SJS 6: "Drop Your Weapons"

Source: Chenoweth, Erica, and Maria J. Stephan. “Drop Your Weapons.” Foreign Affairs July-Aug. 2014: 94-106. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 8 May 2016.

Author Credentials: Erica Chenoweth is an American political scientist and co-director of the Ph.D. program at Korbel School of International Studies. She is also the director of the program on terrorism and insurgency research. She is well known for the work she has put in on the topic of civil resistance. Maria J. Stephan works at the United States Institute of Peace, where she works on topics of civil resistance. She used to be lead foreign affairs officer at the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations.

Summary: Non-violent protesting has become the popular and most successful form of protest over the years. Ever since Mahatma Gandhi popularized civil disobedience, countries all around the world that feel they are oppressed have followed his lead. There is a twice as likely chance of success when the protesting is peaceful than violent. Successful civil disobedience has three key similarities between all protests. They all have the participation of the masses, they all produce regime defections, and they employ flexible tactics. Additionally, the larger and more diverse the campaign, the more likely the campaign would be successful. More recently, social media has come about in assisting with non-violent protesting. An example of recent non-violent protesting was in 2013 in Ukraine. Yanukovych, the leader of Ukraine ended up resigning due to the protests. Switching to violent protesting can sometimes lose support in a cause, just like in Syria.

Analysis: The main idea of this article is to prove to the reader how effective civil disobedience is, and explains why it should be used instead of violence. This article is important, because it uses statistics showing how non-violent protests have been more successful in history. Many examples are provided of times in history where civil disobedience was used and was successful, such as the example of Poland in the 1980's. It is also very important that the article explained the 3 similarities in all successful non-violent protests.