Category: Cultural Intelligence

Drop Your Weapons

When and Why Civil Resistance Works

By Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan

Foreign Affairs, July/August 2014

EXTRACT

Between 1900 and 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance against authoritarian regimes were twice as likely to succeed as violent movements. Nonviolent resistance also increased the chances that the overthrow of a dictatorship would lead to peace and democratic rule. This was true even in highly authoritarian and repressive countries, where one might expect nonviolent resistance to fail. Contrary to conventional wisdom, no social, economic, or political structures have systematically prevented nonviolent campaigns from emerging or succeeding. From strikes and protests to sit-ins and boycotts, civil resistance remains the best strategy for social and political change in the face of oppression. Movements that opt for violence often unleash terrible destruction and bloodshed, in both the short and the long term, usually without realizing the goals they set out to achieve. Even though tumult and fear persist today from Cairo to Kiev, there are still many reasons to be cautiously optimistic about the promise of civil resistance in the years to come.

Read full article.

Told you so, we did.

Ashraf Ghani Wins Afghanistan's Presidential Election: Preliminary Results

KABUL, July 7 (Reuters) – Afghanistan declared former World Bank official Ashraf Ghani the winner of last month's presidential election run-off on Monday on preliminary results that threaten to split the country along ethnic lines.

The Independent Election Commission said Ghani won the June 14 second round with 56.44 percent of the vote, according to preliminary results. The tally might still change, however, when the final official numbers come out on July 22.

Continue reading “Yoda: Ghani Declared Winner in Afghanistan + RECAP of Prior Posts”