Does Nonviolent Resistance Work? Part 3a

This is the first of three posts comprising Part III of a series of posts in which Dr. Ian Hansen shares his thoughts on nonviolence.

Protestors responding to tear gas in peaceful anti-government protest in Venezuela, March 12, 2014.
Protestors responding to tear gas in peaceful anti-government protest in Venezuela, March 12, 2014.
Photo by Daga95.

In a previous post, I ended by discussing the dubiousness of partially nonviolent revolutions that result in the coup-like overthrow of deeply flawed but democratically-elected governments—like the Yanukovich government in the Ukraine and the Morsi government in Egypt.

Sometimes, of course, the system of elections is too broken or corrupt for there to be any hope of reflecting the popular will, in which case a popular nonviolent revolution can present a tempting alternative to just tinkering around with a broken or rigged system.  But any such revolution should be undertaken carefully to facilitate a better and more equitable system of government accountability than the one it overthrew, and to do so quickly.  It is a rare occasion when unelected revolutionary leaders make better decisions than the democratically-elected leaders they overthrow.

I am not cheered by the post-democratic governments of Egypt and Ukraine, and I think the fragile corrupt democracies overthrown by the partially nonviolent coups should probably have been given more time to work.  Now that these nascent democracies have been replaced by coup leaders of very mixed political extractions (including fascists in Ukraine and aficionados of torture and military dictatorship in Egypt), the people in the streets cheering the revolutionary downfall of the leaders they elected face an uncertain and probably darker future.  And I am nervously watching developments in Venezuela.

Ian Hansen, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at York College, City University of New York. His research focuses in part on how witness for human rights and peace can transcend explicit political ideology. He is also on the Steering Committee for Psychologists for Social Responsibility.