Non-Violent Social Movements

2021 Apr 15

Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know by Erica Chenoweth

Registration Closed 3:00pm to 4:00pm

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Virtual Event (Registration Required)

Join us for the book launch of Dr. Erica Chenoweth’s new book, Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know. We will be discussing the relevance of nonviolent social movements with a cross-section of activists and scholars. In Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know, Erica Chenoweth -- one of the world's leading scholars on the topic--explains what civil resistance is, how it works, why it sometimes fails, how violence and repression affect it, and the long-term impacts of such resistance. 

Panelists:

  • Alice...
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Documentation as Resistance Against Widespread Civilian Harm in Yemen
Niku Jafarnia. 3/12/2021. “Documentation as Resistance Against Widespread Civilian Harm in Yemen.” Topol Fellow Discussion Paper. See full text.Abstract

 

The efforts by Yemeni civil society to document the harms of the war as they occur are a powerful act of resistance and are critical to advancing justice for the Yemenis against whom these harms have been perpetrated, in whatever form that justice may ultimately take.

 

The Yemeni Civil War broke out in 2014 following a failed political transition in the aftermath of the 2011 Yemeni Revolution. The Revolution had resulted in the ouster of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had ruled North Yemen and—after North and South Yemen joined—the Republic of Yemen, for more than three decades. However, several groups—including the Houthi movement in northern Yemen—opposed the new government that had formed under Saleh’s former vice president, now current President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. The Houthis attacked and took over the Yemeni capital of Sana’a in the fall of 2014, and several months later, Saudi Arabia responded with a military intervention to re-install the Hadi government, resulting in the civil war that continues to devastate Yemen today.

Since then, it has been deemed the “worst humanitarian crisis in the world.” Though the Hadi-led Yemeni government and the Houthi-led insurgency are the central parties to the conflict, more than a dozen countries have provided support to one of the sides. Most importantly, a Saudi-led coalition of countries (the “Saudi Led Coalition”), including the U.S., is backing the government, while Iran is providing support to the Houthis. The respective resources of the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other countries have contributed to the high rate of civilian casualties, the millions of people at risk of starvation, and the widespread violations of International Human Rights Law (IHRL) and International Humanitarian Law (IHL) in the Yemeni conflict. In spite of this, no party to the conflict has transparently addressed the number of civilian casualties, nor the broader violations of IHL and IHRL, resulting from their operations, and have instead denied their role in the harms being perpetrated against Yemeni civilians.

Read the full paper. 

Women's March Washington, D.C.

How to Stop a Power Grab

November 16, 2020

According to Erica Chenoweth, there is no one, single moment when a country crosses from a democracy into an autocracy. Instead, as she tells The New Yorker, "The norms and institutions can grow weaker over years, or decades, without people noticing."

Black Lives Matter protesters were overwhelmingly peaceful, our research finds
Erica Chenoweth and Jeremy Pressman. 10/20/2020. “Black Lives Matter protesters were overwhelmingly peaceful, our research finds.” The Spokesman Review. Read the article.Abstract

When the Department of Homeland Security released its Homeland Threat Assessment earlier this month, it emphasized that self-proclaimed white supremacist groups are the most dangerous threat to U.S. security. But the report misleadingly added that there had been “over 100 days of violence and destruction in our cities,” referring to the anti-racism uprisings of this past summer.

In fact, the Black Lives Matter uprisings were remarkably nonviolent. When there was violence, very often police or counterprotesters were reportedly directing it at the protesters.

Read the article. 

The Floyd Protests Are the Broadest in U.S. History — and Are Spreading to White, Small-Town America
Lara Putnam, Erica Chenoweth, and Jeremy Pressman. 6/6/2020. “The Floyd Protests Are the Broadest in U.S. History — and Are Spreading to White, Small-Town America.” Washington Post. See full version.Abstract
Erica Chenoweth discusses the Floyd protests and its impact on law, social policies, and the 2020 elections.

Across the country, people are protesting the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and demanding action against police violence and systemic racism. National media focuses on the big demonstrations and protest policing in major cities, but they have not picked up on a different phenomenon that may have major long-term consequences for politics. Protests over racism and #BlackLivesMatter are spreading across the country — including in small towns with deeply conservative politics.

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Carr Center for Human Rights Policy Receives Gift from Topol Family Foundation to Support Launch of Nonviolent Action Lab

May 26, 2020

Cambridge, MA – The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School is pleased to announce a generous gift from the Topol Family Foundation to support the Center’s program on nonviolent social movements.... Read more about Carr Center for Human Rights Policy Receives Gift from Topol Family Foundation to Support Launch of Nonviolent Action Lab

Media Coverage Has Blown Anti-Lockdown Protests out of Proportion
Erica Chenoweth, Lara Putnam, Tommy Leung, Jeremy Pressman, and Nathan Perkins. 5/10/2020. “Media Coverage Has Blown Anti-Lockdown Protests out of Proportion.” Vox. See full text.Abstract
Erica Chenoweth explains that anti-lockdown protests are smaller than portrayed, but the media is amplifying their message.

In the last few weeks, protests against state lockdowns and social distancing measures have seized national headlines. The wall-to-wall coverage might give the impression that what we’re seeing is a powerful grassroots movement in the making. But research we just conducted on protest attendance and media coverage shows something different: This massive media coverage has in fact been out of proportion.

A comprehensive look at the social distancing protests reveals that they have been small in terms of both the number of participants and locations. As one official in the administration of Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) tweeted about a protest in Annapolis on April 20, “There were more media inquiries about this than there were participants.”

Read the full article.

 

The Global Pandemic Has Spawned New Forms of Activism – and They’re Flourishing
Erica Chenoweth, Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, Jeremy Pressman, Felipe G Santos, and Jay Ulfelder. 4/20/2020. “The Global Pandemic Has Spawned New Forms of Activism – and They’re Flourishing.” The Guardian. See full text.Abstract
We’ve identified nearly 100 distinct methods of nonviolent action that include physical, virtual and hybrid actions
Erica Chenoweth and team have been collecting data on the various methods that people have used to express solidarity or adapted to press for change in the midst of this crisis. In just several weeks’ time, they've identified nearly 100 distinct methods of nonviolent action that include physical, virtual and hybrid actions – and they’re still counting. Far from condemning social movements to obsolescence, the pandemic – and governments’ responses to it – are spawning new tools, new strategies, and new motivation to push for change.

Read the full article from The Gaurdian.

 
Questions, Answers, and Some Cautionary Updates Regarding the 3.5% Rule
Erica Chenoweth. 4/20/2020. “Questions, Answers, and Some Cautionary Updates Regarding the 3.5% Rule.” Carr Center Discussion Paper Series, 2020-005. See full text.Abstract
The “3.5% rule” refers to the claim that no government has withstood a challenge of 3.5% of their population mobilized against it during a peak event. In this brief paper, author Erica Chenoweth addresses some of the common questions about the 3.5% rule, as well as several updates from more recent work on this topic.

Four key takeaways are as follows:

  • The 3.5% figure is a descriptive statistic based on a sample of historical movements. It is not necessarily a prescriptive one, and no one can see the future. Trying to achieve the threshold without building a broader public constituency does not guarantee success in the future.
  • The 3.5% participation metric may be useful as a rule of thumb in most cases; however, other factors—momentum, organization, strategic leadership, and sustainability—are likely as important as large-scale participation in achieving movement success and are often precursors to achieving 3.5% participation.
  • New research suggests that one nonviolent movement, Bahrain in 2011-2014, appears to have decisively failed despite achieving over 6% popular participation at its peak. This suggests that there has been at least one exception to the 3.5% rule, and that the rule is a tendency, rather than a law.
  • Large peak participation size is associated with movement success. However, most mass nonviolent movements that have succeeded have done so even without achieving 3.5% popular participation. 

Read the full paper. 

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