Civil Resistance: Reflections on an Idea Whose Time Has Come

It has been three years since Why Civil Resistance Works hit the shelves. When Maria J. Stephan and I sent the final galleys into the publisher, we had no idea that the Arab Spring was about to grip the world; that the Occupy movement would reenergize the protest sector in advanced democracies; or that countries as diverse as Turkey, Venezuela, Ukraine, Thailand, and India would be rocked by nonviolent resistance against entrenched authority, lack of economic opportunity, and corruption. While many people have cataloged the global decline in armed conflict, few have noticed that, in the meantime, the use of civil resistance has been on the rise.