Unarmed Insurrections: People Power Movements In Nondemocracies / Edition 1

by Kurt Schock

Overview

Pinpoints reasons for successes and failures of nonviolent protest movements

In the last two decades of the twentieth century, a wave of “people power” movements erupted throughout the nondemocratic world. In South Africa, the Philippines, Nepal, Thailand, Burma (Myanmar), China, and elsewhere, mass protest demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other nonviolent actions were brought to bear on a rigid political status quo.

Kurt Schock compares the successes of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, the people power movement in the Philippines, the pro-democracy movement in Nepal, and the antimilitary movement in Thailand with the failures of the pro-democracy movement in China and the anti-regime challenge in Burma. Schock develops a synthetic framework that allows him to identify which characteristics increase the resilience of a challenge to state repression, and which aspects of a state’s relations can be exploited by such a challenge.

By looking at how these methods of protest promoted regime change in some countries but not in others, this book provides rare insight into the often overlooked and little understood power of nonviolent action.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780816641932
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	11/15/2004
Series:	Social Movements, Protest and Contention , #22
Edition description:	First edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.88(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Kurt Schock is associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University and a member of the graduate faculty in global affairs.