How to topple dictators and transform society

Crowds of protesters march on the streets in Hong Kong on January 1, 2020. | Photo by Willie Siau/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Nonviolent resistance scholar Erica Chenoweth explains the key ingredients of successful social movements.

The 2010s witnessed an uptick in nonviolent resistance movements across the globe. Over the course of the last decade we’ve seen record numbers of popular protests, grassroots campaigns, and civic demonstrations advancing causes that range from toppling dictatorial regimes to ending factory farming to advancing a Green New Deal.

So, I thought it would be fitting to kick off 2020 by bringing Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard specializing in nonviolent resistance, on The Ezra Klein Show. At the beginning of this decade Chenoweth co-authored Why Civil Resistance Works, a landmark study showing that nonviolent movements are twice as effective as violent ones. Since then, she has written dozens of papers on what factors make successful movements successful, why global protests are becoming more and more common, how social media has affected resistance movements, and much more.

But Chenoweth doesn’t only study nonviolent movements from an academic perspective; she also advises nonviolent movement leaders around the world (including former EK Show guests Varshini Prakash of the Sunrise Movement and Wayne Hsiung of Direct Action Everywhere) to help them be as effective and strategic as possible in carrying out their goals. Chenoweth’s on-the-ground experience combined with a big-picture, academic view of nonviolent resistance makes her perspective essential for understanding one of the most important phenomena of the last decade — and, in all likelihood, the next one.

Ezra Klein

When you look at all the social movements going on today — not only the movements in Chile and Lebanon and Hong Kong and Iran and Catalonia, but Extinction Rebellion and the Sunrise Movement and Direct Action Everywhere — what do you see as holding the most promise for genuine, lasting change?

Erica Chenoweth

I think there are a couple of things that are really interesting about the movements of our time. The first is that they appear to be empowering youth action in politics in a way that hasn’t happened in my lifetime before. Research shows that youth-led movements and student-led movements are much more likely to be nonviolent and more likely to succeed. So that is a really promising part of of today’s movement landscape.

The second thing is the role of women in nonviolent mass movements. We know that when women are excluded from these movements, they’re much less likely to succeed and they’re much more likely to end violently. One of the things that brings me a lot of hope is seeing that a lot of these movements around the world are either women-led or have a very high representation of women.

Another thing that I see as promising is just how much material is now available to people who are trying to organize and mobilize nonviolent action. One of my colleagues and mentors, James Lawson, who was integral to the Nashville desegregation campaign during the civil rights movement, told me that all they had was “Gandhi’s autobiography and the Bible.” Now, we have training manuals, workshops, seminars and all of this research at our fingertips. We know where these movements have existed. We know a lot more about the general factors that help people create change where they live. And it’s up to us to try to see that through.

You can listen to this conversation — and others — by subscribing to The Ezra Klein Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.