Why Civil Resistance Works, Maria J. Stephan
Why Civil Resistance Works, Maria J. Stephan
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Why Civil Resistance Works
The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict

Author: Maria J. Stephan, Erica Chenoweth

Narrator: Traci Odom

Unabridged: 8 hr 57 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 02/26/2019


Synopsis

For more than a century, from 1900 to 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts in achieving their stated goals. By attracting impressive support from citizens, whose activism takes the form of protests, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other forms of nonviolent noncooperation, these efforts help separate regimes from their main sources of power and produce remarkable results.

In this book, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan detail the factors enabling such campaigns to succeed and, sometimes, causing them to fail. They find that nonviolent resistance presents fewer obstacles to moral and physical involvement and commitment, and that higher levels of participation contribute to enhanced resilience, greater opportunities for tactical innovation and civic disruption, and shifts in loyalty among opponents' erstwhile supporters.

Chenoweth and Stephan conclude that successful nonviolent resistance ushers in more durable and internally peaceful democracies, which are less likely to regress into civil war. Presenting a rich, evidentiary argument, they originally and systematically compare violent and nonviolent outcomes in different historical periods and geographical contexts, debunking the myth that violence is necessary to achieve certain political goals.

About Maria J. Stephan

Maria J. Stephan directs the Program on Nonviolent Action at the U.S. Institute of Peace. She was formerly a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, where she co-led the Future of Authoritarianism project. Previously, Stephan was lead foreign affairs officer in the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO), where she worked on both policy and operations for Afghanistan and Syria engagements. Earlier, Stephan directed policy and research at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), a private foundation dedicated to developing and disseminating knowledge about nonviolent struggle. She simultaneously taught courses on human rights and civil resistance at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and American University's School of International Service.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Wick on February 06, 2025

Nonviolent resistance works better than violent resistance. This is a book written with a specific goal: to convince the reader that non-violent resistance is superior to violent resistance. The authors delicately and succinctly lay out their argument in a scholarly way while providing their methodol......more

Goodreads review by Sabrina on May 04, 2016

Excellent book! Chenoweth and Stephan do a superb job of showing the reader how and why nonviolent movements are superior vis-a-vis violent movements. It's clear that they painstakingly went through years of resistance movements and their idiosyncrasies and tried to figure out if they were successfu......more

Goodreads review by Vaiva on December 14, 2020

I cannot believe that I finished it... And I needed one year and a half (or so) :) IT WAS HARDCORE. Ok, a long story short: authors analyze what kind of violent or non-violent actions are more successful in asymmetrical fights (people/citizens VS regimes). Surprise surprise - non-violent fighting (i.......more

Goodreads review by Martin on June 16, 2019

Interesting insight into effectivness of nonviolent strategies and tactics. The book covers more than a century of social conflict and provides a scientific analysis of violent and nonviolent campaigns, while providing explanation of the key success/failure factors at play, while ilustrating them in......more

Goodreads review by Rus on November 09, 2014

Very good examination of why nonviolence succeeds, by multiple indicators, over violence. It is a text book and written for scholars and students but is still worth adding to your library.......more