The Handbook of Conflict Resolution (3rd ed)

by Peter T Coleman

  Each of these sources of power is in turn closely related to or directly dependent on the degree of cooperation, submission, obedience, and assistance that the rulers are able to obtain from their subjects. These include the general population, the paid “helpers” and agents, and the relevant groups and institutions. The groups and institutions that supply the necessary sources of power are called pillars of support. That dependence makes it possible, under certain circumstances, for the population and the regime’s functionaries and agents to reduce the availability of these necessary sources of power or to withdraw them completely by reducing or withdrawing their necessary cooperation and obedience. If the withdrawal of acceptance, submission, and assistance can be maintained in face of the rulers’ punishments for disobedience, the end of the regime is in sight. When the pillars of support are withdrawn, the regime must collapse.

  Since these methods of nonviolent action, especially those of noncooperation, often directly disturb or disrupt the supply of the needed sources of power and normal operations, the opponents are likely to respond strongly, usually with repression. That repression has often included beatings, arrests, imprisonments, executions, and mass slaughters. Despite repression, the resisters have at times persisted in fighting with only their chosen nonviolent weapons. Past struggles have only rarely been well planned and prepared and have usually lacked a strategic plan. Therefore, not surprisingly, in the face of such repression, nonviolent struggles have often produced limited positive results or even resulted in clear defeats and disasters. Yet, amazingly, many nonviolent struggles have triumphed.

  When nonviolent struggles succeed in achieving their declared objectives, the result is produced by the operation of one of four mechanisms—conversion, accommodation, nonviolent coercion, or disintegration—or a combination of two or three of them. Rarely, the opponents have a change of view or conversion takes place. In that case, as a result of the nonviolent persistence and the willingness of the people to continue despite suffering, harsh conditions, and brutalities perpetrated on them, the opponents decide that it is right to accept the claims of the nonviolent group. Although religious pacifists frequently stress the possibility, it does not occur often. One example is the 1924–1925 sixteen-month, twenty-four-hour-a-day campaign of Untouchables and their allies in Vykom, Travancore, in south India. Despite arrests, a flood, and the hot sun, the Untouchables campaigned for the right to walk on a road that passed a Hindu temple.

  A much more common mechanism is accommodation. This essentially means that both sides compromise on the issue and receive and give up some of their original objectives. This can operate only in respect to issues on which each side can compromise without believing themselves to be abandoning a principle or condition that they believe would be in violation of their fundamental beliefs or political principles. Accommodation occurs in almost all labor strike settlements. The final agreed working condition and wages are usually somewhere between the originally stated objectives of the two sides.

  In other conflicts, the numbers of resisters have become so large, and the parts of the social and political order they influence or control are so essential, that the noncooperation and defiance have taken control of the conflict situation. The opponents are still in their former positions, but they are unable to control the system any longer without the resumption of cooperation and submission by the resisters. In this case, not even repression is effective, either because of the massiveness of the noncooperation or because the opponents’ troops and police no longer reliably obey orders. The change is made against the opponents’ will because the supply of their needed sources of power has been seriously weakened or severed. The opponents can no longer wield power contrary to the wishes of the nonviolent group. This is nonviolent coercion. This is what occurred, for example, in the 1905 Russian Revolution. As a result of the Great October Strike, Czar Nicholas issued the constitutional manifesto of October 17, 1905, which granted a legislature, thereby abandoning his claim to be sole autocrat.

  In more extreme situations, the noncooperation and defiance are so vast and strong that the previous regime simply falls apart, and no one is left with sufficient power even to surrender. In Russia in February 1917, the numbers of strikers were massive. All social classes had turned against the regime, huge peaceful street demonstrations were undermining the loyalty of the soldiers, and troop reinforcements dissolved into the protesting crowds. Finally, Czar Nicholas, facing this reality, quietly abdicated, and the czarist government was dissolved and swept away.

  While noncooperation to undermine compliance and to weaken and sever the sources of opponents’ power are the main forces in nonviolent struggle, one other process sometimes operates. This is political jiu-jitsu. In this process, brutal repression against disciplined nonviolent resisters does not strengthen the opponents and weaken the resisters. Rather, widespread revulsion against the opponents for their brutality operates to shift power to the resisters. More people may join the resisters. Third parties may change their opinions and activities to favor the resisters and act against the opponents. Members of the opponents’ usual supporters, administrators, and troops and police may become unreliable and even mutiny. The use of the opponents’ supposedly coercive violence has then been turned to undermine their own power capacity. Political jiu-jitsu does not operate in all situations, however, and heavy reliance must be placed on the impact of large-scale, carefully focused noncooperation. Effective nonviolent struggle is not the product of simple application of the methods of this technique. A struggle conducted by nonviolent means will generally be more effective if the participants understand the factors that contribute to greater success or to likely failure and act accordingly.

  Another important variable in nonviolent campaigns is whether they are conducted on the basis of a wisely prepared grand strategy. The presence or absence and, if present, the quality of strategic calculation and planning can have a major impact on the course of the struggle and in determining its final outcome.

  IMPORTANCE OF NONVIOLENT STRUGGLE

  Past nonviolent struggles have often played significant roles in determining social and political events. These means of conducting conflict are often used when groups believe, rightly or wrongly, that they cannot secure redress of perceived injustices or achieve certain objectives by milder means or by conventional political procedures or processes.

  The many methods of nonviolent action have been applied for many different purposes, of which not everyone would approve. This technique has been used in campaigns to protect or extend civil liberties; in economic conflicts by both labor and management to lift economic or political oppression; in ethnic conflicts; in struggles to gain liberation from foreign occupations and achieve national liberation; to end racial and religious discrimination and domination; to resist and undermine dictatorships; to establish democratic systems; to resist possible social, economic, and political changes; to gain equal rights for women, as in suffrage, employment, and legal status; and diverse other objectives.

  Nonviolent struggle has at times produced or contributed to producing major political and social change, such as ending the Communist system in Poland, breaking down racial segregation in the United States, undermining dictatorships in Latin America, and blocking military rule in Thailand. The technique has contributed to the empowerment of oppressed people by providing them with means of action that they can use even when they lack high status and the instruments of administration and repression that their opponents can wield. This technique was used to block fascist controls in Nazi-occupied Norway from 1940 to 1945 and to block coups d’état by military forces and dictatorial groups as in Germany in 1920 and the Soviet Union in 1991.

  At times, violence and destruction of property have occurred alongside the methods of nonviolent action. Some of the violence in the midst of nonviolent campaigns, however, has been staged by the opponents’ agents provocateur to force a shift to resistance violence, which the opponents can more
easily defeat. At other times, violence has also been instigated during nonviolent campaigns by political doctrinalists who are committed to violence and who will lose major political opportunities if the substantive objectives are instead gained by nonviolent struggle. Violence from both sources requires careful handling by the nonviolent resisters if negative effects are to be limited.

  Over many centuries, nonviolent struggle has served as an instrument of wielding power in society and politics. It has served as a pragmatic substitute for the use of violence to gain objectives. Despite setbacks and frequent poor preparations, this choice of nonviolent means to wage conflicts has had major beneficial consequences that are rarely recognized. What would the United States and the world be like if African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s had, instead of the nonviolent civil rights movement, employed mass violence and terrorism? What would Poland, the Soviet Union, and the rest of world be like today if the Poles in 1980 had risen up by violence or Czechoslovakia in 1968 and 1989 had fought the Soviet Union and domestic Communist rule by violence?

  MEDIA COVERAGE OF NONVIOLENT STRUGGLE

  We live in a world with many serious conflicts. By what means they are waged, whether they are conducted skillfully, and with what results are highly important. Therefore, accurate media coverage of ongoing and past nonviolent struggles and perceptive commentaries on them are both highly important. When references are made that either falsely credit positive accomplishments to the use of violence or otherwise discredit or trivialize the accomplishments of nonviolent struggles, the effect can be to encourage the use of violence in future conflicts. That can have highly negative consequences. Our view of the past heavily influences our perception of what is possible at present and in the future.

  If the reports provided to the public and policymakers about nonviolent struggles are inaccurate or the interpretations and explanations of the events are false, the reporters and analysts will have violated their responsibilities to inform the general public accurately. They will also have done a disservice to the participants in the nonviolent struggles and to their own and other societies.

  There have been instances when a clearly nonviolent struggle has been referred to as “rioting,” “violence,” “unrest,” “mob action,” and the like. Only slightly less inaccurate have been the terms “pacifist” or “passive resistance” to describe nonviolent struggles. Ill-informed commentators or analysts may neglect or denigrate the role of the masses of participants in the action. Some commentators are prone to give credit for major changes to presidents, prime ministers, and dictators, or to ineffective military policies, when masses of people have taken powerful nonviolent action and paid the price.

  Even within the context of nonviolent struggle, such commentators have at times given excessive credit to a single individual whose role was actually highly limited. One prominent American television personality said that Boris Yeltsin “almost single-handedly” defeated the 1991 hardline coup d’état, when in fact noncooperation and protests by many thousands of defiant people and even disobedient Soviet troops had defeated the attempt to restore the Stalinist system. These and other distortions may even cloud the perspectives of future historians so that the full nonviolent characteristic of that conflict may receive insufficient future research and analytical attention.

  Some groups facing acute conflicts reject nonviolent struggle and choose violence because they claim that only violence can attract worldwide attention for their cause. That claim may be untrue, but it is undeniable that media neglect or very limited coverage of important ongoing nonviolent struggles has occurred and can have important consequences. For example, the media failed to give major attention to the nine-year Kosovo campaign of nonviolent noncooperation with Serbian controls and the building of alternative institutions that had been remarkably effective, short of achieving independence. The neglect certainly contributed to the failure to provide major international support for the Kosovo nonviolent movement. Added to this was the internal Kosovar failure to develop a grand strategy of nonviolent struggle for gaining recognized independence. All of this led to the establishment and growth of the Kosovo Liberation Army, catastrophic Serbian repression, expulsions, slaughters, and finally military intervention by NATO and the United States.

  Inaccurate reporting and faulty analyses, or even the absence of reporting, may mean that analysts and policymakers lack accurate information on the basis of which to recommend or support policies or actions. The consequences of poor reporting and analyses may be serious and widespread. Such unfortunate results can be partially or fully avoided with improved information and understanding about nonviolent struggle by reporters, editors, and commentators.

  THE FUTURE OF NONVIOLENT ACTION

  New Scholarly and Strategic Attention

  The twentieth century brought new intellectual efforts to understand this phenomenon, mostly from social scientists and, at times, from advocates of this technique. Among such studies, beginning in 1913 and going to 1994 are these (listed chronologically): Harry Laidler, Boycotts and the Labor Struggle (1913); Clarence Marsh Case, Non-Violent Coercion (1923); E. T. Hiller, The Strike (1928); Wilfred H. Crook, The General Strike (1931); Karl Ehrlich, Niels Lindberg, and Gammelgaard Jacobsen, Kamp Uden Vaaben (1937); Bart de Ligt, The Conquest of Violence (1938); Krishnalal Shridharani, War without Violence (1939); Joan V. Bondurant, Conquest of Violence (1958); Theodor Ebert, Gewaltfrier Aufstand (1968); Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action (1973); and Peter Ackerman and Christopher Kruegler, Strategic Nonviolent Conflict (1994). Of these, Laidler, Hiller, and Crook draw heavily on the labor movement in Europe and North America. Case, Ehrlich and colleagues, and de Ligt include examinations of diverse historical cases. Shridharani and Bondurant base their studies heavily on the movements led by Gandhi. Ebert, Sharp, and Ackerman and Kruegler also use historical cases and represent a significant advance in their analyses of the technique.

  The combination of the growing practice of nonviolent struggle and such intellectual efforts to learn about this technique means that greater knowledge is now available than previously to groups that wish to use nonviolent action.

  Efforts have also recently been made to enhance the effectiveness of future nonviolent action by study of strategic principles. The most important single contribution to this is Peter Ackerman and Christopher Kruegler’s Strategic Nonviolent Conflict.

  A new, highly unorthodox dictionary, Sharp’s Dictionary of Power and Struggle (2011), with nearly one thousand entries, challenges the pro-violence biases in our language about power and defense, among other topics.

  Efforts at Planned Adoption

  Past uses of the technique of nonviolent action have mostly been improvised to meet a specific immediate need and were not the result of long-term planning and preparations. However, the planned and prepared substitution of nonviolent action for violent means has been recommended for consideration in certain types of acute conflicts. These include the following purposes:

  Conducting severe interethnic conflicts with “no compromise” issues

  Producing fundamental social change to correct oppressive social, economic, or political conditions

  Resisting a dictatorship or attempting to disintegrate it

  Deterring and resisting coups d’état

  Deterring and resisting external aggression

  Deterring and resisting attempts at genocide

  There exist unplanned, improvised, cases of the application of nonviolent struggle for all these purposes. It has been claimed, and recent studies suggest, that advance analysis, planning, and preparations can increase the capacity of this technique to be effective even under extreme conditions. In the struggles against dictatorships, oppressive systems, genocide, coups d’état, and foreign occupations, the appropriate strategies all involve efforts to restrict and sever the sources of power of the hostile forces. Application of nonviolent struggle in all of these acute conflict situations involves resistance in fac
e of extreme repression.

  The planned and prepared application of this type of struggle against internal or external aggression is known as civilian-based defense.

  In assessing the viability of nonviolent struggle in extreme circumstances, it is also important to examine critically the adequacy and problems of applying violent means rather than assuming axiomatically its superior effectiveness.

  Expanded knowledge gained through scholarly studies and strategic analyses and its spread in popularized forms is likely to contribute to increased substitutions of nonviolent struggle for violent action. Some policy studies have already been initiated for dealing with coups d’état, defense, and other national security issues.

  Nonviolent Action for “Wrong” Objectives

  Concerns have been voiced that nonviolent action could be used by certain groups for “wrong” objectives, for purposes that many would not endorse. For example, in the nineteenth century, Scottish, English, and US factory owners combating trade union activities sometimes shut down operations in a lockout, Nazis organized economic boycotts of Jewish businesses in the 1930s, and southern segregationists in the United States used social and economic boycotts of civil rights activists in the 1960s. Comparable cases are likely to occur in the future.

  The response to this situation of some specialists on nonviolent struggle is that the use of nonviolent action for those purposes is preferable to those groups continuing to apply violence for the same purposes. Suffering from the results of an economic boycott is preferable to being lynched, for example.

  In acute conflicts, the contending groups are unlikely to abandon or even compromise their beliefs and objectives. However, there sometimes is a possibility that such a group might shift to other means of conducting the conflict. It is argued that the real issue is not therefore whether one would prefer them to change their beliefs and goals (since that is almost certainly not going to happen), but whether one prefers them to struggle for those same goals by violent or nonviolent means. The target group of those applications of nonviolent action would need to decide how to resist the “wrong” objectives, whether by violent repression, educational efforts, or counter-nonviolent action.