Interesting to see Erica Chenoweth’s recent research referenced in a NYTimes in an article by Max Fisher on protests in China. Nonviolence activists (including many Quakers) loved the conclusions of her initial research, which implied that nonviolent, people-power protests were not just morally superior but also pragmatically more effective — suggesting that Gandhi and King and the pantheon of peace activists were right all along.
For years, a stinging criticism of nonviolence strategy has been that it’s rooted in comfortable elite communities and has spent too much time lecturing resistance movements that turn to violence. Chenoweth’s hard numbers and academic rigor gave us a bit of cover: See!, nonviolence works more often than not! Her more recent research makes that pragmatic argument more complicated.
Activists have also tried to apply the data to very different types of social action. Chenoweth’s data was looking at regime change – overthrowing dictators or an occupied territory. How it does and doesn’t apply to reform movements is an open question (hat tip Mackenzian for a great convo on this and this link).
The next part of the Times’ article references Zeynep Tufekci’s theory that the last decade’s era of social-media protests can create instant, large-scale challenges to government power that are dramatic but essentially leaderless and don’t come out of strategic, long-term visioning. These are more likely to fizzle out. I’m reminded of a 2010 blog post of mine, Gladwell and strong tie social media networks, where I talked about the organizing that needs to go on in the background of a social network to make it more effective.
While this article focuses on China, the elephant for nonviolence activists today is the war in Ukraine. People power wasn’t going to stop Russian tanks headed toward Kiev in February. The best one could hope for is Ukrainians gumming up the system – employing strategies like blowing up bridges during the invasion and slow-walking Russian orders afterwards. But without a military defense, there was almost certainly going to be a long (perhaps decades long) period of occupation and repression. Activists can still support relief work and conscientious objectors, etc., but I honestly don’t know what tools we had to offer in regards to the invasion itself.