WEBVTT

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I'd like you to imagine that you live
in a really repressive country.

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There are elections, but they're fake.

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The leader wins
100% of the vote each time.

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Security forces beat up
opposition leaders with impunity,

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and they harass everyone else.

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This is a country where being in this room
right now would get you on a list.

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Now let's say you've had enough,

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and so have many other people
that you talk with in low whispers.

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I'm not talking about The Hunger Games,
although that would be awesome!

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(Laughter)

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Unfortunately, I'm talking
about real world conditions

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that many people face right now.

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So assuming you've decided to act,

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what would be the best way

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for you to challenge the system
and create something new?

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My own answer to this question
has changed over the past few years.

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In 2006, I was a PhD student here
at CU Boulder, studying Political Science,

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and my dissertation was
on how and why people use violence

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to create political change
in their countries.

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As for the scenario I just described,

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back then I bought into the idea
that power flows from the barrel of a gun,

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and what I would have said was
that, although it was tragic,

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it was logical in such situations
for people to use violence

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to seek their change.

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But then I was invited
to an academic workshop

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put on by the International Center
on Nonviolent Conflict.

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They were giving a week-long primer
on nonviolent resistance

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to try to get people like me
to teach about it in our classes.

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My view of all of this at the time

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was that it was well-intentioned
but dangerously naive.

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I mean, the readings
they sent me in advance argued

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that the best way for people
to seek really difficult political changes

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was through nonviolent
or civil resistance.

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They described civil resistance
as an active form of conflict,

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where unarmed civilians would use tactics
like protests, boycotts, demonstrations,

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and lots of other forms
of mass non-cooperation

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to seek change.

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They brought up cases like Serbia,

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where a nonviolent revolution
toppled Slobodan Milošević,

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the Butcher of the Balkans,
in October 2000,

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and the Philippines,

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where the People Power Movement
ousted Ferdinand Marcos in 1986.

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At the workshop, I said stuff like,
"Well, those were probably exceptions.

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For every successful case
you guys bring up,

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I can think of a failed case
like Tienanmen Square.

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I can also think of plenty of cases
where violence worked pretty well

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like the Russian, French,
and Algerian revolutions.

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Maybe nonviolent resistance works

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if you're seeking environmental reforms,
gender rights, labor rights,

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but it can't work, generally,

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if you're trying to overthrow a dictator
or become a new country.

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And it definitely can't work

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if the authoritarian leader
you're facing is not incompetent,

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it's somebody who's
really brutal and ruthless."

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So by the end of the week,
as you can imagine, I wasn't very popular.

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(Laughter)

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But my soon to be co-author,
Maria Stephan, came up to me

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and said something like,
"If you're right, why don't you prove it?

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Are you curious enough to study this
in a serious way, empirically?"

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Believe it or not, nobody had
really done that before systematically,

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and although I was still skeptical,

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I was curious.

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I figured that if they were right,
and I was wrong, somebody better find out.

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So for the next two years,

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I collected data on all major
nonviolent and violent campaigns

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for the overthrow of a government
or a territorial liberation since 1900.

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The data covered the entire world

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and consisted of every known case

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where there were
at least 1,000 observed participants;

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this is hundreds of cases.

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Then I analyzed the data,
and the results blew me away.

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From 1900 to 2006,

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nonviolent campaigns worldwide
were twice as likely to succeed outright

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as violent insurgencies.

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And there's more.

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This trend has been increasing over time,
so that in the last 50 years,

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nonviolent campaigns are becoming
increasingly successful and common,

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whereas violent insurgencies are becoming
increasingly rare and unsuccessful.

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This is true even in those extremely
brutal, authoritarian conditions

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where I expected
nonviolent resistance to fail.

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So, why is civil resistance so much
more effective than armed struggle?

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The answer seems to lie
in people power itself.

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Researchers used to say
that no government could survive

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if just 5% of its population
rose up against it.

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Our data showed that the number
may be lower than that.

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No single campaign has failed
during that time period

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after they had achieved
the active and sustained participation

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of just 3.5% of the population.

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And lots of them succeeded
with far fewer than that.

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3.5% is nothing to sneeze at.

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In the U.S. today,
that's like 11 million people.

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But get this:

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every single campaign
that surpassed that 3.5%

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was a nonviolent one.

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In fact, the nonviolent campaigns
were on average

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four times larger
than the average violent campaigns,

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and they were often much more
inclusive and representative

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in terms of gender, age,
race, political party, class,

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and the urban-rural distinction.

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Civil resistance allows

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people of all different levels
of physical ability to participate,

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so this can include the elderly,
people with disabilities,

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women, children,
and anyone else who wants to.

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If you think about it,

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everyone is born with a natural
physical ability to resist nonviolently.

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Anyone here who has kids knows

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how hard it is to pick up a child
who doesn't want to move

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or to feed a child
who doesn't want to eat.

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Violent resistance, on the other hand,
is a little more physically demanding,

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and that makes it
a little bit more exclusive.

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In my case, when I was in college,
I was in Military Science classes

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because I planned
to go through the ROTC program

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and become an army officer.

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I really liked the rappelling,
the shooting at the range,

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the map reading, of course,
and the uniforms.

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But I wasn't stoked

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when they asked me to get up
in the wee hours of the morning

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and run until I vomited.

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So I quit and chose the far less
demanding career of a professor.

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(Laughter)

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Not everybody wants to take
the same chances in life,

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and many people won't turn up
unless they expect safety in numbers.

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The visibility of many civil resistance
tactics, like protests, allow them

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to draw these risk-averse people
into the fray.

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Put yourself back in that repressive
country for just a minute.

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Let's say your trusted friend
and neighbor comes to you and says,

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"I know you sympathize with our cause.

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We'll have a mass demonstration
down the street tonight at 8 o'clock.

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I hope to see you there."

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I don't know about you all,
but I am not the person

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who is going to show up
at 7:55 and see what's up.

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I'm probably going to look
outside my window at 8:30

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and see what's going on.

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If I see six people congregated there
in the square, I'll sit this one out.

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But if I see 6,000 and more coming
down the alleyway, I just might join in.

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My point here is that the visibility
of civil resistance actions allows them

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to attract more active
and diverse participation

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from these ambivalent people,

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and once they become involved,

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it's almost guaranteed that the movement
will then have links to security forces,

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civilian bureaucrats,
economic and business elites,

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educational elites, state media,
religious authorities, and the like,

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and those people start
to reevaluate their own allegiances.

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No regime loyalists, at any country,

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live entirely isolated
from the population itself.

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They have friends,
they have family members,

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they have existing relationships

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that they have to live with
in the long term,

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whether or not the leader stays or goes.

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In Serbia, when it became obvious
that hundreds of thousands of Serbs

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were descending on Belgrade
to demand that Milošević leave office,

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police officers started to disobey
the order to shoot on demonstrators.

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When one of them was asked
why he did so, he said simply,

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"I knew my kids would be in the crowd."

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Some of you are thinking,
"Is this person insane?

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I watch the news, and I see protesters
getting shot at all the time."

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And it's true.

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Sometimes, crackdowns do happen,
but even in those cases,

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the nonviolent campaigns were
outperforming the violent ones by 2 to 1.

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It turns out that when security forces
beat up, arrest, or even shoot

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unarmed activists,

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there is indeed safety in numbers.

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Large, well-coordinated
campaigns can shift

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between tactics that are concentrated,
like protests or demonstrations,

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to tactics of dispersion,

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where people stay away
from places they were expected to go.

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They do strikes, they bang
on pots and pans, they stay at home,

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they shut off their electricity
at a coordinated time of day.

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These tactics are much less risky,

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they're very hard, or at least
very costly to suppress,

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but the movement stays just as disruptive.

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What happens in these countries
once the dust settles?

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It turns out that the way you resist
matters in the long run too.

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Most strikingly, countries
in which people wage nonviolent struggle

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were way more likely to emerge
with democratic institutions

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than countries
in which they wage violent struggle.

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Those countries with nonviolent campaigns

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were 15% less likely
to relapse into civil war.

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The data are clear:

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when people rely on civil resistance,

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their size grows,

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and when large numbers of people
remove their cooperation

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from an oppressive system,

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the odds are ever in their favor.

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(Laughter)

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So, I and many others like me had ignored

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the millions of people worldwide

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who were skillfully using civil resistance

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in favor of studying
just things that blow up.

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I was left with a few questions
about the way I used to think.

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Why was it so easy and comfortable
for me to think that violence works?

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Why did I find it acceptable to assume

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that violence happens
almost automatically

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because of circumstances
or by necessity,

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that it's the only way out
of some situations?

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In a society that celebrates
battlefield heroes on national holidays,

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I guess it was natural
to grow up believing

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that violence and courage
are one and the same,

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and that true victories cannot come
without bloodshed on both sides.

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But the evidence I presented
here today suggests

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that for people
serious about seeking change,

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there are realistic alternatives.

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Imagine what our world
would look like now

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if we allowed ourselves
to develop some faith in them.

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What if our history courses emphasized
the decade of mass civil disobedience

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that came before
the Declaration of Independence

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rather than the war that came after?

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What if our social studies textbooks
emphasized Gandhi and King

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in the first chapter
rather than as an afterthought?

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And what if every child
left elementary school

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knowing more about the Suffragist Movement

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than they did
about the Battle of Bunker Hill?

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What if it became common knowledge
that when protest becomes too dangerous,

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there are many nonviolent
techniques of dispersion

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that might keep movement safe and active?

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So here we are, in 2013,
in Boulder, Colorado.

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Maybe some of you are thinking,

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"That's great that civil resistance works.

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What can I do?"

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Encourage your children to learn more

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about the nonviolent legacies
of the past 200 years

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and explore the potential of people power.

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Tell your elected representatives

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to stop perpetuating
the misguided view that violence pays

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by supporting the first groups
in a civil uprising who take up arms.

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Although civil resistance
cannot be exported or imported,

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it's time for our officials to embrace
a different way of thinking;

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that in both the short and longer term,

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civil resistance tends
to lead behind societies

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in which people can live more freely
and more peaceably together.

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Now that we know what we know
about the power of nonviolent conflict,

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I see it as our shared responsibility
to spread the word,

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so that future generations
don't fall for the myth

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that violence is their only way out.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)