Dr. Maria J. Stephan Tells Human Rights Workshop, "Nonviolence Works"

A few years ago, Dr. Maria J. Stephan and Professor Erica Chenoweth spent a night at a conference debating whether nonviolent campaigns to oust regimes or fight for self-determination have historically proven more successful than violent ones. Stephan, a longtime scholar of nonviolent resistance, bet on nonviolent campaigns. Chenoweth, a specialist in political violence, was more skeptical. They decided to research the question together, and their results surprised even Stephan — history tells us that nonviolent campaigns have been successful twice as often as violent ones.

Stephan, the current director of the Program on Nonviolent Action at the U.S. Institute of Peace, shared their qualitative and quantitative findings at the Schell Center’s Human Rights Workshop on February 1, 2018. Stephan noted that these findings validate ideas put forward for many years by scholars of nonviolence — that, in Stephan’s words, “Power doesn’t flow from the barrel of a gun, but is grounded in the consent and obedience of the people.”

Stephan explained that she and Chenoweth had researched campaigns from 1900 to the early 2000s, focusing on movements that challenged an incumbent regime or sought self-determination. The long-term political impact of these movements, among other factors, was the indicator they used to determine success. Through their research, they found that compared to violent campaigns, nonviolent resistance was 10 times more likely to result in stable, enduring democracies. They also determined that the single most important factor for having a successful campaign was how many participants it had and how diverse they were —an area where nonviolent campaigns tend to win out.

“Because barriers to entry are so much lower in nonviolent campaigns, you get eleven times more people coming to nonviolent campaigns than violent ones – you get women, youth, the disabled,” Stephan explained. “And when you have large numbers, that translates into significant economic, social, and political pressure.”

Stephan acknowledged that it is currently very difficult for nonviolent movements to succeed, citing the rise of authoritarianism and reactionary populist movements and other challenges. As she noted, oppressive regimes are coordinating their efforts to crush dissent to an unprecedented degree by sharing technologies and tactics.

But Stephan remained optimistic. “Regimes have the resources and manpower to counter dissent,” she said, “but activists have the ability and wherewithal to counter new kinds of repression. It’s a cat and mouse game.” This leads Stephan to advise activists against directly copying tactics they see employed elsewhere in the world. “That,” she said, “is making the authoritarian’s job a lot easier.”

Instead, she stressed that lawyers and strategists alike need to help activists and dissidents develop more tactical approaches to resist authoritarianism and gain support from the international community. For instance, she urged lawyers to help challenge the increasing number of laws that make it illegal for civil society groups to receive aid from foreign groups — a trend Maria Burnett from Human Rights Watch discussed at the Schell Center last semester.

Lawyers can learn from grassroots movements, too, Stephan said. In her view, nonviolent social movements offer an answer to what many consider a fundamental weakness of the human rights regime — the difficulty of enforcing human rights. She advised that, rather than think only about traditional enforcement mechanisms such as the United Nations or other international bodies.

“We should think of movements and people power – how people organize from grassroots level to use nonviolent tactics to challenge injustice and advance human rights – as enforcement mechanisms,” Stephan concluded. “Social movements are how people breathe life into human rights.”