How civil resistance works, maybe

Another book finished, an infinity more to read.

As promised, I have now finished, annotated, summarized, and mulled over a book I’ve been meaning to read for quite some time: Why Civil Resistance Works (WCRW), by Harvard Kennedy School professor Erica Chenoweth and her co-author Maria J. Stephan, previously of the US Institute of Peace and currently of the Horizons Project. To my surprise and embarrassment, this is not the book in which Chenoweth comes up with her currently circulating 3.5% statistic* , but it was worthwhile nonetheless — which is not to say that I wholeheartedly endorse it. But we’ll get into that.

(*I.e. The claim / observation / interpreted finding that a movement for regime change is very likely to succeed when 3.5% of a country’s citizens get involved.)

TL:DR;

The one-sentence version of the book is this: If you want regime change, then according to an analysis of 300 historical movements, nonviolence works, and violence doesn’t — mostly because it’s easier to recruit people to a nonviolent movement, and numbers matter most. The end.

Or at least – that's the theory.

Why this finding is worth a whole book

Given the introduction's description of previous research on this subject, it's very clear why this work has gotten so much attention. It is a fundamentally data-driven approach to an academic field that appears, previously, simply not to have been. And I think this alone is worth a short aside. As insightful as it can be – I'm a big fan of C. Wright Mills' The Power Elite, for example – it continues to shock me how much historical and even contemporary "scholarship" on large patterns in human behavior appears to be just fuckin' sayin' stuff. Clearly, many people still find this approach compelling, but it is highly vulnerable to a particular kind of attack: evidence.

While I have never done a systematic review, there is a story I have heard many times in my extended hike through the many rooms of academia. Over the last century, field after field has been forced to reckon with humanity's increasing ability to handle empirical evidence in large volumes – and the fact that this evidence often definitively overrules what was once considered scripture. In psychology, in political science, economics, sociology, organizational behavior, this has happened again and again and again. But even fields like biology, once upon a time a profoundly qualitative endeavor, have also been fundamentally shaken by how much more you can learn by simply measuring the things you care about.

In 2011 – quite a bit later to the party than most, but a welcome addition nonetheless – the field of nonviolence studies appears to have undergone this same realization. Does nonviolence – work? Let's literally, finally, just actually measure it. This book is the product of that measurement.

One reason of course this story is so close to my heart is that it is my own fervent hope that I will be able to induce an even more seismic shift by bringing another field into the modern age. The study of life satisfaction as the first domino, yes – but eventually, our approach to the most fundamental principles of policy and governance. Stop guessing. Measure what matters. Act accordingly. But enough about that for now.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5655570

A more detailed summary

There is no resistance without supporters

In case the single sentence synopsis I gave you didn't satisfy your curiosity, here is a little more. WCRW has a driving theory. The theory is, success in a movement is fundamentally a function of the population's support. Chapter by chapter, they argue that this is because the more people you have, the harder you are to suppress, the more flexible you can be when you are suppressed, the wider the variety of ideas, contacts, and tactics you have access to, and of course the greater the amount of pressure you're able to exert. But really, More People is Better is pretty self-explanatory.

From there, the effectiveness of nonviolence is introduced as practically just a corollary. A violent resister needs more training, more commitment, more equipment, more physical fitness, more secrecy, more security, etc. etc. Therefore, it will be harder to recruit an effective violent supporter, than a nonviolent one. Ergo, nonviolence is better.

The authors support this line of thinking by showing that in their data, "nonviolent" coded movements come out as successful, dramatically more often – in addition to being more successful when they succeed – than "violent" movements. However, this is also where I started to have questions.

Is there a middle path? (Maybe, but it's probably narrow)

Being by nature both a contrarian and quantitative thinker, it seemed as though this raised an immediate and obvious question: what is the relative impact of one violent person compared to one nonviolent person? Or in other words, if you could get an equal number of people prepared for violence, would they be more effective overall? If recruitment is one problem and effectiveness is really a separate problem, then I want to know about them in separate detail. And I don't remember the book giving a clear answer, at least to this specific piece of the puzzle.

However, the authors do make the convincing point that nonviolence seems to have other positive effects. In particular, in their 300 case studies, nonviolent movements are dramatically more like to result in democratic regimes once they succeed, at a rate of around 50% vs 6% for violent movements. Meaning there could be serious repercussions for trying to do an end-run on their argument, if you were in theory actually able to mobilize large numbers of violent supporters. This point pushed me to think about the resistance movement as a trial run of the government you want to have, and the data seems to suggest that if you want a nonviolent government, you should also have a nonviolent resistance.

The book does raise vague descriptions of other people's arguments about the hypothesized Malcolm-Martin dynamic (i.e. a radical flank like the Nation of Islam can make a peaceful movement like Civil Rights look like the better alternative), but just as quickly waves them away as too rare and too risky.

The other major hypothesized driver of nonviolence's success is that violence causes retrenchment, solidarity amongst the opposition whose loyalties you need to divide, and is easy justification for violent repression, which is a game the ruling regime has uniquely powerful tools to win. If you want to win, you should play the game where you have the advantage. I don't remember specific statistical support for this argument, but I found it all sufficiently convincing not to be too disturbed.

There is also the fact – either complicating or simplifying any strategic decision, depending on how you look at it – that violence by a small group can reshape the image of a large group. Even if only a few people are violent, or even a few acts are committed, these are the broad brushes that can then be used to paint, and condemn, the majority of a peaceful movement. (Hence the fragility of the Malcolm-Martin approach.) While whether that matters or not seems to be an enormously complicated question, the authors argue that this makes violence an unambiguously bad thing. In particular, they argue that Palestinians throwing rocks at tanks was enough violence to dramatically hamstring their cause, both in the eyes of the press and in those of the Israelis who felt further justified in using force.

Still – life is more complicated than any theory, and the book does a decent job of admitting as much. To give life to the theories and their complexities there are four detailed case studies, of Iran, Palestine, Burma/Myanmar, and the Phillippines (plus here's my own of Denmark peacefully resisting the Nazis if you haven't read it yet). They're each extremely illuminating – but this includes illuminating pieces that are missing in the book itself.

There are several ways the research misses the mark

Again going back to my roots as an irrepressible contrarian, the major question seems to be: are there exceptions, or cases in which the good outweighs the harms, and what do they look like? And to answer this correctly, I think it is equally critical to clarify a key term: What exactly do you mean by "non-violence"? The authors do provide a definition but my reaction to it in my notes was – and I quote:

Lol moruerfuck bullshit definition is nineteen worthless words that just ends in "without the use of violence"

It is clear that they consider rocks thrown at a tank to be "violent," even if the threat of harm to the tank is measurably zero. But even more recently than that, masses of South Koreans shoving the riot police effectively stopped a very recent attempted authoritarian coup, in a developed country. Does shoving count as violence? Are there situations (meaning people, places, or conditions) in which it would be considered "violent," and others in which it wouldn't? The research was either unable or unwilling to get into such high detail across their whole sample, but it's very clear that there are wide gradations of what will be tolerated, and by whom. (In particular, there seems to be an obvious trend of social underclasses receiving far more violent retaliation even for trivial acts, while the actions of the middle-class Koreans were largely tolerated, even by the riot police themselves.)

This might seem to be picking nits, but this wouldn't bother me so much if it weren't for one particular example: that of the United States.

From the beginning the book is clear that there are exceptions to all of the patterns. Some violent movements succeed, some peaceful movements fail. But the American Revolution is an exception, within their exception. Not only did this violent movement succeed in total liberation from the English crown, but the country did not devolve into a dictatorship afterwards (at least not right away). In other words, it avoided the risk the book warns about with violent regime change.

The author's explanation for this is that the US spent years developing institutions prior to Independence, so there was something positive to fill the power vacuum when it opened up. But I don't think this is a footnote to an exception – I think it should be presented as a fundamental pillar of the phenomenon. The example they provide of Burma/Myanmar only reinforced this idea for me.

In the story about the resistance movement in Burma, we see that it struggled for many reasons, not least among them a truly spectacular amount of violent repression. But amongst them all, the authors slip in a fact that I believe deserved far more attention – it didn't really have a clear goal. As I recorded in my notes:

!!! Elections, slorc [the regime] wins 10/400 seats but then just ignores the results. Opposition has no endgame, and isn't sufficiently organized to DO anything

Maybe it's the case that Burma was an exception, because basically every other movement does have a well-planned and agreed upon endgame – but I simply don't believe this. I think that the success of any movement – no, any action – depends fundamentally upon the clarity and intelligence of what it is trying to achieve. And even if Burma was uniquely bad at having a plan, I am absolutely certain there has been a wide spectrum of planning success across the other movements, simply because there is a wide array of preparedness, competence, foresight, and detail, across all endeavors. However the difficulty of measuring such a thing is so great that, except for its most extreme cases (such as No Plan, or The Federalist Papers), there is little hope for research to factor in "preparedness" more than qualitatively.

In other words, I believe WCRW should be completely reorganized around a concept that they relegate to an afterthought. Not, "movements succeed when they're non-violent," but "movements succeed when they know what they are actually attempting to accomplish." And from this, it is non-violence that practically follows as a corollary.

Do you want a society in which all of your inhabitants feel respected, welcome, and engaged? Well then, you want to build a movement in which they're respected, welcomed, and engaged, now. Try not to antagonize or demonize the people you have to keep living with, after you succeed. Try not to sacrifice all the people you want to have working for you, before you succeed. Try to repair relationships with as many people as possible (the opposition's base) in your final goal of destroying relationships with as few people as possible (the abusive leaders of the ruling regime). Don't do these things just because they're nonviolent. Do them because they're creating the country that you want.

In other words, the fact that Burma failed, even though it was nonviolent, and the US succeeded, even though it was not nonviolent, makes me believe that this preparedness is in fact the deeper pattern. Which re-opens the question of, if it's not innately forbidden, what really is the role of violence?

In my own view, the answer seems to be that, once you're planned and prepared and unified, it is still smart, moral, and effective, to keep violence in your back pocket until the very last possible moment – the moment when, in fact, it is the only possible solution. Which is also when the great majority of people can see the case for it, and support it. But it's a still a tactic, with pros and cons – not a uniquely forbidden fruit.

Its role may be very conditional, and rare, and limited – I'm altogether prepared to believe that. Violence is, as a thing unto itself, bad. That at least should be loud and unambiguous. But I also don't put a blanket over the idea, because The Goal is not just to be non-violent, as a goal unto itself – as WCRW can confuse us into thinking. This is simply the wrong abstractions, that forces us to consider the wrong methods. The Goal is to make life better. Most of the time, this goal itself makes it obvious that violence isn't the answer. But the only real goal is – The Goal. And we use the tools we have, to get us there. Hitler's gotta go. I am altogether at peace with this.

I do admit am always a little suspicious when I read a book, and once again feel as though it best supports my own ideas, but it's hard to argue with the American Revolution, in America. And I believe it is self-evident that that our own effectiveness, now, could only become greater by making our own endgame clearer. Do we want to "resist"? Do we want to abolish ICE? (Of course we do, but.) OR, is our true, complete, and actual goal to rebuild a fundamentally changed nation, finally capable of the promises on which it was founded, canonized in a dictionary-thick description of our every hope desire and plan? Because that's what the GOP did. And they succeeded.

Coming up with detailed, future, theoretical principles for our country may seem insignificant and overly academic and even badly missing the point sometimes as concentration camps are erected on American soil, but this is what I'm spending my own time on, and why I'm spending it this way. We must have a Plan. We must. Not only for how we get out of this, but for what we do after. And we just don't.

Though the book does suggest what a piece of the plan might look like.

We want change - so we need to MAKE change

This part of the book I thought was excellent, because it really does talk about goals, actions, and effectiveness in a satisfyingly specific way. The central theme as I read it boils down to: Your actions must have consequences. Symbolism will not save you, from people who mean you harm. If you strike, it needs to be financially significant, like with the oil industry in Iran. A strike cannot be in a situation where that labor is easily replaced, such as Palestinians striking against Israeli companies. If you boycott, it needs to have financial repercussions, like the international movement against the apartheid regime. Do things that do something. Your goal – to remember at all times – is to take power from the ruling regime. So, take it. Otherwise, what are we doing? Country after country drives this point home.

Because "performative" is used so frequently and so pejoratively to describe social action, I want to be very clear that I don't think most "performances" are disingenuous. I think, in general, that when people say they support a cause, they do. (Their action might just reflect that their understanding of the issue is shallow, which is very different from their potential for support, as I write about here.) But I do get, perhaps irrationally, mad at social action that doesn't have a clear consequence. Even when I still believe it's well intentioned. Even if I think I might know why it's so common.

My operating theory is that much of how we now understand social movements comes from the example of the Civil Rights Movement – and that because they marched, we think we should too. But the more you read about the Movement, the more you learn that practically none of their actions were symbolic. The very premise of Jim Crow was that Black people weren't supposed to be places – so when they went into them anyway, that was a radical act. Simply physically being at lunch counters, Greyhound waiting rooms, bus seats, shopping districts during Christmas season – these actions broke laws. They challenged authority. They had wide economic consequences. It's that they just happened, to look like marches.

Marching does have its own benefits - such as deepening the commitment of the marchers, and displaying power to those who aren't sure if they want to join. But if there is any lesson to be taken from the countries that succeed in regime change – nonviolently or not – then it is that marching is simply not its own goal. So if we act as if marching, alone, will do our work for us, then we are doomed. And I say this sincerely. Doomed.

In conclusion, of the summary

The book was interesting, and informative, even with its shortcomings. And it was built on a foundation that I have been trained to trust: that of hundreds of meticulous data points. But more and more, I can only get angry with what feel like the limitations of that form. I want what we do to be right. To be accurate and correct and properly informed. But the language of research has so much, so frequent trouble being both correct, and prescriptive. And I am forced to look for answers beyond it. Or, to provide that answer myself. Okay fine, don't be violent – what should we do??

What we do next

This is long already. I'll keep the conclusion short. Here is what the book suggested to me we must do next.

Next, we take power from the people who have it. Because they are using it to build concentrations camps, to protect pedophiles, to torture Americans, to destroy generations of research, to utterly cripple every one of our international relationships, to steal unfathomable amounts of money, and to systematically strip both the American system of any remaining moral meaning, and our lives of so much of the substance, growth, and joy that we could otherwise have.

How? We maneuver, and donate, and furiously labor for an advantage on every necessary front: money, people, and information. We cut off their funding, we recruit their support, we replace their lies with the truth, we win their votes – and we take their power.

Nonviolently. Because that is the nature of the system we want to build.

But also, powerfully, intentionally, and with a crystalline clarity of our own objectives. Because nothing else will succeed.

We also must do this with the right goals, and the right people – because again, we are not just overturning one system, and hoping that another better one will appear magically in its place. We are building something vast, specific, and intentional.

And we do it now. Because the damage is accumulating at a terrifying rate.