Civil resistance: Difference between revisions

'''Civil resistance''' is political action that relies on the use of [[nonviolent resistance]] by civil groups to challenge a particular power, force, policy or [[regime]].<ref>Examples of the use of the term "civil resistance" include [[Erica Chenoweth]] and Maria J. Stephan, [http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-15682-0/why-civil-resistance-works ''Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict''], Columbia University Press, New York, 2011; Howard Clark, [https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Civil+Resistance+in+Kosovo ''Civil Resistance in Kosovo''], Pluto Press, London, 2000; Sharon Erickson Nepstad, [http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Sociology/SocialMovementSocialChange/?view=usa&ci=9780199778218 ''Nonviolent Revolution: Civil Resistance in the Late 20th Century''], Oxford University Press, New York, 2011; [[Michael Randle]], [http://www.civilresistance.info/randle1994 ''Civil Resistance''], Fontana, London, 1994; [[Adam Roberts (scholar)|Adam Roberts]], [http://www.aeinstein.org/english/ ''Civil Resistance in the East European and Soviet Revolutions''], Albert Einstein Institution, Massachusetts, 1991.</ref> Civil resistance operates through appeals to the adversary, pressure and coercion: it can involve systematic attempts to undermine the adversary's sources of power, both domestic and international. Forms of action have included demonstrations, vigils and petitions; strikes, go-slows, boycotts and emigration movements; and sit-ins, occupations, and the creation of parallel institutions of government. Civil resistance movements' motivations for avoiding violence are generally related to context, including a society's values and its experience of war and violence, rather than to any absolute ethical principle. Cases of civil resistance can be found throughout history and in many modern struggles, against both tyrannical rulers and democratically elected governments.<ref name="Roberts">This is abstracted from the longer definition of "civil resistance" in Adam Roberts, Introduction, in Adam Roberts and Timothy Garton Ash (eds.), [https://books.google.com/books?id=BxOQKrCe7UUC&dq=Civil+resistance+and+power+politics&source=gbs_navlinks_s ''Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experience of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to the Present''], Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 2–3. See also the short definition in Gene Sharp, [http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Reference/Subjectareareference/SocialSciences/?view=usa&ci=9780199829897 ''Sharp's Dictionary of Power and Struggle: Language of Civil Resistance in Conflicts''], Oxford University Press, New York, 2011, p. 87.</ref> The phenomenon of civil resistance is often associated with the advancement of democracy.<ref>See e.g. the report by Peter Ackerman, Adrian Karatnycky and others, ''How Freedom is Won. From Civil Resistance to Durable Democracy'', Freedom House, New York, 2005 [http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/special_report/29.pdf]</ref>