Does nonviolent resistance work? What Chenoweth and Stephan get right (Part 1b)

Second in a series by guest author Ian Hansen

This is a continuation of Part 1 of a four-part series: Does nonviolent resistance work?

  • Part 1: What Chenoweth and Stephan get right (also see Parts 1a1c2a2b and 2c)

The short video at the beginning of this post features Maria Stephan and Erica Chenoweth, 2013 winners of the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order for their book Why Civil Resistance Works—a thesis that is not surprisingly under debate.

In defense of Stephan and Chenoweth’s argument that the Otpor Revolution in Serbia and the No! movement in Chile are strong examples of the power of civil resistance, I am actually quite impressed with how the U.S. provided support to these movements without either (a) accidentally tarring those they supported as American stooges or (b) accidentally undermining American interests in the targeted countries.

The Otpor revolution is one of the more inspiring moments of world history—overthrowing a genocidal dictator with a nationwide nonviolent campaign. The U.S. deserves to bask somewhat in the moral glow of that operation, though its assistance was financially miniscule by the standards of foreign aid and the vast majority of the credit for the revolution goes to the Serbian people.

Moreover, supporting the No! campaign against Pinochet was a brilliant way of covering the tracks of U.S. involvement in the coup that put Pinochet in power in the first place, allowing him and his class to rape a nation for a decade and half.

By 1988, the damage Pinochet had done to Chile was very hard to reverse and there was no prospect of returning to the open horizon of possible societal change that the assassinated democratically-elected president Salvador Allende had enjoyed. The U.S. could thus afford to stand beside those who fought that Quixotic-looking but ultimately successful campaign against Pinochet, and by doing so could also bargain for some continued influence in the economic structuring of post-Pinochet Chile.

Clearly, there is something creepy about an ultraviolent hyperpower basking in the moral glow of nonviolent revolutions against scummy genocidal dictators (including ones they once put in power), but in general I think that imperialism that makes liberal use of nonviolence is probably better for all involved than imperialism that does not.

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.

Does nonviolent resistance work? What Chenoweth and Stephan get right (Part 1a)

By Ian Hansen

This is the first in a series of posts intended as reply to a comment by Dahlia Wasfi on a previous post of mine. Nonviolent uprisings are an area of interest rather than expertise for me. I welcome feedback on my thoughts and expect my own views to evolve as I learn more.Why Civil Resistance Works by Chenoweth & Stephan

  • Part 1: What Chenoweth and Stephan get right (also see Parts 1b1c, 2a2b and 2c)

Dr. Wasfi noted that nonviolent struggles cited as successful in Maria Stephan and Erica Chenoweth’s book Why civil resistance works: The strategic logic of nonviolent conflict (see a shorter article here) could also be read as failures and that successful nonviolent movements have rarely worked in isolation. Violent factions fought the same powers and arguably also contributed to successful changes of power attributed to nonviolent movements like Gandhi’s Satyagraha in India and the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S.  She also noted that Maria Stephan works for the U.S. State Department, which is true.

I believe that Why Civil Resistance Works provides valuable reading to anyone interested in changing the existing power relations in any society. Chenoweth and Stephan are very aware of potential counter-arguments to the nonviolent position and take detailed steps to address them. I particularly admire their pragmatic attempt to classify movements that are more violent than nonviolent and more nonviolent than violent, and to compare their relative success. This classification and judgment is a pretty fraught task, but it is possible to make a plausible comparison across movements when enough movements are included.

The implications of Maria Stephan’s work for the State Department are unclear—must we assume that nothing she says is credible? Is it not relevant that the State Department leans considerably more towards supporting the peaceful rule of law than does, say, the Pentagon or Langley/CIA, as argued by right wing critics of the State Department (assertion) on the assumption that supporting the peaceful rule of law is a bad thing?

The U.S. government may oversee an empire, but different elements of that government employ substantially different means and are guided by substantially different goals and even ideologies. The State Department appears at least somewhat amenable to a shift in policy towards creating and influencing nonviolent movements in order to pursue global interests, judging by its previous support for movements like Otpor in Serbia and the No! Campaign against Pinochet.

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.