Why is civil disobedience effective

Why are they effective? One good example of that comes from South Africa. The anti-apartheid movement organized a total boycott of white businesses, which meant that black community members were still going to work and getting a paycheck from white businesses but were not buying their products.

Several months of that and the white business elites were in total crisis. They demanded that the apartheid government do something to alleviate the economic strain.

Botha resigned. The reason I bring the case up is because organizers in the black townships had to prepare for the long term by making sure that there were plenty of food and necessities internally to get people by, and that there were provisions for things like Christmas gifts and holidays. In the U. Could you imagine if Things would be totally different in this country. There are just some characteristics of our age that complicate things a bit.

WCFIA: You make the surprising claim that even when they fail, civil resistance campaigns often lead to longer-term reforms than violent campaigns do.

How does that work? CHENOWETH: The finding is that civil resistance campaigns often lead to longer-term reforms and changes that bring about democratization compared with violent campaigns. Countries in which there were nonviolent campaigns were about 10 times likelier to transition to democracies within a five-year period compared to countries in which there were violent campaigns — whether the campaigns succeeded or failed. One of the best examples of this is the Kefaya movement in the early s in Egypt.

Although it failed in the short term, the experiences of different activists during that movement surely informed the ability to effectively organize during the uprisings in Egypt. Cooke Finally, observation of past and present social movements, including the Abolitionist movement, MeToo, and Black Lives Matter, suggests that, rather than appealing to the public principles of political morality, civil disobedients may in fact seek to transform common sense morality.

Last Resort : What grounds the widely accepted requirement that civil disobedience be undertaken as a last resort? How do we know agents have met it? One position is that, in a liberal democracy, citizens should use proper legal channels of political participation to express their grievances Raz ; though Raz grants that individual acts of disobedience can be justified in liberal regimes.

But, since causes defended by a minority are often those most opposed by persons in power, legal channels may be less than wholly effective Rawls , Moreover, it is unclear when a person could claim to have reached a situation of last resort; she could continue to use the same tired legal methods without end. To ward off such challenges, Rawls suggests that, if past actions, including by others, have shown the majority to be immovable or apathetic, then further attempts may reasonably be thought fruitless and the dissenter may be confident her civil disobedience is a last resort , Minority Group Coordination : The coordination requirement is designed to regulate the overall level of dissent Rawls , While there is some merit to this condition, arguably civil disobedience that does not meet it can still be justifiable.

In some cases, there will be no time or opportunity to coordinate with other minorities. In other cases, other minority groups may be unable or unwilling to coordinate. A reason for Rawls to defend this coordination requirement is that often coordination serves a more important concern, namely, the achievement of good consequences. It is often argued that civil disobedience can only be justified if there is a high probability that it will produce positive change, since only such change can justify exposing society to the risks of harm usually associated with civil disobedience — namely, its destabilizing and divisive potential and the risk that it could encourage lawbreaking or escalate into uncivil disobedience.

In response to these challenges, one might question the empirical claims that civil disobedience is divisive and that it has the consequence of leading others to use disobedience to achieve changes in policy. One might also question whether it necessarily would be a bad thing if civil disobedience had these consequences. Concerning likelihood of success, civil disobedience can seem most justifiable when the situation appears hopeless and when the government refuses to listen to conventional forms of communication.

Additionally, even when general success seems unlikely, civil disobedience might be defended for any reprieve from harm that it brings to victims of a bad law or policy. Tree-hugging, for example, can delay or curtail a clear-cut logging scheme and thereby prolong the protection of an ecosystem.

The justification of civil disobedience further articulates the conditions for its effective role in society. Far from undermining the rule of law or destabilizing society, civil disobedience could strengthen the social and legal order. Both ideas deem the practice of civil disobedience to be a valuable component of the public political culture of a near-just constitutional democratic society. Deliberative democrats Markovits ; Smith , ch. Agents engaged in civil disobedience can enhance democratic legitimacy in a number of ways, including by putting a heretofore-neglected issue on the political agenda and raising awareness about its stakes; contributing to and informing democratic deliberation; highlighting the outsize influence of powerful players and the exclusionary effects of certain processes of public deliberation, and working to make the latter more inclusive.

Civil disobedience does not only aim to invigorate democratic sovereignty, but also can constitute a form of democratic empowerment in itself — an exercise of political agency that is especially meaningful for marginalized groups.

Through civil disobedience, individuals discover and realize their power. They work together and forge bonds of solidarity. They engage in democratic politics. Many activists further enact within their movement the norms and values that guide their struggles, for instance through radical inclusion, direct democratic decision-making, aspiration to consensus, and leaderless organizational structures.

Some theorists insist on the need to align the means of protest with its aims, by deploying only persuasive, non-violent forms of protest that reflect democratic ideals Habermas , —4; M. Cooke , while others contend that civil disobedience can be confrontational and coercive without betraying its democratic aims Smith ; Fung , A third approach to the value of civil disobedience, besides the liberal and democratic lenses, comes from the political realist perspective.

Other realists criticize both liberal and deliberative democratic perspectives for their deductive, top-down approach to moral analysis, their quest for rational consensus, and their assumption that people can be persuaded by rational arguments alone Sabl , ; Mantena For her part, Mantena debunks the common understanding of Gandhi and King as committed in principle and absolutely to non-violence, showing that their endorsement of non-violence reflected concerns of political efficacy.

Recent social scientific research has corroborated the effectiveness of non-violence in campaigns of civil resistance, which seek to topple dictatorships or colonial powers Chenoweth and Stephan ; Schock How should the state respond to civil disobedience?

The question of appropriate legal response applies, first, to the actions of law-enforcers when deciding whether and how to intervene in a civilly disobedient action. It applies, second, to the actions of prosecutors when deciding whether to file charges and proceed to trial. Finally, it applies to the actions of judges and juries when deciding whether to convict and for judges how much to punish. How much punishment is appropriate for civil disobedients? Is punishment appropriate at all?

If there is a right to civil disobedience, then, as we saw, it protects people from punishment. Unlike civil wrongs, which are privately brought, criminal wrongs are public wrongs: the polity, not the victim there may not be any , prosecutes the alleged wrongdoer. If civilly disobedient breaches of law are public wrongs, comparable to or worse than ordinary offenses, then civil disobedients should be punished similarly or more severely than those who commit ordinary offenses.

Kent Greenawalt lays out reasons to hold that civil disobedients deserve the same punishment as others who breach the same laws. First, the demands of proportionality would seem to recommend a uniform application of legal prohibitions. Since trespass is prohibited, persons who breach trespass laws in protest of either those laws or other laws would seem to be equally liable to persons who breach trespass laws for private purposes.

Second, any principle that officials may use to excuse justified illegal acts will result in some failures to punish unjustified acts, for which the purposes of punishment would be more fully served. Even when officials make correct judgments about which acts to excuse, citizens may draw mistaken inferences, and restraints of deterrence and norm acceptance may be weakened for unjustified acts that resemble justified ones Greenawalt , What follows is that all such violations, justified and unjustified, should be treated the same.

There also are reasons to believe that civil disobedients should be dealt with more severely than are others who have offended. First, as mentioned above, disobedients seem to have put themselves above the law in preferring their own moral judgment about a certain issue to that of the democratic decision-making process and the rule of law.

Second, the communicative aspect of civil disobedience could be said to aggravate disobedient offenses since their communication usually is attended by much greater publicity than most covert violations are. This forces legal authorities to concern themselves with the possibility that law-abiding citizens will feel distressed, insecure, and perhaps imposed on, if no action is taken. So, notes Greenawalt, while authorities may quietly let minor breaches pass, failure to respond to violations performed, in some respect, in the presence of authority, may undercut claims that the rules and the persons who administered them deserve respect , —2.

Third, and related, civil disobedients often invite, and might inspire, other citizens to do what they do. Such risk of proliferation of civil disobedience and, further, of its escalation into lawlessness and violence, may support the imposition of more severe punishment for agents engaged in civil disobedience.

However, both the models of civil disobedience presented above, which stress its role and value in liberal democracies, and the arguments for the right to civil disobedience examined below, strongly push for the opposite view that civil disobedients, if punished at all, should be dealt with more leniently than others who have offended. The government can exercise its responsibility of leniency by not prosecuting civil disobedience at all, depending on the balance of reasons, including individual rights, state interests, social costs, and constitutional benefits.

In general, prosecutors should not charge disobedients with the most serious offenses applicable and judges should give them light sentences. Leniency follows from the recognition of the special constitutional status of civil disobedience. In this view, officials at all levels have the discretion to not sanction civil disobedients, and they should use it. Prosecutors have and should use their discretion not to press charges against civil disobedients in some cases, or to charge them with the least serious offense possible.

Dworkin urges judges to engage in an open dialogue with civil disobedients at least those who articulate legal arguments in defense of their actions and dismiss their charges after hearing them, or to use their discretion in sentencing, for instance by accepting guilty pleas or guilty verdicts but imposing trivial punishments.

To the contrary, judges might well systematically decide against civil disobedients, upholding the special interests of the ruling class of which they are part. For Rawls, there is only a moral right to engage in justified civil disobedience. Dworkin outlines what such a right of conduct might look like, analogizing civil disobedients with Supreme Court justices, who test the constitutional validity of unjust law through direct disobedience of that law.

For the latter, Dworkin argues that utilitarian reasons for punishing should be weighed against the fact that the accused acted out of principled convictions, and that the balance should generally favor leniency. Joseph Raz puts forward a different account of the right to civil disobedience, insisting that this right extends to cases in which people ought not to exercise the right: it is part of the nature and purpose of rights of conduct that they give persons a protected sphere in which to act rightly or wrongly.

To say that there is a right to civil disobedience is to allow the legitimacy of resorting to this form of political action for causes one opposes Raz , By contrast, in a liberal state, the right to political activity is, by hypothesis, adequately protected by law and, hence, the right to political participation cannot ground a right to civil disobedience.

A different view of rights holds that when a person appeals to political participation rights to defend her disobedience, she does not necessarily criticize the law for outlawing her action. Lefkowitz maintains that members of minorities can appreciate that democratic discussions often must be cut short so that decisions may be taken, and those who engage in civil disobedience may view current policy as the best compromise between the need to act and the need to accommodate continued debate.

Nonetheless, they also can point out that, with greater resources or further time for debate, their view might have held sway. Given this possibility, the right to political participation must include a right to continue to contest the result after the votes are counted or the decisions taken.

And this right should include suitably constrained civil disobedience because the best conception of political participation rights is one that reduces as much as possible the impact that luck has on the popularity of a view Lefkowitz ; see also Smith , ch. An alternative response to Raz questions whether the right to civil disobedience must be derived from rights to political participation. Brownlee , ch.

Whether such a right would fall under participation rights depends on the expansiveness of the latter rights. When the right to participate is understood to accommodate only legal protest, then the right conscientiously to object, which commonsensically includes civil disobedience, must be viewed as distinct from political participation rights. A further challenge to a regime-focused account is that real societies do not align with a dichotomy between liberal and illiberal regimes; rather they fall along a spectrum of liberality and illiberality, being both more or less liberal relative to each other and being more or less liberal in some domains than in others.

Philosophers have typically focused on the question of how courts should treat civil disobedients, while neglecting to apply that question to law enforcement.

Yet the police have much discretion in how to deal with civil disobedients. In particular, they have no obligation to arrest protesters when they commit minor violations of the law such as traffic obstruction: accommodation of and communication with protesters is something they can but all too rarely decide to do.

Instead, many governments practice militarized repression of protests. Local police departments in the U. Also, the British government sought to strengthen public order laws and secure new police powers to crack down on Extinction Rebellion XR , the global environmental movement whose street protests, die-ins, and roadblocks for climate justice have brought cities to a standstill.

Accommodation requires communication channels between police and activists and involves strategies such as pre-negotiated arrests. While the U. Neither approach respects anything like a right to civil disobedience. A constitutional government committed to recognizing the right to civil disobedience would also have to reform part of its criminal laws and make available certain defenses. Brownlee proposes two. Second, states should accept necessity as a justificatory defense for civil disobedience undertaken as a reasonable and parsimonious response to violations of and threats to non-contingent basic needs Brownlee , ch.

As these defenses suggest, constitutionally recognizing civil disobedience does not mean making civil disobedience legal. Disobedients would still be arrested and prosecuted, but they would get to explain and defend their actions in court.

They would be heard. Even so, civil disobedience remains an enduring, vibrant part of political activism and, increasingly, benefits from transnational alliances. Theorists have long assumed that civil disobedience only begs justification in liberal, democratic societies — the best real-world candidates for legitimate states.

However, civil disobedience also raises questions in undemocratic and illegitimate contexts, regarding its overall role, strategic value, and tactical efficacy. Yet they still beg significant questions concerning the proper contours of extra-institutional dissident politics and the justification of uncivil and forceful tactics in repressive contexts, including violence against police and the destruction of pro-China shops and Chinese banks.

Finally, whereas theorists have tended to think of civil disobedience as generally undertaken to achieve worthy public goals, liberal democratic states have recently witnessed much disobedience in pursuit of anti-democratic and illiberal goals, including conscientious refusal to abide by antidiscrimination statutes and violations of, and protests against, laws requiring the provision of reproductive services and the public health measures enacted to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

We may need a different lens than liberal and democratic theorists have offered to evaluate the full range of conservative social movements, counter-movements, and reactionary movements which resort to civil and other forms of disobedience. Thanks to Kelsey Vicar for research assistance. Features of Civil Disobedience 1. Other Types of Protest 2. Justification 3.

Responding to Civil Disobedience 4. Features of Civil Disobedience Henry David Thoreau is widely credited with coining the term civil disobedience. Other Types of Protest Although civil disobedience often overlaps broadly with other types of dissent, nevertheless some distinctions may be drawn between the key features of civil disobedience and the key features of these other practices.

Justification The task of defending civil disobedience is commonly undertaken with the assumption that in reasonably just, liberal societies people have a general moral duty to follow the law often called political obligation. Responding to Civil Disobedience How should the state respond to civil disobedience? Bedau, Hugo A. Civil Disobedience in Focus , London: Routledge. Scheuerman ed.

Burns and H. Hart eds. Brownlee, Kimberley, As news spread of the boycott, African American leaders across Montgomery began to lend their support. From December 5, to December 20, , approximately 40, African Americans refused to travel on Montgomery buses. The protestors were determined to continue until the city met with their demands, which included the hiring of black bus drivers and a first-come first-seated policy.

Ultimately a group of five Montgomery women sued the city in the U. District Court, seeking to have the segregation laws totally invalidated. In December , the US Supreme Court declared segregation laws in Alabama to be anti-constitutional although this did not apply to interstate buses. The legal case, which ended the boycott, was partially built on the testimony of Claudette Colvin.

It was not until , with Jim Crow laws overturned by the Civil Rights Act, that segregation was banned. Two hundred people turn their back on abuse and move to settle on traditional land. They refuse to leave, demanding the rightful return of the land to the indigenous people. Gurindji tribal elder Vincent Lingiari led two hundred pastoral workers away from the privately owned Wave Hill cattle station in the Northern Territory, as a protest against low pay, poverty and decades of abuse.

The strike lasted seven years. It was the precursor to lands rights legislation almost ten years later when, in , square kilometers of Australian land was the first returned to the Gurindji tribe. In , The Aboriginal Land Rights Northern Territory Act was signed, allowing indigenous people to claim traditional and spiritual land.

Four men walk into a bar and ask to be served. Sevice is denied because they are gay — the men risk arrest to ensure their story is reported and shared. In New York City, serving alcohol to homosexuals was illegal. Many lives were destroyed as a result.

This is thought to be the first organised act of civil disobedience by gay people. Service was denied and the incident was widely reported in the press. Within a year, New York State courts ended the practice of using gay patronage as an excuse for revoking liquor licences; thus opening the way for licenced gay bars. Influenced by the sit-ins at segregated lunch counters by black civil rights protestors, this was a brilliant example of how the non-violent, courteous action of four brave individuals led to societal change and the reframing of public understanding.

As a world superpower destroys a tiny island with bombs and bullets, undeterred inhabitants refuse to surrender the fight to reclaim their home. In , Culebra islanders undertook a series of protests against the United States Navy for its use of the island for military training exercises.

Homes were torn down, and targets erected. A three mile exclusion zone was set around the island, making prisoners of the island's inhabitants. Little fishing remained and any cattle were grazed on navy owned land. Unwilling to withdraw claims to the whole island, protestors built a chapel in just three days on Flamingo Beach, a restricted, major target area, using only crude tools.

US Marshals ordered them to leave but they refused and six people were arrested. Six days later, the navy demolished the chapel. Protesters illegally occupied restricted areas, including Flamingo Beach, remaining there for several weeks.

Those who needed new homes squatted on Navy land, which was also used in the creation of sports areas and graveyards. In , all political parties in Puerto Rico called for the US Navy to cease operations and leave the island. Finally, in , President Nixon ordered the Navy to leave the island, which they did in December Timber trail at Pureoa Forest Park, Waikato.

Credit: Buffy May. A group of friends and activists set up home in the branches of year old trees, while below them, bulldozers and chainsaws move to destroy the forest.

In the s, grassroots environmental groups started focusing their actions on the logging industry in New Zealand. The country had lost two thirds of its native forest cover as a result of logging since the 19th century.

New Zealand logging is an industry that still accounts for 1. A petition of approximately , signatures was presented to Parliament, demanding an end to logging and legal recognition of native forests. Despite this, the year old forests of Pureora were to be logged of all merchantable timber. In the first ever tree-sitting protest , activists Steven King , Shirley Guildford and others from the Native Forest Action Council led the action against the decimation of the Pureora forest.

Protestors took action quickly , obtaining camping permits for the forest. They climbed into the canopy of six totara trees and demanded Pureora be spared. Platforms and tree houses were constructed as protestors occupied the area and refused to leave.

Some blocked access to the trees with their bodies. This definitive, fast response was vital in that they established themselves before the authorities could respond. The result of the protest was that both the public and government were alerted to the destruction of natural habitats, the loss of biodiversity, and environmental fragility.

This was a small act of civil disobedience taken by a few people who knew that bulldozers and chainsaws do not give way to petitions and prolonged debate. It led to a government-imposed logging moratorium and, eventually, the end of native forest logging in the park, with the creation of Pureora Forest Park in The Treetop protest platform is still accessible today.

Students and scientists rise up against the mighty Soviets in a fight to rid their country of exploitative and polluting large-scale mines. Other toxic compounds are released into the air during fracking and these have been linked to birth defects, neurological problems and cancer.

In , a local news programme enlightened the Estonian people to Soviet plans to construct a huge phosphorite mine in Virumaa. The Soviet Estonian leadership had in the past been severely criticised for concealing information and this news unleashed an extensive protest campaign known as The Phosphorite War.

The protest culminated in spring , when brave students from Tartu University organised two peaceful demonstrations. Estonian musicians joined the protest, singing songs that became symbolic of the struggle. In the autumn of , the Estonian leadership reached an agreement with the mighty Soviet government to halt the construction of the mine.

This was the first extensive protest in Soviet Estonia. It encouraged resistance against the Soviet Union and led to the restoration of Estonian independence in The Phosphorite War was one of the most important milestones in Estonian environmental history. It brought the people of Estonia together with a renewed sense of identity and proved the power of collective action.

Most significantly, it unlocked the fetters of fear. Enough playing with us! The outrage is coming! Credit: Triin Tark. In a steadfast wave of organised resistance, the United Kingdom comes together to fight a discriminatory system enforced by a common enemy—the British Government.

It amounted to a single flat-rate tax on every adult, irrespective of personal income. This resulted in lower income households being compelled to pay more in tax than higher earners.

It was widely quoted that the billionaire Duke of Westminster would pay the same tax as his chauffeur. From the day it was implemented, 1st April , the people of Scotland were fiercely opposed to the poll tax, and they fought long and hard to have it abolished.

A campaign of organised resistance made it impossible for the councils to enforce the tax, and physically impossible for police to arrest mass defaulters. The blockading of housing estates and private homes from court-appointed sheriffs was a key part of the Scottish struggle. The English and Welsh drew inspiration from Scotland's fight but the outcome was not as peaceful.

A London march resulted in the worst riots in the city for over a century with people arrested and injured.