People power

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_power

 

Political term
Goals	political change, democratisation

Mass protest in Libya, 2011.

"People Power" is a political term denoting the populist driving force of any social movement which invokes the authority of grassroots opinion and willpower, usually in opposition to that of conventionally organised corporate or political forces. People power protest attempts to make changes in the political process of a given state - it refers to “revolutions driven by civil society mobilisation” which result in a reconfiguration of political power in a given state. As denoted by the name, this method is reliant on popular participation “civilian-based” and therefore does not include isolated acts or protest without an overarching organisation by a group of people. People power can be manifested as a small-scale protest or campaign for neighborhood change; or as wide-ranging, revolutionary action involving national street demonstrations, work stoppages and general strikes intending to overthrow an existing government and/or political system. With regards to tactics employed by People Power movements, both nonviolence and violence have been used throughout history: as was the case in the non-violent 1986 Philippines revolution which overthrew the Marcos régime, or the violent uprising in Libya in 2011.

As denoted by the name, people power movements are reliant on popular participation and are therefore supported by civilians, as opposed to a governmental organisation or military wing. For this reason, academics and historians often consider the grassroots nature of people power movements, as they express the discontent of the governed.

History

The earliest origins of people power protests are often identified as in “the third world, across at the second half of the twentieth century”. The socio-political and economic circumstances of this period popularised grassroots movements in the Third World. These circumstances include: a general trend in growing attention to human rights across the globe; advancements in communication technologies which allowed for dissemination of revolutionary ideas and organisational capabilities; minimal censorship of citizens by the government; among others. A specifically renowned instantiation of people power is the ‘flower power’ movement of the 1960s, which was organised in opposition to the Vietnam War.

Goals

The general academic consensus is that people power movements are executed with the goal of changing the existing political structure in a given country, and in most cases, installing a democratic political system. As such, social movements or acts of protest which either have a goal unassociated with a political ideology, or incoherent movements with no end goal at all, are considered excluded from people power.

Strategies

With regards to the numerous strategies carried out by people power activists, movements of this kind may involve violence and pacifism. Academic scholars recognise that because people power movements operate with the end goal of changing the existing political structure, if violence is to be used it will be “pragmatic or strategic” rather than principled non-violence. Pragmatic non-violence can include “non-physcial pressures” or other measures to “undermine the opponents power”. As such, the category of people power cannot be applied to protests which are ends in themselves to exclusively promote a nonviolent philosophy. Rather, people power will use violent or nonviolent strategies — or both — to achieve desired outcomes with specific political goals. A case in point is the EDSA Revolution in the Philippines of 1986, which although was intended to be a peaceful revolution, actually adopted violent tactics. However, it is important to note that historically, when compared to violent campaigns, more cases of non-violent people power movements have succeeded in achieving their political goals as they gain wider resonance with audiences outside the movement.

The level of organisation of people power movements varies from “relatively spontaneous…to pre-planned and highly coordinated”. There is not one specific method of planning or coordination necessary for a people power movement: so long as the tactics employed reflect a sustained effort from a “grassroots populace”. In terms of examples of different tactics employed, a wide range of strategies of protest and persuasion have been used. Strategies used by people power activists often engage the wider population so as to maximise participation and general engagement. Below is a list of strategies that would be exemplary of people power movements.

Small-scale examples

Collecting Signatures 2018

• Social media and network communications to share photos, images, and longer texts
• Signatures for petitions
• House meetings and events
• Posters, letter-writing, phone-calling
• Contact with media outlets or press
• Civil disobedience
• Fundraising and education campaigns
• Direct appeals through messages and emails
• Crowdsourcing campaigns to maximise participation in communities

Large-scale examples

• Organised “acts of sabotage” against government which anticipate armed and violent conflicts
• Nonviolent action and campaigns
• Violent street demonstrations and marches
• Blockades
• Work stoppages
• General strikes
• Legal action
• Boycotts, investments or disinvestments

April Carter, leading scholar on grassroots action and peace studies, identifies three advantages with the strategies of people power protests:

It reflects how those engaged in strikes, demonstrations and occupation of key buildings, and facing down armed security forces, see themselves: the people rising against oppressive rulers; it links the idea of resistance to the idea of democracy, which is the goal of the mass protests; it suggests the central strategy (conscious or intuitive) behind such peaceful revolts: that rulers can be toppled when the ruled refuse to obey them any longer.

Notable examples

The Philippines (1986)

Also known as the EDSA revolution, this instance of people power was a series of demonstrations which took place in Manila between February 22nd and 25th 1986. Protesters expressed contempt towards the incumbent President Ferdinand Marcos after allegations of widespread corruption and persisting internal issues — including a prevalent economic disparity and a worsening recession. The ESDA’s revolution had the ultimate goal of overthrowing the Marcos dictatorship and replacing it with a new political structure. Ultimately, this example of people power is regarded as a success in achieving the goals of the movement, signified by the fall of the Marcos’ dictatorship and his subsequent exile to Hawaii in 1986. In his place, the revolutionary government led by Corazon Aquino was installed, electing Aquino as the eleventh president of The Philippines.

Myanmar (1988-1990)

Also known as the 8888 Uprising, this movement aimed to overthrow the military and totalitarian regime of General Ne Win of the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP). The Burmese movement had roots not only within the student, but also the religious populace: the campaign was led by students, monks and nuns. These activists were met with heavy government repression, in which there was over 3,000 casualties in demonstrations. Overall, Burma’s people power movement was unsuccessful as the campaign was suppressed by the military regime, without resulting in a democratic change to the political structure. Although the movement did encourage international action in the form of economic and diplomatic sanctions, the United Nations has made recent declarations that the country still suffers internal political corruption, reporting recent elections as fraudulent.

Eastern European satellite states (1980s-1990s)

Berlin Wall Protests, 1989.

The dissolution of the Soviet Bloc during the end of the Cold War is also recognised as a people power as it was a culmination of growing disappointment with communist leadership in the USSR’s satellite states. Grassroots measures included, but is not limited to, the Solidarity movement in Poland and the Velvet Revolution in Czhechoslovakia. These movements established the foundations for the Revolutions of 1989, which saw a wider change in the sociopolitical structure of Eastern Europe. The fall of the Berlin Wall in November successfully dismantled the Soviet Union and dissolved of the Soviet Bloc, subsequently allowing for the creation of individual, democratic state governments.

Recent examples

The Maldives (2004-2008)

Maldivian people power campaigns towards incumbent President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom of the Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) took place between 2004 and 2008. Protests were direct at President Abdul Gayoom’s autocratic rule, which involved immense internal human rights abuses such as arbitrary arrests, torture, politically motivated killings. The movement was successful: Gayoom was voted out in the 2008 election. However, he re-entered the political sphere in 2012 as people power opposition began to diminish. Therefore this movement is considered a failure in that it didn’t lead to a sustained change in the political structure of The Maldives.

Tunisia (2011)

The Tunisian civil resistance movement was catalysed when labour unions voiced dissatisfaction with internal economic issues, corruption, lack of political freedoms and poor living conditions brought on by the dictatorial rule of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The people power movement started in 2010 when civilian Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire in response to being arrested and harassed by local authorities. This people power campaign was largely based on bottom-up protests such street demonstrations, and was organised on online media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. The Tunisian Revolution is widely regarded as a successful people power campaign, as the dictatorial president fled the country on 14th January after widespread demonstrations. This contemporary example also served as a major inspiration for the Arab Spring revolution.

Libyan Civil War (2011)

Often regarded as a violent example of a people power movement, the Libyan Civil War took place between the 15th of February and 23rd of October in 2011. The goal of the movement was to overthrow Islamic modernist Muammar Gaddafi’s government, which was notorious for a systemic violation of human rights in Libya. This case of people power represents a relatively violent transfer of power — the International Criminal Court estimated that nearly 10,000 casualties occurred during this event. Rebel forces partook in street protests which contributed to massive general public damage, to which the Gaddafi government responded with the employment of warplanes, artillery, warplanes, and helicopter gunships. The movement ended when the National Transitional Council (NTC) was established as the legal representative of Libya and replaced the Gaddafi government, and the subsequent death of Muammar Gaddafi.

However, the extent to which the Libyan Civil War is considered a success is debated — although Gaddafi’s government was replaced, a second civil war was started in Libya after Gaddafi loyalists refused to cooperate with the new government.

People power and people's war

People power is often associated with People’s War. People’s War is also a social movement, however with the specific purpose of “confrontation until they [protesters] have acquired the military strength to seize control of the state, or it disintegrates from within”. The main difference is that whereas people power seeks to dissolve autocratic and repressive regimes, people’s war refers to guerrilla conflict with ideological motives, such as an insurrection.

Below is a list of commonalities between the social movements of people power and people's war:

• "winning majority support
• mobilising excluded sections of the population
• encouraging defection of troops and police
• building alternative institutions from below and
• promoting solidarity and fearlessness”

Criticism

The methodology of people power has been criticised from both academic and non-scholarly fields. Firstly, given the movement’s grassroots origins, people power has been criticised for excluding elite individuals such as academics from engaging in social movements. This consequently alienates individuals who potentially hold expert knowledge and experience from the organisation and execution of social movements. As a result, people power movements can reflect an “arrogance, or sheer inefficiency”.

Furthermore, people power methods are controversial in terms of their ability to sustain success. Historically, there is no guarantee that engaging in these movements will secure “permanent radical change”. This was the case of The Maldives which resulted in only a short term change to the political structure. Additionally, people power is controversial for producing unintended, or in some cases counterproductive, consequences in the political situation of a state. Military and autocratic governments “may be able mobilise their full forces of repression to quell for a time even the bravest resistance”, as seen in the example of Burma.

Boycott

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott

A boycott is an act of nonviolent, voluntary abstention from a product, person, organization, or country as an expression of protest. It is usually for moral, social, political, or environmental reasons. The purpose of a boycott is to inflict some economic loss on the target, or to indicate a moral outrage, to try to compel the target to alter an objectionable behavior.

The word is named after Captain Charles Boycott, agent of an absentee landlord in Ireland, against whom the tactic was successfully employed after a suggestion by Irish nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell and his Irish Land League in 1880.

Sometimes, a boycott can be a form of consumer activism, sometimes called moral purchasing. When a similar practice is legislated by a national government, it is known as a sanction. Frequently, however, the threat of boycotting a business is an empty threat, with no significant effect on sales.

Etymology

Vanity Fair caricature of Charles C. Boycott

 

Protesters advocating boycott of KFC due to animal welfare concerns

The word boycott entered the English language during the Irish "Land War" and derives from Captain Charles Boycott, the land agent of an absentee landlord, Lord Erne, who lived in County Mayo, Ireland. Captain Boycott was the target of social ostracism organized by the Irish Land League in 1880. As harvests had been poor that year, Lord Erne offered his tenants a ten percent reduction in their rents. In September of that year, protesting tenants demanded a twenty-five percent reduction, which Lord Erne refused. Boycott then attempted to evict eleven tenants from the land. Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish leader, proposed that when dealing with tenants who take farms where another tenant was evicted, rather than resorting to violence, everyone in the locality should shun them. While Parnell's speech did not refer to land agents or landlords, the tactic was first applied to Boycott when the alarm was raised about the evictions. Despite the short-term economic hardship to those undertaking this action, Boycott soon found himself isolated – his workers stopped work in the fields and stables, as well as in his house. Local businessmen stopped trading with him, and the local postman refused to deliver mail.

The concerted action taken against him meant that Boycott was unable to hire anyone to harvest his crops in his charge. After the harvest, the "boycott" was successfully continued and soon the new word was everywhere. The New-York Tribune reporter, James Redpath, first wrote of the boycott in the international press. The Irish author, George Moore, reported: 'Like a comet the verb 'boycott' appeared.' It was used by The Times in November 1880 as a term for organized isolation. According to an account in the book The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland by Michael Davitt, the term was promoted by Fr. John O'Malley of County Mayo to "signify ostracism applied to a landlord or agent like Boycott". The Times first reported on November 20, 1880: "The people of New Pallas have resolved to 'boycott' them and refused to supply them with food or drink." The Daily News wrote on December 13, 1880: "Already the stoutest-hearted are yielding on every side to the dread of being 'Boycotted'." By January of the following year, the word was being used figuratively: "Dame Nature arose.... She 'Boycotted' London from Kew to Mile End."

Girlcott

Girlcott, a pun on "boycott", is a boycott intended to focus on the rights or actions of women. The term was coined in 1968 by American Lacey O'Neal during the 1968 Summer Olympics in the context of protests by male African American athletes. The term was later used by retired tennis player Billie Jean King in 1999 in reference to Wimbledon, while discussing equal pay for women players. The term "girlcott" was revived in 2005 by the Women and Girls Foundation in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania against Abercrombie & Fitch.

Notable boycotts

Main article: List of boycotts

 

The 1976 Montreal, 1980 Moscow, and 1984 Los Angeles Olympic boycotts

 

Nameplate of Dr. Werner Liebenthal, Notary & Advocate. The plate was hung outside his office on Martin Luther Str, Schöneberg, Berlin. In 1933, following the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service the plate was painted black by the Nazis, who boycotted Jewish owned offices.

Although the term itself was not coined until 1880, the practice dates back to at least the 1790s, when supporters of the British abolitionists led and supported the free produce movement. Other instances include:

• the Iranian Tobacco Boycott in 1891
• Civil rights movement boycotts to protest segregation (e.g., Montgomery & Tallahassee Bus Boycotts)
• the United Farm Workers union grape and lettuce boycotts
• the American boycott of British goods during the American Revolution, such as the Boston Tea Party
• the 1905 Chinese boycott of American products to protest the extension of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1902.
• the Indian boycott of British goods organized by Mahatma Gandhi
• the successful Jewish boycott organized against Henry Ford in the United States, in the 1920s
• the boycott of Japanese products in China after the May Fourth Movement
• the antisemitic boycott of Jewish-owned businesses in Nazi Germany during the 1930s
• the Jewish anti-Nazi boycott of German goods in Lithuania, the US, Britain, Poland and Mandatory Palestine during 1933
• the Arab League boycott of Israel and companies trading with Israel.
• the worldwide Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign led by Palestinian civil society against the State of Israel.
• The global fossil fuel divestment movement, described by Desmond Tutu as an "apartheid-style boycott to save the planet", and considered to be the biggest boycott-style campaign in history.

During the 1973 oil crisis, the Arab countries enacted a crude oil embargo against the West. Other examples include the US-led boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, the Soviet-led boycott of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and the movement that advocated "disinvestment" in South Africa during the 1980s in opposition to that country's apartheid regime. The first Olympic boycott was in the 1956 Summer Olympics with several countries boycotting the games for different reasons. Iran also has an informal Olympic boycott against participating against Israel, and Iranian athletes typically bow out or claim injuries when pitted against Israelis (see Arash Miresmaeili).

Academic boycotts have been organized against countries—for example, the mid- and late 20th-century academic boycotts of South Africa in protest of apartheid practices and the academic boycotts of Israel in the early 2000s.

Application and uses

Protesters advocating boycott of BP due to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill

Boycotts are now much easier to successfully initiate due to the Internet. Examples include the gay and lesbian boycott of advertisers of the Dr. Laura talk show, gun owners' similar boycott of advertisers of Rosie O'Donnell's talk show and (later) magazine, and gun owners' boycott of Smith & Wesson following that company's March 2000 settlement with the Clinton administration. They may be initiated very easily using either websites (the Dr. Laura boycott), newsgroups (the Rosie O'Donnell boycotts), or even mailing lists. Internet-initiated boycotts "snowball" very quickly compared to other forms of organization. Viral Labeling is a new boycott method using the new digital technology proposed by the Multitude Project and applied for the first time against Walt Disney around Christmas time in 2009.

African-Americans in Dallas boycotting a Korean owned Kwik Stop in a mostly black community.

Some boycotts center on particular businesses, such as recent protests regarding Costco, Walmart, Ford Motor Company, or the diverse products of Philip Morris. Another form of boycott identifies a number of different companies involved in a particular issue, such as the Sudan Divestment campaign, the "Boycott Bush" campaign. The Boycott Bush website was set up by Ethical Consumer after U.S. President George W. Bush failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol – the website identified Bush's corporate funders and the brands and products they produce. Historically boycotts have also targeted individual businesses. During the early decades of the twentieth century hotels in Australia were regularly targeted over the cost of alcohol, accommodation and food, as well as mistreatment of employees.

As a response to consumer boycotts of large-scale and multinational businesses, some companies have marketed brands that do not bear the company's name on the packaging or in advertising. Activists such as Ethical Consumer produce information that reveals which companies own which brands and products so consumers can practice boycotts or moral purchasing more effectively. Another organization, Buycott.com, provides an Internet-based smart-phone application that scans Universal Product Codes and displays corporate relationships to the user.

"Boycotts" may be formally organized by governments as well. In reality, government "boycotts" are just a type of embargo. Notably, the first formal, nationwide act of the Nazi government against German Jews was a national embargo of Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933.

Where the target of a boycott derives all or part of its revenues from other businesses, as a newspaper does, boycott organizers may address the target's commercial customers.

Collective behavior

The sociology of collective behavior is concerned with causes and conditions pertaining to behavior carried out by a collective, as opposed to an individual (e.g., riots, panics, fads/crazes, boycotts). Boycotts have been characterized by some as different from traditional forms of collective behavior in that they appear to be highly rational and dependent on existing norms and structures. Lewis Killian criticizes that characterization, pointing to the Tallahassee bus boycott as one example of a boycott that aligns with traditional collective behavior theory.

Philip Balsiger points out that political consumption (e.g., boycotts) tends to follow dual-purpose action repertoires, or scripts, which are used publicly to pressure boycott targets and to educate and recruit consumers. Balsiger finds one example in Switzerland, documenting activities of the Clean Clothes Campaign, a public NGO-backed campaign, that highlighted and disseminated information about local companies' ethical practices.

Dixon, Martin, and Nau analyzed 31 collective behavior campaigns against corporations that took place during the 1990s and 2000s. Protests considered successful included boycotts and were found to include a third party, either in the capacity of state intervention or of media coverage. State intervention may make boycotts more efficacious when corporation leaders fear the imposition of regulations. Media intervention may be a crucial contributor to a successful boycott because of its potential to damage the reputation of a corporation. Target corporations that were the most visible were found to be the most vulnerable to either market (protest causing economic loss) or mediated (caused by third-party) disruption. Third-party actors (i.e., the state or media) were more influential when a corporation had a high reputation—when third-party activity was low, highly reputable corporations did not make the desired concessions to boycotters; when third-party activity was high, highly reputable corporations satisfied the demands of boycotters. The boycott, a prima facie market-disruptive tactic, often precipitates mediated disruption. The researchers' analysis led them to conclude that when boycott targets are highly visible and directly interact with and depend on local consumers who can easily find substitutes, they are more likely to make concessions. Koku, Akhigbe, and Springer also emphasize the importance of boycotts' threat of reputational damage, finding that boycotts alone pose more of a threat to a corporation's reputation than to its finances directly.

Philippe Delacote points out that a problem contributing to a generally low probability of success for any boycott is the fact that the consumers with the most power to cause market disruption are the least likely to participate; the opposite is true for consumers with the least power. Another collective behavior problem is the difficulty, or impossibility, of direct coordination amongst a dispersed group of boycotters. Yuksel and Mryteza emphasize the collective behavior problem of free riding in consumer boycotts, noting that some individuals may perceive participating to be too great an immediate personal utility sacrifice. They also note that boycotting consumers took the collectivity into account when deciding to participate, that is, consideration of joining a boycott as goal-oriented collective activity increased one's likelihood of participating. A corporation-targeted protest repertoire including boycotts and education of consumers presents the highest likelihood for success.

Legality

Protesters calling for a boycott of Israel

Boycotts are generally legal in developed countries. Occasionally, some restrictions may apply; for instance, in the United States, it may be unlawful for a union to engage in "secondary boycotts" (to request that its members boycott companies that supply items to an organization already under a boycott, in the United States); however, the union is free to use its right to speak freely to inform its members of the fact that suppliers of a company are breaking a boycott; its members then may take whatever action they deem appropriate, in consideration of that fact.

United Kingdom

When the boycott first emerged in Ireland, it presented a serious dilemma for Gladstone's government. The individual actions that constituted a boycott were recognized by legislators as essential to a free society. However, overall a boycott amounted to a harsh, extrajudicial punishment. The Prevention of Crime (Ireland) Act 1882 made it illegal to use "intimidation" to instigate or enforce a boycott, but not to participate in one.

The conservative jurist James Fitzjames Stephen justified laws against boycotting by claiming that the practice amounted to "usurpation of the functions of government" and ought therefore to be dealt with as "the modern representatives of the old conception of high treason".

United States

"Boycott Xinjiang Genocide Products! Also don't attack our Chinese neighbors. Just say no to xenophobia and racism!" sticker on New York University campus in 2020

Boycotts are legal under common law. The right to engage in commerce, social intercourse, and friendship includes the implied right not to engage in commerce, social intercourse, and friendship. Since a boycott is voluntary and nonviolent, the law cannot stop it. Opponents of boycotts historically have the choice of suffering under it, yielding to its demands, or attempting to suppress it through extralegal means, such as force and coercion.

In the United States, the antiboycott provisions of the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) apply to all "U.S. persons", defined to include individuals and companies located in the United States and their foreign affiliates. The antiboycott provisions are intended to prevent United States citizens and companies being used as instrumentalities of a foreign government's foreign policy. The EAR forbids participation in or material support of boycotts initiated by foreign governments, for example, the Arab League boycott of Israel. These persons are subject to the law when their activities relate to the sale, purchase, or transfer of goods or services (including the sale of information) within the United States or between the United States and a foreign country. This covers exports and imports, financing, forwarding and shipping, and certain other transactions that may take place wholly offshore.

However, the EAR only applies to foreign government initiated boycotts: a domestic boycott campaign arising within the United States that has the same object as the foreign-government-initiated boycott appears to be lawful, assuming that it is an independent effort not connected with the foreign government's boycott.

Other legal impediments to certain boycotts remain. One set are refusal to deal laws, which prohibit concerted efforts to eliminate competition by refusal to buy from or to sell to a party. Similarly, boycotts may also run afoul of anti-discrimination laws; for example, New Jersey's Law Against Discrimination prohibits any place that offers goods, services and facilities to the general public, such as a restaurant, from denying or withholding any accommodation to (i.e., not to engage in commerce with) an individual because of that individual's race (etc.).

Alternatives

A boycott is typically a one-time affair intended to correct an outstanding single wrong. When extended for a long period of time, or as part of an overall program of awareness-raising or reforms to laws or regimes, a boycott is part of moral purchasing, and some prefer those economic or political terms. Most organized consumer boycotts today are focused on long-term change of buying habits, and so fit into part of a larger political program, with many techniques that require a longer structural commitment, e.g. reform to commodity markets, or government commitment to moral purchasing, e.g. the longstanding boycott of South African businesses to protest apartheid already alluded to. These stretch the meaning of a "boycott."

Another form of consumer boycotting is substitution for an equivalent product; for example, Mecca Cola and Qibla Cola have been marketed as substitutes for Coca-Cola among Muslim populations.

A prime target of boycotts is consumerism itself, e.g. "International Buy Nothing Day" celebrated globally on the Friday after Thanksgiving Day in the United States.

Another version of the boycott is targeted divestment, or disinvestment. Targeted divestment involves campaigning for withdrawal of investment, for example the Sudan Divestment campaign involves putting pressure on companies, often through shareholder activism, to withdraw investment that helps the Sudanese government perpetuate genocide in Darfur. Only if a company refuses to change its behavior in response to shareholder engagement does the targeted divestment model call for divestment from that company. Such targeted divestment implicitly excludes companies involved in agriculture, the production and distribution of consumer goods, or the provision of goods and services intended to relieve human suffering or to promote health, religious and spiritual activities, or education.

When students are dissatisfied with a political or academic issue, a common tactic for students' unions is to start a boycott of classes (called a student strike among faculty and students since it is meant to resemble strike action by organized labor) to put pressure on the governing body of the institution, such as a university, vocational college or a school, since such institutions cannot afford to have a cohort miss an entire year.

Sports events

Further information: List of Olympic Games boycotts

The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin were held after the Nazis rose to power three years prior. Despite advocacy from numerous officials and activists, no country boycotted the games, although the United States was close to it. In the 1970s and 1980s South Africa became the target of a sports boycott.

After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the United States led a 66-nation boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics much to Soviet chagrin. The USSR then organized an Eastern Bloc boycott of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, which allowed the Americans to win far more medals than expected.

In at least one case, a boycott has been documented due to on-field results of a game; the residents of New Orleans boycotted television broadcasts of Super Bowl LIII after a controversial officiating call led to the hometown New Orleans Saints losing the NFC Championship Game and being denied a trip to the Super Bowl. Viewership of the game dropped in the city by half compared to Super Bowl LII, contributing to a noticeable drop in the overall national ratings, but the boycott failed to achieve any meaningful remedy for the Saints or their fans.

Diplomatic boycott

Nations have from time to time used "diplomatic boycotts" to isolate other governments. Following the May Coup of 1903, Great Britain led the major powers in a diplomatic boycott against Serbia, which was a refusal to recognize the post-coup government of Serbia altogether by withdrawing ambassadors and other diplomatic officials from the country; it ended three years later in 1906, when Great Britain renewed diplomatic relations through a decree signed by King Edward VII.

A diplomatic boycott is when diplomatic participation is withheld from an event such as the Olympics but athletic participation is not limited. In 2021, a number of Western nations, led by the United States, Britain and Canada, protested the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics through a diplomatic boycott, citing China's policies concerning the Uyghur genocide and human rights violations in the country.

Civil resistance

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Civil resistance is a form of political action that relies on the use of nonviolent resistance by ordinary people to challenge a particular power, force, policy or regime. Civil resistance operates through appeals to the adversary, pressure and coercion: it can involve systematic attempts to undermine or expose the adversary's sources of power (or pillars of support, such as police, military, clergy, business elite, etc.). Forms of action have included demonstrations, vigils and petitions; strikes, go-slows, boycotts and emigration movements; and sit-ins, occupations, constructive program, and the creation of parallel institutions of government.

Some 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. Civil resistance cases can be found throughout history and in many modern struggles, against both tyrannical rulers and democratically elected governments. Mahatma Gandhi led the first documented civil resistance campaign (using three primary tactics: civil disobedience, marches, and creation of parallel institutions) to free India from British imperialism. The phenomenon of civil resistance is often associated with the advancement of human rights and democracy.

Historical examples

Civil resistance is a long-standing and widespread phenomenon in human history. Several works on civil resistance adopt a historical approach to the analysis of the subject. Cases of civil resistance, both successful and unsuccessful, include:

• Mohandas K. Gandhi's role in the Indian independence movement in 1917–1947
• Martin Luther King Jr.'s, James Bevel's, and other activists' roles in the Civil Rights Movement in 1955–1968
• the Sudanese Revolution against military regime (leader Ibrahim Abood )-1958- 1964.
• Aspects of the Northern Ireland civil rights movement in 1967–1972
• a variety of raids on U. S. draft boards to protest the war in Vietnam, 1967-1971
• the Sudanese Revolution against military regime (Jaffer Numairy )-1969- 1984.
• the Revolution of the Carnations in Portugal in 1974–75, supporting the military coup of 25 April 1974
• the Iranian Revolution in 1977–1979, before Khomeini's advent to power in February 1979
• the Polish Solidarity Trade Union used civil resistance to protest against the Soviet controlled government, even after delegalization and numerous crackdowns.
• the People Power Revolution in the Philippines in the 1980s that ousted President Marcos
• the campaigns against apartheid in South Africa, especially before 1961, and during the period of 1983–1994.
• the mass mobilization against authoritarian rule in Pinochet's Chile, 1983–1988
• the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 in China
• the various movements contributing to the revolutions of 1989 in central and eastern Europe
• the 1988–1990 Singing Revolution that led to the restoration of independence of the three Soviet-occupied Baltic countries
• the campaign against Serbian domination in Kosovo, 1990–1998, that was followed by war
• the revolutions in Serbia in 2000, Georgia in 2003, and Ukraine in 2004, all of which involved successful resistance against an incumbent government that had refused to acknowledge its defeat in an election and had sought to falsify the election results
• the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon in 2005, following the assassination of former prime minister Rafic Hariri on 14 February 2005, and calling for Syrian military withdrawal from Lebanon
• the demonstrations, mainly led by students and monks, in the Saffron Revolution in Burma in 2007
• the 2009 Iranian presidential election protests following evidence of electoral manipulation in the elections of June 2009

Egypt, 25 January 2011: marchers in Cairo with 'OUT' signs on the 'Day of Anger' against President Mubarak. On 11 February he left office.

• the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, starting in Tunisia in December 2010, and resulting, in 2011, in the fall of rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. In some countries the movements were followed by war (e.g. Syrian Civil War and War in Yemen) or by a return to military rule, as in Egypt in 2013 following the Egyptian Revolution of 2011
• the 15-M or Indignados movement, which included the peaceful occupation of squares all over Spain in May–June 2011, and a mosaic of other forms of civil disobedience by many of the groups that were created, or strengthened, after the squares occupations. In particular the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages, or PAH.
• the Gezi Park protests in Turkey in 2013, in opposition to urban development plans, and also to government encroachments on freedom of expression and on Turkey's secularist traditions
• the early phases of the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine in 2013–14, demanding closer integration with European Union countries, and the resignation of President Viktor Yanukovych. Various tactics of unarmed civil resistance were also frequently employed in the Russian-occupied settlements during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
• the 2014 Hong Kong protests, also known as "Occupy Central" and the "Umbrella movement", opposing the 2014–15 Hong Kong electoral reform in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
• Women's marches in USA from January 2017 Women's March onwards to resist President Donald Trump's sexist statements.
• Extinction Rebellion (XR), established in the May 2018. An international nonviolent movement with three climate and ecological emergency demands and 10 Principles and Values.

Numerous other campaigns, both successful and unsuccessful, could be included in a longer listing. In 1967 Gene Sharp produced a list of 84 cases. He followed this with further surveys. In 2013 Maciej Bartkowski authored a long list of cases in the past 200 years, arranged alphabetically by country. The International Center on Nonviolent Conflict's (ICNC) website houses an enormous Resource Library with dozens of case studies and other resources about civil resistance campaigns and movements as well as the dynamics of civil resistance. ICNC's blog, Minds of the Movement, also serves as a thorough compendium of civil resistance campaigns and movements throughout history and today. Swarthmore's Global Nonviolent Action Database is an additional key resource documenting hundreds of civil resistance campaigns and movements.

Effectiveness

It is not easy to devise a method of proving the relative success of different methods of struggle. Often there are problems in identifying a given campaign as successful or otherwise. In 2008 Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth produced a widely noted article on "Why Civil Resistance Works", the most thorough and detailed analysis (to that date) of the rate of success of civil resistance campaigns, as compared to violent resistance campaigns. After looking at over 300 cases of both types of campaign, from 1900 to 2006, they concluded that "nonviolent resistance methods are more likely to be successful than violent methods in achieving strategic objectives". Their article (later developed into a book) noted particularly that "resistance campaigns that compel loyalty shifts among security forces and civilian bureaucrats are likely to succeed".

On the other hand, the evidence of several of the 2011 uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa appears to provide contrasting pathways by which this logic may fail to materialise, with splits in the armed forces contributing towards civil war in Libya and Syria, and a shift in armed forces loyalty in Egypt failing to contribute towards enduring democratic reform. Criticisms of the central thesis of the book on Why Civil Resistance Works have included:

1. Forming judgements about whether a campaign is a success or failure is inherently difficult: the answer may depend on the time-frame used, and on necessarily subjective judgments about what constitutes success. Some of the authors' decisions on this are debatable. Similar difficulties arise in deciding whether a campaign is violent or non-violent, when on the ground both strategies may co-exist in several ways.
2. Regimes transitioning from autocracy to democracy tend to be highly unstable, so an initial success for a movement may be followed by a more general failure.
3. Perhaps, more generally, sufficient account is not taken of the possibility that violence often takes place in circumstances that were already violent and chaotic, stacking the odds against any successful outcome for violence.

In July 2020, Erica Chenoweth's new research was published in the Journal of Democracy, in which she finds that the success rates of civil resistance have been dropping since the beginning of the 2010s. Some of the reasons identified include the authoritarian learning curve and over-reliance of activists on digital forms of organizing such as social media campaigns. What's more, the Covid-19 pandemic which began in 2020 led large numbers of movements worldwide to cancel public actions and instead shift focus on internal priorities, such as strategic planning.

Reasons for choosing to use civil resistance

Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese pro-democracy leader, greeting supporters from Bago State, Burma, 14 August 2011. She has stated that she was attracted to non-violent civil resistance, not on moral grounds, but "on practical political grounds". Photo: Htoo Tay Zar

Some leaders of civil resistance struggles have urged the use of non-violent methods for primarily ethical reasons, while others have emphasized practical considerations. Some have indicated that both of these types of factor have to be taken into account – and that they necessarily overlap.

In his chapter on "Pilgrimage to Nonviolence" Martin Luther King Jr. gave a notably multi-faceted account of the various considerations, experiences and influences that constituted his "intellectual odyssey to nonviolence". By 1954 this had led to the intellectual conviction that "nonviolent resistance was one of the most potent weapons available to oppressed people in their quest for social justice."

Some have opted for civil resistance when they were in opposition to the government, but then have later, when in government, adopted or accepted very different policies and methods of action. For example, in one of her BBC Reith Lectures, first broadcast in July 2011, Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy campaigner in Myanmar (formerly Burma), stated: "Gandhi's teachings on non-violent civil resistance and the way in which he had put his theories into practice have become part of the working manual of those who would change authoritarian administrations through peaceful means. I was attracted to the way of non-violence, but not on moral grounds, as some believe. Only on practical political grounds." Subsequently, as State Counsellor of Myanmar from 2016 onwards, she incurred much criticism, especially in connection with the failure to prevent, and to condemn, the killings and expulsions of the Rohingya people in Rakhine State.

Relationship to other forms of power

The experience of civil resistance suggests that it can at least partially replace other forms of power. Some have seen civil resistance as offering, potentially, a complete alternative to power politics. The core vision is of nonviolent methods replacing armed force in many or all of its forms.

Several writers, while sharing the vision of civil resistance as progressively overcoming the use of force, have warned against a narrowly instrumental view of non-violent action. For example, Joan V. Bondurant, a specialist on the Gandhian philosophy of conflict, indicated concern about "the symbolic violence of those who engage in conflict with techniques which they, at least, perceive to be nonviolent." She saw Gandhian satyagraha as a form of "creative conflict" and as "contrasted both to violence and to methods not violent or just short of violence".

It is generally difficult in practice to separate out entirely the use of civil resistance and power-political considerations of various kinds. One frequently-encountered aspect of this problem is that regimes facing opposition taking the form of civil resistance often launch verbal attacks on the opposition in terms designed to suggest that civil resistance is simply a front for more sinister forces. It has sometimes been attacked as being planned and directed from abroad, and as intimately connected to terrorism, imperialism, communism etc. A classic case was the Soviet accusation that the 1968 Prague Spring, and the civil resistance after the Soviet-led invasion of August 1968, were the result of Western machinations. Similarly, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, in March 2011, accused "enemies" of using "very sophisticated tools" to undermine Syria's stability; and President Vladimir Putin of Russia, in speeches in 2014, described events in Ukraine and the Arab countries as foreign-influenced. Such accusations of sinister power-political involvement are often presented without convincing evidence.

There can be some more plausible connections between civil resistance and other forms of power. Although civil resistance can sometimes be a substitute for other forms of power, it can also operate in conjunction with them. Such conjunction is never problem-free. Michael Randle has identified a core difficulty regarding strategies that seek to combine the use of violent and non-violent methods in the same campaign: "The obvious problem about employing a mixed strategy in the course of an actual struggle is that the dynamics of military and civil resistance are at some levels diametrically opposed to each other." However, the connections between civil resistance and other forms of power are not limited to the idea of a "mixed strategy". They can assume many forms. Eight ways in which civil resistance can in practice relate to other forms of power are identified here, with examples in each case:

1. Civil resistance is often a response to changes in constellations of power. Leaders of civil resistance campaigns have often been acutely aware of power-political developments, both domestic and international. In some countries there has been a growth of civil opposition after, and perhaps in part because of, an occupying or colonial state's internal political turmoil or setbacks in war: for example, this was a key factor in the Finnish struggle of 1898–1905 against Russian control. In other countries the problems faced by their own armed forces, whether against conventional armies or guerrillas, played some part in the development of civil resistance: for example, in the People Power Revolution in the Philippines in 1983–86.
2. Civil resistance campaigns frequently lead to a situation of partial stalemate, in which negotiation between civil resisters and those in positions of governmental power is perceived as essential. Hence, "round table talks" were critically important in the Indian independence struggle up to 1947, in Solidarity's campaign in Poland up to 1989, and in Ukraine in 2004.
3. The relation between civil resistance and the military coup d'état can be especially multi-faceted. In some cases a civil resistance campaign has been an effective response to a military coup. In other cases a campaign could succeed in its final objective—e.g. the removal of a hated regime—only when there was the reality or the threat of a military coup to bring about the desired change. Thus, the 1963 Buddhist crisis in South Vietnam a long civil resistance campaign against the government resulted in change only when the South Vietnamese army coup of 1–2 November 1963 toppled President Ngo Dinh Diem. In Egypt in June–July 2013, a civil resistance movement in effect called for a military coup: peaceful demonstrators and a petition supported by millions of signatures demanded the replacement of the elected Muslim Brotherhood government, and provided a degree of revolutionary legitimacy for the army take-over of 3 July 2013. At least one non-violent campaign, the Revolution of the Carnations in Portugal in 1974–75, was in support of a military coup that had already occurred: this campaign helped to steer Portugal in a democratic direction.
4. Some non-violent campaigns can be seen as reluctant or unwitting harbingers of violence. They may be followed by the emergence of groups using armed force and/or by military intervention from outside the territory concerned. This can happen if, for example, they (a) are perceived as failures, or (b) are repressed with extreme violence, or (c) succeed in removing a regime but then leave a power vacuum in its place. Processes of the first two of these kinds happened, for example, in Northern Ireland in 1967–72 and in Kosovo in the 1990s. Processes of the third kind, involving some forms of power vacuum, included Libya from 2011 onwards, and Yemen from 2012 onwards. The possibility of such developments can be an inducement to a government to bargain with a non-violent movement before things get out of hand. However, in several countries in the Middle East and North Africa in 2011 and after, campaigns by civil resistance movements were followed by violent internal conflict and civil war, often with the involvement of external forces: Syria is the most tragic case.
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4. Václav Havel, impresario of civil resistance in the years leading up to the 1989 Velvet Revolution. In April 1991, as President of post-Communist Czechoslovakia, he praised the NATO military alliance; and on 12 March 1999 the Czech Republic (with Havel still as president) joined the alliance. He is seen here on 26 September 2000. Photo: IMF
5. There have also been some cases of certain uses of force by civil resistance movements, whether against their adversaries, or to maintain internal discipline. For example, on 2 February 2011, in the generally peaceful Egyptian struggle against President Mubarak, some groups among the crowds in Tahrir Square in Cairo did use certain forms of force for a defensive purpose when they were attacked by pro-regime thugs, some of whom were riding on horses and camels. In the subsequent days the crowds in Tahrir Square reverted to using non-violent methods.
6. Some civil resistance movements have sought, or welcomed, a measure of armed protection for their activities. Thus in the American civil rights movement of the 1960s, the Freedom Ride of May 1961, having been opposed violently, received armed protection for part of its hazardous journey; and the Selma to Montgomery March of March 1965 only succeeded in reaching Montgomery, Alabama, at the third attempt, when it was protected by troops and federal agents.
7. Some campaigns of civil resistance may depend up the existence of militarily defended space. A life-saving example of an effective civil resistance enabling threatened people to reach a defended space occurred with the Rescue of the Danish Jews in 1943 when thousands of Jews were spirited out of German-occupied Denmark and across a narrow stretch of sea (the Sound) to Sweden.
8. When leaders of even the most determinedly non-violent movements have come to power in their countries, they have generally accepted the continued existence of armed forces and other more or less conventional security arrangements. For example, in 1991 Václav Havel who had been a leading figure in civil resistance in communist Czechoslovakia from the founding of Charter 77 to the Velvet Revolution of 1989, in his new capacity as President of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic paid tribute to the NATO alliance. On 12 March 1999 the Czech Republic, along with Poland and Hungary, became a member of NATO.

The term "civil resistance": merits and concerns

Gandhi in South Africa in about 1906–1909. Referring to his years there, he later wrote: "... I found that even civil disobedience failed to convey the full meaning of the struggle. I therefore adopted the phrase civil resistance."

The term is not new. Gandhi used it in many of his writings. In 1935 he wrote: "... I found that even civil disobedience failed to convey the full meaning of the struggle. I therefore adopted the phrase civil resistance." It is a near-synonym for nonviolent resistance, civil disobedience, people power and satyagraha. While each of these terms has its uses and connotations, "civil resistance" is one appropriate term to use in cases where the resistance has a civic quality, relating to a society as a whole; where the action involved is not necessarily disobedience, but instead involves supporting the norms of a society against usurpers; where the decision not to use violent methods is not based on a general philosophy of nonviolence, but on a wide range of prudential, ethical and legal considerations; and where the technical and communications infrastructure of modern civil societies provides a means of organizing resistance. Because of such considerations, the term has been used in this century in many analyses in academic journals.

What exactly are the advantages of the term "civil resistance", as distinct from its near-synonyms "nonviolent action" and "nonviolent resistance"? All these terms have merits, and refer to largely the same phenomena. Indeed, there is a long history, in many languages, of using a wide variety of terms to describe these phenomena. The term "civil resistance" has been used increasingly for two main reasons:

1. It emphasises the positive (civic goals; widespread civil society involvement; and civil as distinct from uncivil conduct) rather than the negative (avoidance of the use of violence).
2. It conveys, more effectively perhaps than such terms as "nonviolent resistance", that a movement's avoidance of violence in pursuit of a particular cause is not necessarily tied to a general belief in "nonviolence" in all circumstances, nor to a philosophy of "Gandhism", but rather arises from the particular values and circumstances of the society concerned.

There have been concerns that the term "civil resistance" might on occasion be misused, or at least stretched in a highly controversial way, to encompass acts of violence. Thus, arising from experience within the anti-globalization movement, one participant-observer has seen "new forms of civil resistance" as being associated with a problematic departure from a previously more widely shared commitment to maintaining nonviolent discipline. Because of these concerns, those who have used the term "civil resistance" have tended to emphasise its nonviolent character, and to use it in addition to – and not in substitution of – such terms as "nonviolent resistance".