Effective Non-Violence? Resistance Strategies and Political Outcomes

​​​Yesterday, at the Edmund Pettus Bridge​, President Obama and over 100 members of the US Congress celebrated the 50th anniversary of the historic civil rights march in Selma, a turning-point in the non-violent civil rights movement. President Obama was introduced by John Lewis, who with Hosea Williams and others led the march fifty years ago and was severely beaten by the Alabama police.

John Lewis gave the 2011 PRIO Annual Peace Address, on the Role of Non-violence in the Struggle for Liberation​​.

Kristian Skrede Gleditsch is one out of 9 scientists with affiliation to Norwegian institutions who is included in the new list compiled by Thomson Reuters, and is also the only UK-based political scientist to be included in this prestigious international list of the most highly cited researchers in recent years. Kristian has his main position as Professor at the Department of Government at the University of Essex​, and holds a 20 % position at PRIO.

​​Today, Erica Chenoweth is awarded the Karl Deutsch Award by the International Studies Association. ​The award was established in 1981 to recognize scholars in IR under age 40, or within ten years of defending their dissertation, and is presented annually to a scholar who is judged to have made (through a body of publications) the most significant contribution to the study of International Relations and Peace Research.​

Non-violent resistance brings about political change much more effectively than the use of violence, say the two scholars, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan,  who have won the 2013 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order.

Erica Chenoweth is an Associate Senior Researcher at PRIO's Centre for the Study of Civil War. She will be lecturing in an upcoming course on civil resistance at PRIO 12-14 May 2013.

The Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) is announcing a PhD fellowship financed as part of a Grant from the Research Council of Norway for a project on “Effective Non-Violence? Resistance Strategies and Political Outcomes” led by Kristian Skrede Gleditsch of the University of Essex & PRIO. The project seeks to understand the conditions that foster the use of non-violent as opposed to violent tactics, focusing on the interaction between specific characteristics of different organizations, their constituencies, the state, and external actors.

Applications deadline 31 May 2012.