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New
York: Columbia University Press, 2011. ISBN: 978-0-231-15682-0. 296
pp. ; $ 29.50. -
Reviewed
by Jason Rineheart
Erica
Chenoweth’s and Maria J. Stephan's book is one of the most timely
released study in the past decade. Shortly after non-violent protest
movements swept the Middle East - changing regimes and the political
discourse in many countries – the two researchers released this
comprehensive study, analyzing the historical efficacy of
non-violent resistance.
Using
their Non-violent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes (NAVCO) data
set, the authors quantitatively analyzed 323 violent and non-violent
resistance campaigns for the period 1900 to 2006. Their conclusion:
non-violent movements are nearly twice as likely to achieve success
(or partial success) than their violent counterparts. Chenoweth and
Stephan hypothesize that non-violent campaigns are more likely to
succeed because non-violent activism creates lower barriers to
participation, creating the conditions for diverse membership and
allowing mass mobilization across key social sectors.
Perhaps
their most interesting findings relate to the consequences of
violent and non-violent movements for post-conflict regimes. The
NAVCO data show that successful non-violent movements produce
democratic regimes more often than successful violent movements.
Interestingly, the data also reveal that non-violent campaigns do
not necessarily benefit from outside material support, although the
authors acknowledge that small amounts of money, sanctions, and
international public support can have a positive impact on
successful movements. However, they caution that "outside
support for local non-violent groups is a double-edged sword”
since that is often used by regimes to delegitimize such movements
(p. 225).
To
support their findings, four case studies explain why some
non-violent movements achieve success, partial success, and, at
times, fail. The Iranian revolution (1977-1979) and the Philippine
People's Power movement (1983-1986) are their textbook examples of
how broad-based civil resistance, mass participation, and strategic
non-cooperation from all sectors of society can succeed against
authoritarian regimes. Similarly, the authors make a persuasive case
in their explanation why the First Palestinian Intifada (1987-1992)
was a relatively peaceful movement that achieved "partial
success," or at least more progress than the violence used by
the PLO and Hamas. The label "partial success" in this
instance is one that some analysts may take issue with, since the
Israeli occupation and settlement activity increased substantially
over the following decades. Finally, the Burmese Uprising
(1988-1990) case study shows how both violent and non-violent
campaigns can fail if such movements do not create and maintain
unified popular support and generate loyalty shifts within a regime.
Perhaps
Chenoweth and Stephan’s most daunting task is pre-empting
scholarly critiques questioning how they can accurately define a
resistance movement as entirely "violent" or entirely
"non-violent", and sufficiently determine which faction
contributed most to a movement's success when such movements operate
simultaneously. But when compared against years of failed violent
activism in countries like Iran and the Philippines, the authors
argue that identifying and framing successful non-violent campaigns
within the fog of violent and non-violent activism is actually not
as difficult as some may assume, especially when considering the
amount of diverse support and mass mobilization that successful
non-violent movements produce.
True
to academic form, the book reads as a lengthy, quantitative research
report full of nuance, definitions, and important caveats explaining
the inherent difficulties when systematically studying violent and
non-violent movements. Some may disagree with their methodologies or
the way they coded their data, but their justifications and
rationales are refreshingly straightforward and transparent.
Yet
when it comes to framing their study, one striking aspect that may
irk some scholars is how they situate their research within existing
the literature. They claim that a "prevailing view among
political scientists is that opposition movements select terrorism
and violent insurgency strategies because such means are more
effective than non-violent strategies at achieving policy goals"
(p. 6). They argue that Robert Pape's (2003, 2005, 2010) work -
which holds that suicide terrorism is an effective strategy to
defeat occupying democratic powers - "could be applied to
almost all scholars whose research tests the efficacy of different
violent methods" because such scholars fail to compare violent
methods to non-violent alternatives (p. 25-26).
It
is certainly true that some security scholars are biased toward
studying violent conflict. But it is a bit unfair to project Pape's
heavily criticized work onto the entire research community as
accepted scholarship, particularly when several terrorism
researchers have argued that using terrorism as a strategic tactic
is rarely successful and at times even self-defeating (Crenshaw,
1992; Rapoport, 1992; Hoffman, 2006; Abrahms, 2006). Moreover, the
authors' data reveal that insurgent movements in their data base
succeed roughly 25% of the time, which they acknowledge is in line
with similar other studies. Thus, despite framing their research as
breaking new ground in the arena of security studies, their findings
are actually in line with accepted scholarship on the relative
ineffectiveness of terrorism and insurgent violence.
The
book is novel in its attempt to quantitatively compare and contrast
violent and non-violent insurgencies and in pushing back against
security scholarship that has been reluctant to study non-violent
movements. As such, it is a welcomed contribution. Terrorism
researchers, alas, are left wanting more nuanced analysis on the
efficacy of terrorism and insurgent tactics within their NAVCO data
set. But perhaps such a study is in the works.
About
the Reviewer: Jason
Rineheart is
a Research Assistant at the Terrorism Research Initiative.
