Academics and Research / Magazine Feature

Korbel Professor Erica Chenoweth is getting noticed for her work on nonviolent resistance

Erica Chenoweth, who joined the Korbel School in 2012, has focused her research on investigating whether and when nonviolence works — and influential groups around the world are taking notice. Photo: Wayne Armstrong

Erica Chenoweth, who joined the Korbel School in 2012, has focused her research on investigating whether and when nonviolence works — and influential groups around the world are taking notice. Photo: Wayne Armstrong

The Philippines’ famed “Yellow Revolution” of the 1980s, which resulted in the departure of President Ferdinand Marcos from office and the restoration of democracy in the country, also was one of history’s greatest nonviolent protests. The streets were filled with thousands of unarmed Filipinos — so many weaponless citizens that, when the order came down to shoot, security forces ignored the command or deliberately jammed their weapons.

“Now imagine if the mass uprising had been an armed one,” says Erica Chenoweth, an associate professor at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies. “Security forces wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot.”

Chenoweth, who joined the Korbel School in 2012, has focused her research on investigating whether and when nonviolence works — and influential groups around the world are taking notice. In December, she was named to Foreign Policy magazine’s list of “Top Global Thinkers.” The editors said Chenoweth earned her spot on the list “for proving Gandhi right.”

“She uses her data to show that nonviolent campaigns over the last century were twice as likely to succeed as violent ones, [along with] arguments about current events [and] why U.S. strikes on Syria weren’t wise, and why Egypt’s pro-government sit-ins over the summer were unlikely to work,” the editors wrote.

Chenoweth has had her findings published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Economist and elsewhere. In 2013, Chenoweth and her co-author, Maria Stephan, took home the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, along with a $100,000 prize, for their book, “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict” (Columbia University Press, 2011). The book also won the prestigious 2012 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award, which is given annually for the best book on government, politics or international affairs.

In the book, Chenoweth asserts that nonviolent resistance to oppressive governments outperforms violent resistance by a two-to-one margin — even in highly repressive, powerful and authoritarian contexts. The source of this success, she contends, is people power: mass, broad-based participation by ordinary people.

Chenoweth’s research raises interesting questions about how governments respond to resistance. Many resort to violence, she notes, because they “still operate on so-called realist assumptions: that every country has to fend for itself; that even if they would like to pursue nonviolent policies, their enemies will see this as weakness and take advantage of it; and that to show strength they must demonstrate the willingness and capacity to deploy violent force to inflict harm on would-be aggressors.”

Chenoweth — who teaches classes on international relations, terrorism, civil war, nonviolent resistance and contemporary warfare — admits the nonviolent path is an uphill battle. “Effective nonviolent action takes a lot of preparation, planning, training and discipline,” she says. “Just going into the streets and demonstrating doesn’t mean that anything is going to change. Strategy must lead tactics, not the reverse. The good news is there are a lot of resources for people who want nonviolence: training programs and books and DVDs about how people have used civil resistance to confront oppression.”

Despite the amount of violence reported in the media, Chenoweth says the world “probably just lived through the most peaceful decade in human history, in terms of deaths from war. As of 2011, all of the world’s wars were concentrated in just a handful of countries.”

But, she says, 2013 was an especially troubling year. Heated clashes continued or erupted in Syria, Central African Republic, Sudan and South Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Myanmar and Mexico.

“Conflict-related deaths swung back up to early-1990s levels. So we’re moving in the wrong direction.”

Still, episodes of mass nonviolent action are making headway, she says, noting that more nonviolent conflicts occurred in the first 13 years of the new millennium than in any similar period in recorded history.

“The overall picture is that the world is a pretty contentious place right now,” she says. “It’s just that some people are using violence, and others are using often highly disruptive and effective nonviolent action.”

Chenoweth traces her interest in the nonviolence movement to a 2006 workshop held by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, a private educational foundation. “I became intrigued, especially when I realized there wasn’t a lot of systematic empirical research on the topic,” she says. “The field was defined mostly by comparative case studies and theory.”

Chenoweth relished the opportunity to contribute original research to the cause.

“I get immense satisfaction from being of service to others,” she says. “My major motivation is to be as useful as possible to those who are trying to bring about peace in the world.”

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