Negotiating Civil Resistance

"Reviewing the literature on negotiation and civil resistance, this report examines the current divide between the two and digs deeper to identify the fundamental convergences. It builds on these findings to illustrate why negotiations and negotiation concepts are essential to the success of civil resistance campaigns. Using historical examples, it then examines the dynamics of negotiation in the context of these strategic domains"--Publisher's web site.

Civil resistance is one of the most powerful forces for moving countries from dictatorship to democracy. Yet many civil resistance campaigns, even when they achieve a breakthrough against their authoritarian opponents, fail to result in high-quality new democratic regimes. I argue that one key factor influencing this is the mechanism through which civil resistance campaigns achieve this breakthrough. Winning a civil resistance campaign via an election or negotiation tends to promote democratization, while extra-institutional seizures of power, even when primarily nonviolent, tend to make democratization less likely. Crossnational statistical evidence from all successful civil resistance campaigns from 1945-2011 and two key case studies from Egypt and Armenia provide strong supportive evidence of the importance of breakthrough mechanisms and the democratizing impact of elections and negotiations. To promote democracy, civil resistance typically must not just win, it must win well.

This report explores the complementary ideas and practices that civil resistance and peacebuilding approaches present, each from different points along the conflict transformation spectrum. Both strategies oppose violence in all its forms, and seek to pursue just peace by peaceful means. However, they take different approaches to conflict transformation, both in their analyses of the primary causes of violence and how they respond to conflict. The report then describes how civil resistance and peacebuilding can work in tandem throughout the four stages of transformation of asymmetric conflicts. Concrete examples are provided to illustrate the respective functions of constructive conflict (through civil resistance) and conflict mitigation (through peacebuilding) in transitions from latent to overt conflict, from resistance to dialogue and negotiation, and from conflict settlement to sustainable peace. It highlights in particular: the crucial importance of civil resistance as a violence prevention/mitigation instrument and as a pre-negotiation strategy for oppressed groups, enabling them to wage necessary conflicts through nonviolent means, thereby putting pressure on incumbent elites to redistribute power equitably; the usefulness of peacebuilding's conflict mitigation methods to translate civil resistance gains into mutually acceptable negotiated outcomes and to reconcile polarized relationships in the wake of nonviolent struggles; and the need for sustained civil resistance in post-conflict or post-war societies in order to prevent and oppose autocratic backlashes, to resist anti-emancipatory, and 'neoliberal' tendencies within post-war peacebuilding operations, or to put pressure on all stakeholders to implement their commitments to progressive state reforms and social justice. The conclusion highlights takeaways for researchers, nonviolent activists and educators, peacebuilding practitioners and international agencies seeking to support constructive, effective conflict transformation.

This book investigates the decision-making process, rationale and determining factors which underlie the strategic shifts of armed movements from violent to nonviolent resistance. The revival of global interest in the phenomenon of nonviolent struggle since the 2011 Arab Spring offers a welcome opportunity to revisit the potential of unarmed resistance as an alternative pathway out of armed conflicts, in cases where neither military (or counter-insurgency) nor negotiated solutions have succeeded. This volume brings together academics from various disciplinary traditions and offers a wide range of case studies – including South Africa, Palestine and Egypt – through which to view the changes from violence to nonviolence within self-determination, revolutionary or pro-democracy struggles. While current historiography focuses on armed conflicts and their termination through military means or negotiated settlements, this book is a first attempt to investigate the nature and the drivers of transitions from armed strategies to unarmed methods of contentious collective action on the part of non-state conflict actors. The text concentrates in particular on the internal and relational factors which underpin the decision-making process, from a change of leadership and a pragmatic re-evaluation of the goals and means of insurgency in the light of evolving inter-party power dynamics, to the search for new local or international allies and the cross-border emulation or diffusion of new repertoires of action. This book will be of interest to students of security studies, peace and conflict studies, political sociology and IR in general.

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, even in Iran, Burma, the Philippines, and the Palestinian Territories. Combining statistical analysis with case studies of specific countries and territories, 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 therefore less incentive for a regime to maintain its status quo), and shifts in loyalty among opponents' erstwhile supporters, including members of the military establishment. 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 occurs because of structural and environmental factors and that it is necessary to achieve certain political goals. Instead, the authors discover, violent insurgency is rarely justifiable on strategic grounds.

From Gandhi to Martin Luther King, Tiananmen Square to the Orange Revolution, non-violent action against the forces of oppression has played a key role in world history. This book tells the compelling story of each of the major campaigns of civil resistance that have shaped our world over the last century.

Experts on conflict resolution examine ongoing cases of internal conflict in countries such as Angola, Ethiopia, Lebanon, and Sri Lanka, and explore how conflicts can be resolved through negotiation rather than combat. They look at types of conflicts such as secession rebellions and regional minority rebellions, conditions for negotiation, and the dynamics of protest and resolution, and discuss the history of negotiations in 11 countries. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Civil Resistance Tactics in the 21st Century belongs on the virtual bookshelf of anyone who is studying or practicing nonviolent action. Scholars: Explore updated categories and tactics that respect and expand on Gene Sharp's landmark work. Teachers & Trainers: Give your participants a brief overview of the whole range of nonviolent tactics used around the world, when and how those tactics work, and how nonviolent tactics differ from, or combine with, other types of civil resistance. Activists: Use this concise guide to expand your toolbox and sharpen your analytical tools for selecting powerful strategies for your campaigns. This book dovetails with two huge online sources (Nonviolence International's Nonviolent Tactics Database and Organizing & Training Archive) so that you can move seamlessly between strategy and implementation.

Describes a method of negotiation that isolates problems, focuses on interests, creates new options, and uses objective criteria to help two parties reach an agreement.

When to Talk and When to Fight is a conversation between talkers and fighters. It introduces a new language to enable negotiators and activists to argue and collaborate across different schools of thought and action. Weaving beautiful storytelling and clear analysis, this book maps the habits of change-makers, explaining why some groups choose dialogue and negotiation while others practice confrontation and resistance. With lucid charts and graphs by Rosi Greenberg, When to Talk and When to Fight is a brilliant new way of talking about how we change the world.