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The success of nonviolent civil resistance | Erica Chenoweth | TEDxBoulder

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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)
Title:
The success of nonviolent civil resistance | Erica Chenoweth | TEDxBoulder
Description:

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Between 1900-2006, campaigns of nonviolent civil resistance were twice as successful as violent campaigns. Erica will talk about her research on the impressive historical record of civil resistance in the 20th century and discuss the promise of unarmed struggle in the 21st century. She will focus on the so-called "3.5% rule" - the notion that no government can withstand a challenge of 3.5% of its population without either accommodating the movement or (in extreme cases) disintegrating. In addition to explaining why nonviolent resistance has been so effective, she will also share some lessons learned about why it sometimes fails.

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Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDxTalks
Duration:
12:34
  • To the Approver: Sorry, I forgot to check title and description.

    Title has the wrong format and should read:
    The success of nonviolent civil resistance | Erica Chenoweth | TEDxBoulder

    The TEDx disclaimer is missing in the description:
    This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences.

  • Hi Peter, thanks for doing the review. I will check the comparison and do my best to improve future works.

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