A dilemma action is a type of non-violent civil disobedience designed to create a "response dilemma" or "lose-lose" situation for public authorities "by forcing them to either concede some public space to protesters or make themselves look absurd or heavy-handed by acting against the protest."[1][2] The Serbian-based NGO Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies has extensively used the technique in its trainings to nonviolent civil resistors. Dilemma actions have been shown to increase non-violent campaign success rate by 11-16%[3]
Examples of dilemma actions include Ai Weiwei's gathering to eat pig's trotters, the Standing protests of the 2013 protests in Turkey,[1] the Gaza Freedom Flotilla[4] and Uganda's 2011 Walk to Work protests.[5]
Factors of success edit
McClennen et al (2023) identified four main factors that contribute to the success of a Dilemma Action:[3]
- Facilitating group formation,
- Delegitimising opponents,
- Reducing fear,
- Generating sympathetic media coverage.
See also edit
Further reading edit
- George Lakey, Powerful Peacemaking: A Strategy for a Living Revolution (Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers, 1987 [1973]).
- Srdja Popovic, Andrej Milovojevic, and Slobodan Djinovic, Nonviolent Struggle: 50 Crucial Points, 2d ed. (Belgrade: Center for Applied Non Violent Action and Strategies, 2007), 70–71.
- Philippe Duhamel, The Dilemma Demonstration: Using Nonviolent Civil Disobedience to Put the Government between a Rock and a Hard Place (Minneapolis, MN: Center for Victims of Torture, 2004).
References edit
- ^ a b Laura Moth, Today's Zaman, 19 June 2013, A standing dilemma in Taksim [permanent dead link]
- ^ John A. Gould and Edward Moe, "Beyond Rational Choice: Ideational Assault and the Strategic Use of Frames in Nonviolent Civil Resistance", in, Sharon Erickson Nepstad, Lester R. Kurtz (2012), Nonviolent Conflict and Civil Resistance, Emerald Group Publishing, p141
- ^ a b McClennen, Sophia; Popovic, Srdja; Wright, Joseph (2023). "How to Sharpen a Nonviolent Movement". Journal of Democracy. 34 (1): 110–125. doi:10.1353/jod.2023.0007. ISSN 1086-3214.
- ^ wri-irg.org, 5 March 2013, Freedom Flotilla to Gaza – a dilemma action evolves
- ^ Al Jazeera, 28 April 2011, Uganda walk-to-work protests kick up dust