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The Checklist for Ending Tyranny

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The Checklist for Ending Tyranny © 2014 Peter Ackerman and Hardy Merriman The Checklist for Ending Tyranny By Peter Ackerman and Hardy Merriman Today the most deadly confLicts in the world are not between states but rather within them, pitting tyrants against the populations they oppress. It is widely beLieved that these oppressed populations have two choices: acquiesce to tyranny in hopes that it will evolve to something milder or launch a violent insurrection to gain freedom. This Limited view is refuted by the fact that civiL resistance campaigns (sometimes referred to as “people power” movements or nonviolent confLicts) have occurred far more frequently than generaLLy reaLized. Beginning in 1900, there has been on average one major campaign of civiL resistance challenging an incumbent ruler per year.1 These citizen-led movements have increasingly defined the outcome of the most geopolitically significant conflicts and democratic transitions since 1972.2 Yet policy makers, scholars, journalists, and other interested observers consistently underestimate this capacity of ordinary people to undermine tyranny and achieve rights without violence. An Analytical Blind Spot The uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011, and more recentLy in Ukraine in 2014, are examples of how grassroots civil resistance can surprise people with its power and transformative potentiaL. No one saw these uprisings coming, but this makes them far from unique. Few if any saw the “Color Revolutions” coming in Serbia (2000), Georgia (2003), and Ukraine (2004). In decades prior, no one anticipated that organized nonviolent resistance would play a decisive role in the fall of Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos (1986), Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet (1988), the Soviet regime in Poland (1989), or the apartheid regime in South Africa (1992). As international and regional experts struggle to explain these and other nonviolent conflicts, they frequentLy concLude that successfuL cases of civiL resistance are historicaL anomaLies based on a unique set of circumstances in a given country at a given time. Because their dynamics are seen as case-specific, they are not regarded as evidence of a generaL strategy by which populations can wieLd power against a wide variety of oppressors. However, tyrants around the worLd do not suffer from this blind spot. They have come to recognize people power movements as the greatest threat to their ongoing rule. This chapter appears in: Mathew Burrows and Maria J. Stephan (eds.), Is Authoritarianism Staging a Comeback?, Washington, DC: The Atlantic CounciL, 2015. 1 © 2014 Peter Ackerman and Hardy Merriman With the incidence of nonviolent confLict acceLerating over the Last decade it is critically important for those who support democratic change to update their understanding of why people power movements succeed. Nonviolent confLict works across many different cases because it exploits two fundamentaL reaLities: that authoritarian regimes depend on wide-scale obedience among the populations they oppress in order to maintain their control, and that not everyone in such regimes is equally loyal. How Civil Resistance Works Based on these two realities, civiL resisters mobiLize popuLations to systematicaLLy withdraw their obedience and appLy nonviolent pressure—through tactics such as strikes, boycotts, mass demonstrations, and other actions—to disrupt an oppressive system and achieve rights, freedom, and justice. When participation in civil resistance diversifies and grows, repression against resisters is often insufficient to restore tranquility and instead becomes more LikeLy to backfire. As disruption continues, cracks also begin to appear within the government and other institutions (i.e. police, military, media and politicaL, bureaucratic, and economic entities) critical to the state. These cracks often lead to defections, and as defections cascade, the core capacities that an authoritarian depends on for their rule—control of materiaL resources, human resources, people’s skills and knowledge, the information environment, and the capacity to commit sanctions—are devastated. Left with no viable chain of command with which to execute their orders, tyrants ultimateLy run out of options and are coerced out of their position by sustained nonviolent pressure. Sweeping change has often been the result. Skills versus Conditions With the increasing incidence and impact of civil resistance, it is important to examine what factors determine its outcomes. Do the conditions prior to the commencement of the conflict determine whether a movement or authoritarian wiLL win? Or is victory for either side determined more by the strategic choices and skillfulness with which they wage the conflict? A critical facet of the mission of the International Center on Nonviolent ConfLict (of which we are a part) is to argue that skills are on balance more important than conditions in determining movement trajectories and outcomes. This point This chapter appears in: Mathew Burrows and Maria J. Stephan (eds.), Is Authoritarianism Staging a Comeback?, Washington, DC: The Atlantic CounciL, 2015. 2 © 2014 Peter Ackerman and Hardy Merriman usuaLLy invites significant pushback especially focused on the wiLLingness of the adversary to use violence. “Nonviolent resistance only works against benign or miLd adversaries” is a frequent refrain, but convenientLy forgotten is the defeat of the apartheid regime in South Africa, Pinochet in Chile, Marcos in the PhiLippines, or the communist regime in Poland. More recent exampLes incLude Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Ben ALi in Tunisia. None of these regimes can be claimed to be miLd, benign or unwiLLing to use severe repression. These qualitative examples are supported by quantitative analysis. In 2008 the organization Freedom House issued a research study that examined various structural factors and their influence on civil resistance in 64 transitions from authoritarian governments between 1975-2006. Here is an excerpt of its key conclusion: … neither the poLiticaL nor environmentaL factors examined in the study had a statistically significant impact on the success or failure of civiL resistance movements…. [C]ivic movements are as LikeLy to succeed in less developed, economically poor countries as in deveLoped, affLuent societies. The study aLso finds no significant evidence that ethnic or religious polarization has a major impact on the possibilities for the emergence of a cohesive civic opposition. Nor does regime type seem to have an important influence on the ability of civic movements to achieve broad support.3 The only factor examined in the study that had a statistically significant influence on the emergence and outcomes of civil resistance movements was government centralization. The authors write that: The study suggests high degrees of centralization correLate positiveLy with the emergence of a robust civic movement with the potentiaL to chaLLenge regime authority. The reverse aLso appears to be true: the greater the degree of government decentralization, the less likely it is that a successful movement of civic mobilization wiLL arise.4 Thus, whiLe the study finds one environmental condition that infLuences the trajectories of civil resistance movements, their overall findings strongly undercut claims that conditions are determinative of the outcome of these conflicts. Three years Later, in their award-winning 2011 book, Why Civil Resistance Works: This chapter appears in: Mathew Burrows and Maria J. Stephan (eds.), Is Authoritarianism Staging a Comeback?, Washington, DC: The Atlantic CounciL, 2015. 3 © 2014 Peter Ackerman and Hardy Merriman The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, scholars Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan rigorousLy analyzed 323 violent and nonviolent campaigns that challenged sitting governments between 1900 and 2006.5 Their groundbreaking findings showed that nonviolent campaigns succeeded 53% of the time versus 26% of the time for violent campaigns.6 They also found that whiLe state repression and other structuraL factors can influence a civil resistance campaign’s prospects for success (though often by Less than is commonly assumed—in the case of violent state repression it only reduced success rates by about 35%), they found no structural conditions that were determinative of movement outcomes.7 After thoroughly evaLuating the data they conclude that “the evidence suggests that civil resistance is often successful regardless of environmental conditions that many people associate with the failure of nonviolent campaigns.”8 These resuLts reveaL the incorrect premises upon which the conventionaL wisdom about civil resistance is based. SkiLLs and strategic choice often matter more than conditions in determining the outcomes of these conflicts. This is actuaLLy not surprising when we consider that the first strategy-based decision by opponents of tyranny is how to fight. It is reasonabLe to expect that if external conditions were key in determining the outcome then the strategic choice of how to fight by people chaLLenging tyranny would not matter, and success rates between violent and nonviolent conflicts over time and many cases should be the same. But that is not what the data indicates. Between 1900-2006 people power movements have been twice as successful, and recent case studies show that the differential in success rates has not significantly changed.9 Some may counter this by asserting that civil resisters pick battLes that are easier to win, but Chenoweth and Stephan anticipated that argument and show that
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