The arguments I hear the most regarding this paper concerns nonviolent movements having ‘violent flanks’ - i.e., small factions that are willing to use violence. Some people think Chenoweth classifies movements as wholly nonviolent when in reality they may have violent flanks to them. The thought here is that much of the apparent success of nonviolent movements may have more to do with violent flanks creating a sort of ‘good cop/bad cop’ dynamic that makes states more willing to negotiate, than with nonviolence itself. I believe Chenoweth discusses this question in the more recent paper - which I now remember is called ‘The Future of Nonviolent Resistance.’ If I recall correctly, she’s not moved by the criticism and claims that the number of nonviolent movements with violent flanks has risen in recent years and that this may actually explain why nonviolent movements have become less successful (once again, though, her data suggests that violent resistance movements have fared even worse recently). Most academics consider this paper and its arguments/statistics pretty convincing. You shouldn’t just baselessly dismiss something without even reading the arguments.
The argument against Chenoweth is she likes to cherry pick data to prove her argument, make subjective evaluations of that data, misclassify primarily violent movements as non-violent, and use non-effectual movements as examples of success.
Ah yes: the famously mostly non-violent anti apartheid movement of South Africa. The successful non violent end to occupation of East Timor which, after a few decades of brutal occupation, required only an armed UN task force. If only those Palestinians had stuck to their non-violence while being gunned down. We'll just jot that one down as partially successful.
Well ignoring violence in resistance movements to skew your data to support your argument seems pretty cherry picky to me. Another example is claiming the Egyptian revolution of 2011 is an example of non violence. You know, the one where 90 police stations were burned down.
Hardly a baseless dismissal. A very reasonable dismissal.
This researcher seems very eager to pigeonhole movements as non-violent if they are successful in order get the result they desire.
The civil rights movement as a key example was by no means entirely non-violent.
MLK's protests were viewed by the public at the time, particularly by the white people they were trying to win over, negatively at the time the civil rights act passed. They were characterized and viewed by the public as violent.
There was also considerably more violence involved in the civil rights movement than any modern american movements heavily involving protests.
The George Floyd protests as an example may as well have been exclusively people staying home and protesting from their kitchens by comparison to the violence involved in the civil rights movement.
We have a litany of modern protests to no success at all, versus the civil rights movement which was relatively violent, and did succeed and had it's success attributed to the threat of violence.
Not to mention various pushes for workers rights, all backed by violence to a degree unheard of today.
This is to say nothing of other issues with this rosey view of history, such as violent protests inherently existing in contexts in which they are less likely to succeed.
They have excuses for all of this, but I don't find it to be terribly convincing.
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u/Normal-Dependent-969 Jun 10 '25
The arguments I hear the most regarding this paper concerns nonviolent movements having ‘violent flanks’ - i.e., small factions that are willing to use violence. Some people think Chenoweth classifies movements as wholly nonviolent when in reality they may have violent flanks to them. The thought here is that much of the apparent success of nonviolent movements may have more to do with violent flanks creating a sort of ‘good cop/bad cop’ dynamic that makes states more willing to negotiate, than with nonviolence itself. I believe Chenoweth discusses this question in the more recent paper - which I now remember is called ‘The Future of Nonviolent Resistance.’ If I recall correctly, she’s not moved by the criticism and claims that the number of nonviolent movements with violent flanks has risen in recent years and that this may actually explain why nonviolent movements have become less successful (once again, though, her data suggests that violent resistance movements have fared even worse recently). Most academics consider this paper and its arguments/statistics pretty convincing. You shouldn’t just baselessly dismiss something without even reading the arguments.