonviolent resistance doesn't have to manifest itself as people coming out in the streets in massive numbers. Rather, it "is just as likely to take the form of stay-aways, sit-ins, occupations, economic boycotts, and so forth," the authors write. In their survey, Chenoweth and Stephan found that "the average nonviolent campaign has over 200,000 members--about 150,000 more active participants than the average violent campaign." Of the twenty-five largest campaigns, twenty have been nonviolent, and of these a full 70 percent have been successes.

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"When large numbers of people in key sectors of society stop obeying and engage in prolonged acts of social, political, and economic disruption, they may fundamentally alter the relationship between ruler and ruled," they write. "If mass participation is associated with campaign success, then nonviolent campaigns have an advantage over violent ones."

The reasons they give are many and convincing.

For one thing, "the moral...