Is Nonviolent Protest Remotely Effective?

Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King are the poster-champions for nonviolent protest in modern times. Gandhi’s efforts gave rise to the end of the British Raj and birth to modern India. Dr. King’s legendary efforts supported a seeming tsunami of change against America’s segregation laws and practices, generating anti-discrimination statutes – including the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as amended in 1970, 1975, 1982 and 2006 (recently eviscerated by an activist right wing faction majority in the U.S. Supreme Court). The anti-Vietnam War rallies in the 1960s and 70s ripped the nation apart, but after a tumultuous few years and prolonged Paris peace discussions with North Vietnam, the last U.S. forces withdrew in a dramatic helicopter exit on April 29, 1975.

We’ve seen violent protests over the centuries, including our own Revolutionary War, which forced our independence from England. Insurgencies, civil wars and “wars of liberation” have resulted in overthrows of incumbencies repeated over history, most recently reflected in the some of the regime changes following the recent revolts under the Arab Spring. Non-violent protests have often evolved into violence or provoked violent retaliation from incumbents. Picture the tear gas, police in riot gear marching towards protestors, and the occasional lethal flurry of bullets from Kent State to Tiananmen Square and the Intifada, to name a few.  

So the question remains. Exactly how effective is peaceful protest as an agent of change? As researchers began to examine the statistical realities, they began with a struggle of exactly what the right terminology they should use to generate accurate results. “‘I never use the term peaceful, by the way,’ says Maria Stephan, a senior policy fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

“Stephan and her colleague, Erica Chenoweth, are scholars of nonviolent action and civil resistance, both terms are their preferred alternatives to the more passively-perceived idea of ‘peace.’ The pair met in 2006, and that same year were assigned as roommates at a conference sponsored by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.

“At the time, however, Chenoweth studied political violence and was quietly skeptical throughout the workshop of how much power a nonviolent movement could, in fact, wield compared to armed struggles. The two would debate at night in their room: Was armed insurrection—war, guns, and bombs—the most effective method for a movement that wanted to, say, overthrow a dictator or gain independence? Or could nonviolent acts of resistance, such as marches, boycotts, occupations, and hunger strikes, truly hold more power, even against very brutal regimes? Beyond anecdotes and a small number of case studies, it dawned on them that there was no quantitative way to compare…

“One man, Gene Sharp, essentially invented the field of nonviolent studies in the 1970s, developing formal theories about why, when, and how they succeed. Only last year did a university even start an initiative entirely dedicated to nonviolent action and civil resistance. (Its head, Stellan Vinthagen at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is also launching the field’s first journal this year.)

“And so Stephan and Chenoweth set out to bring empirical rigor to a subject that needed it badly. Rather than look at the hugely broad world of protest causes, they decided to focus on only movements with the most difficult goals to achieve—overthrowing a regime, kicking out an occupying force, or territorial self-determination—in order to really test the question they were asking. Their initial dataset in 2011 cataloged the outcomes of all such mass movements they could find from 1900 to 2006—adding to 323 nonviolent and violent movements in all, from Gandhi’s movement in 1919 to the coup that removed Thailand’s prime minister from power in 2006.

“Their most striking finding: Nonviolent campaigns were successful against government repression 46% of the time, more than twice the success rate (20%) of their violent counterparts. Not only that, they found the success rate of violent insurgencies has actually been declining in recent decades, and that nonviolent resistance campaigns have a stronger tendency to lead to democratic governments and lasting peace later on.” FastCompany.com, March 19^th.

Aside from simply raising public awareness, nonviolent protests have always catered to those most oppressed and to the rebellious craving for relevance among the young. The fact that change often emanates from younger generations with changing and evolving attitudes should not come as a surprise. The overall global population has more young people than ever before (according to the United Nations, there are 1.8 billion people between 10 and 24, out of about 7 billion total, particularly in developing nations) – even with large segments of graying citizens living longer. So massive changes are inevitable, some good and some bloodbaths seemingly without end.

I’m Peter Dekom, and change is simply a part of everyone’s experience, but when it comes to seismic attitudinal and political shifts, it is very interesting on how we really do get “there.”