Scripts for Cooperation and Protest

Lecture 11:

Scripts for Cooperation and Protest:

People Power, Low-Violence Strategies, and Cosmopolitan Governance

Topics: -

1. People Power: Protest, Mass Demonstration, and Low-Violence Strategies

2. People Power I: The End the Marcos Regime in the Philippines

3. People Power II: The Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia

4. Humanising Globalisation?

5. Constructive Democracy, Proactive Reform and Cosmopolitan Governance

6. Bibliography, Resources, and Further Reading

1. People Power: Protest, Mass Demonstration, and Low-Violence Strategies

Today we will be looking at several strategies that have moderated the dominant pattern of 'globalisation-from-above'. We have already seen how particular nations such as France, India and China can resist and modify globalisation patterns to some degree, while particular cultural and economic cultures also adapt the way globalising forces work at the local level. Other avenues have begun to modify the emerging global culture. First, during the 1980s and then again in the 21st century people power, that is, the direct mass action of populations, have been able to change the destiny of nations quite directly. We can see this by looking briefly at the Philippines and former Czechoslovakia, while elsewhere people power has been mobilised to press for change in countries as diverse as Poland, Mexico, Serbia, Indonesia and Hong Kong. Through 2003-2006 such strategies have also come into play in changing governments in Georgia, the Ukraine, problematically in Kyrgyzstan (see Page 2005) and in unsuccessfully mass protests in Uzbekistan.

Related strategies of cooperative social policy action and participatory action research have also been used to mobilise local and international communities on particular agenda, e.g. on the environment and poverty reduction (Ulrich 2002). Second, there have recently been called for a modification of the international capitalist system to make it more responsive to human rights and to local cultural needs. This Soft Capitalism has emerged as an area of reform in business culture, but it remains to be seen how far this will flow into existing patterns of economic globalisation (see Thrift 1998), i.e. whether it can provide the needed human face for capitalism. The third emerging paradigm to humanise global flows is the notion of a new cosmopolitan governance based on explicit awareness of the role international civil society and transnational flows in shaping a more responsive and tolerant global system. This approach has an emphasis on social relations, human capital and constructive dialogue among different groups and institutions.

Reform and change often tend to be viewed along the spectrum of evolutionary or revolutionary change. Revolutionary change is often supported by those who argue that an existing system cannot be reformed and needs to be totally swept away: in the past, Communist and fascist parties alike often argued for this kind of change. But the democratic revolutionaries in 18th century France and America also found that real reform could only be achieved by violent revolution, followed by wars in support of these revolutionary changes. In the 19th century, on the other hand, evolutionary change did support both democratic and socialist reforms in countries such as Britain and Germany, and in the late 20th were the by-word of socialism, social-democratic parties, and liberal democracies which tended to favour low-violent reform of authoritarian or oligarchic political systems. In the 21st century the question has begun to focus on reform at different levels: local, city-level, national, regional, at the level of global institutions and the moderation of shaping of the impact of globalisation processes.

Political change, however, can also be facilitated by non-violent or low-violence popular mobilisation. Specific economic and international conditions can allow sudden political change which is revolutionary in nature but rests not on violent warfare nor a revolution, but on a civil society that manages to change political systems with a relatively low degree of violence. Two classic and complete examples of this process can be cited: the mass movement which forced the flight of President Marcos from the Philippines, and the 'Velvet Revolution' which replaced an authoritarian communist regime with a broadly-based, democratic system in Czechoslovakia. Both happened very quickly: some months of political manoeuvring and pressure resulted in a sharp period of public protest again Marcos in 1986. In Czechoslovakia, partly inspired by reforms in the Soviet Union and Poland, students and other reforming elements came together in a sudden outburst of demands in 1989, virtually bringing the existing government to its knees in 1989 over little more than ten days.

Both are clearly examples of people power, i.e. the mass activation of popular protest and mass demonstration which expressed its will directly, with a wide range of different organisations only partly involved in leading such protest. Yet as we shall see, in both cases certain conditions needed to be met before this expression of popular opinion could lead to positive changes. In particular, the international and military climate needed to be ripe for such mass opposition to be effective. Usually, the legitimacy or unity of a governing regime has to be weakened before mass popular action can easily displace an authoritarian government. People power, in this sense, has been widely effective in a number of other cases. A number of ideologically led revolutionary movements in the 19th century and anti-colonial revolts (the revolutions of 1848, the Paris Commune of 1871, the 1905 protest in Russia (see Ackerman & Duvall 2000), the 1917 revolution in Russia, the generally mass supported revolutions, revolutionary wars or colonial wars in Ireland, China, Vietnam, Indonesia) included elements of people power, though often combined with military and political action of a committed revolutionary leadership. Cases of people power in the late 20th century include the post-Communist reform movements in Poland (see Ackerman & Kruegler 1994, pp283-316), the Baltic States where civilian-based defence was used to help defend democratic but military weak states which had just recently declared independence (Randle 1994, p63; Ackerman & Kreugler 1994, pxxiii), Romania, where elements of the military soon joined mass popular demonstrations and fought a short civil war against security forces, the anti-coup movement in the Soviet Union in 1991, and in part the movements which forced the resignation of President Suharto of Indonesia in 1998. Likewise, the replacement of the Milosevic regime within Yugoslavia in 2000 was based on elections backed up by an impressive display of mass mobilisation on the streets. In the Georgia (2003-2004, in part through seizure of the parliament) and in the Ukrainian 'orange revolution' (via street protests and civil disobedience in rejecting a suspect poll outcome in 2004 elections) mass popular action was needed to ensure the transfer of power from corrupt governments to more democratic governments under President Mikhail Saakashvili and President Viktor Yushchenko (see Meyer 2005; Karatnycky 2005). People power, in the sense of mass agitation demanding positive change, therefore remains a major component of modern political reality, and a major aspect of international change. Furthermore, it is now not just directed at particular governments, but more diffusely at international institutions, regimes, and more vaguely at patterns of globalisation and neo-liberal reform. However, as well shall, people power mechanisms cannot be directly ported across to mechanism of reform for intergovernmental organisations or the structures of transnational capital.

The methods used by 'people power' only sometimes equate with the notion of non-violence or civil disobedience. Systematic non-violent opposition to illegitimate governments or unjust laws has been used and consciously developed by a number of thinkers. It was made famous by Mahatma Gandhi in his efforts to gain social and political rights for Indians in South Africa, and then to resist British rule in India. It was used by Martin Luther King Jr. and his followers over a total of some 15 years in their efforts to secure civil liberties for Afro-Americans in the U.S. (Ackerman & Duvall 2000, p3), and was used by more recent leaders such as Desmond Tutu in efforts to secure reform in South Africa, and remains one of the main tools of Buddhists seeking reform in Tibet.

From 1996-2000 major street marches had protested electoral 'irregularities'

within former Yugoslavia, helping oust Milosevic form government (Courtesy OSCE Photo Archive)

It has since been adopted by many political reform groups as an effective tool which makes its point publicly, but doesn't alienate wider public sympathies. Here, a mixture of passive resistance, demonstrations, strikes, political and legal activity, and the creation of parallel institutions, can all come together to have an effect on a stronger opposition. These are all sanctions that hurt, weaken, or impose costs on, the opponent in political, social or economic ways (Ackerman & Kreugler 1994, pp4-6). A wide range of tactics can impose sanctions on a regime: -

In each of these conflicts, disruptive actions were used as sanctions, as aggressive measures to constrain or punish opponents and to win concessions. Protests such as petitions, parades, walkouts, and demonstrations were used to rouse public support for movements. Forms of non-cooperation such as strikes, boycotts, resignations, and civil disobedience helped subvert the operations of governments. And direct intervention such as sit-ins, nonviolent sabotage, and blockades frustrated many rulers' will to subjugate their peoples. (Ackerman & Duvall 2000, p2)

One of the key aims is usually to 'erode an opponent's source of tangible support' (Ackerman & Kreugler 1994, p8). Thus, when 'the state had run out of ways to coerce . . . compliance, it would have to come to terms' (Ackerman & Duval 2000, p1). In the case of Gandhi's activities: -

Even such a succinct exposition of Gandhi's career reveals the complex interaction in the Indian independence struggle between radical civil resistance and conventional politics. The mixed fortune of the campaigns also demonstrated the importance of the broader context in which they were taking place, even when facing the same opponent. In the campaign of 1920-2, and again in 1930-1, the difficulty for the British authorities was that they could not act too violently or repressively against a non-violent movement without alienating the moderate Indian politicians whose cooperation they hoped to enlist, and without risking opposition at home and abroad. Thus the campaigns, precisely because they were non-violent as well as radically disruptive of the administration, exercised genuine pressure in the tough world of realpolitik. (Randle 1994, p70)

Mahatma Gandhi first developed his ideas in South Africa, where as a young lawyer he agitated for the rights of Indian residents in that country. Various variants of this non-violent resistance were used on his return to India in 'the non-cooperation campaign of 1920-2; the civil disobedience campaigns of 1930-1 (see Ackerman & Kreugler 1994, pp157-212), and 1932-3; the campaign of individual civil disobedience in 1940; and the Quit India campaign of 1942.' (Randle 1994, p63). Civil disobedience continued in 1939, and by 1941, some 26,000 non-violent protesters (satyagrahis) had been arrested by the British (Randle 1994, p69). Satyagrahais the rough equivalent of ' peaceful non co-operation' but literally means "the struggle for truth" (Shiva 1999). It was developed by Gandhi to operate at two levels. There were those, firstly, who fully accepted the concept of non-violence (ahimsa) and therefore should never resort to violence (Randle 1994, p72). Secondly, it forced imperial and local authorities to use force to maintain enforcement of their laws and policies, exposing them as using violence and further wielding an authority that had become illegitimate. It must be stressed, of course, that Gandhian non-violence was one among many tools used in the struggle for Indian independence.

Similar methods were also used by Germans when the Ruhr Valley was occupied by the France and Belgium in 1923, with a wide campaign of passive resistance which included strikes and non-cooperation (Ackerman & Kruegler 1994, pp99-156; Randle 1994, p53). It was also used by Norway and Denmark in resistance to the demands of German occupation forces, and included an extensive programme to save Jews living in Denmark, though it could not directly overthrow these forces (Ackerman & Kruegler 1994, pp213-250; Randle 1994, p54). Mass popular action, sometimes non-violent, or using low levels of violence, was also used in overturning the Jean Claude Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti (early 1986), in resisting repressive regimes in Chile (Drake 2000), and in the first phase of non-cooperation in the Intifada on the West bank and Gaza Strip. In many cases, however, if low-violent strategies fail, they will be followed by intensified forms of violence and protest.

International influence and international cooperation are often major components of these programmes. Civil rights protests in the U.S. of the 1950s and 1960s were already inspired by the example of Gandhi, which in turn inspired some of the strategies used by the Dalai Lama in relation to Tibet (Randle 1994, p55; Tenzin Gyatso 1990, p127). Otherwise, a large number of international campaigns on a wide range of issues, e.g. nuclear weapons, environmental issues, social justice, debt relief, reform in the G8, have used campaigns of non-violent solidarity, though different groups sometimes run different strategies at the same time. The World Peace Brigade, for example, was set up in 1962 to protest the testing of nuclear weapons in Algeria and related issues, while Peace Brigades International (PBI) became active in Central America in the 1980s (Randle 1994, p56, p82, p85). The Freedom and Peace Group which was set up in Poland in 1985 likewise had close links with the Western peace movements (Randle 1994, p62). Non-violent strategies were widely used in South Africa between 1946 and 1992, though later a militant arm (Spear of the Nation) of the ANC was formed in 1962, perhaps in part as a response to the Sharpeville massacre of 69 unarmed protesters (a further 180 were injured) in 1960 (Randle 1994, p74). Yet the sabotage and attacks on security forces by these and other military groups was internationally less importance than the continued demonstrations, strikes, boycotts and township insurrections, which prominent leaders such as Biko, Mandela, Tutu and Boesak turned against the South African government. Low-violent challenges were crucial in reform throughout East Europe through the late 1980s (e.g. Poland and Czechoslovakia), was partially applied in Indonesia through 1997-1998 to remove President Suharto (though street violence did escalate), in the removal of Milosevic in Serbia through 2000, and in 2003-2005 reform in Georgia and Ukraine,a and less successfully in Kyrgyzstan (for the strong dependency of Kyrgyzstan on the international system, see Petric 2005) and Uzbekistan.

However, in many cases such non-violent methods are often not strictly peaceful. If the protesting groups remain sufficiently in control to avoid all violence, they nonetheless are often subject to the violent actions of police, security forces, the military, and political thugs often used to suppress dissent. Furthermore, in some cases, particularly in student protests, a certain degree of ritual violence may be entered into, ranging from the destruction of property and the hazing of police, to all out pitched battles with rocks and sticks, e.g. student activities in South Korea and Indonesia at times have crossed over into more violent forms of confrontation. The borderlines between non-violent protest and moderately violent confrontation are in fact very hard to define, unless group or ideologically driven discipline rigidly sets the limits of confrontation (see Ackerman & Kreugler 1994, pp9-10).

In this session, we will be focusing on 'low violent' methods which mobilise mass support, split government and military opposition or at least neutralise or weaken the moral of ordinary troops (Ackerman & Kreugler 1994, p37), and mobilise 'civil society' without the need to resort to a military revolution which directly destroys government forces (see for example Moore 2001). These strategies may also be more appropriate for reform of international institutions and for the mobilisation of international civil society. These types of action can therefore be viewed as 'low violence' examples of people power. Non-violent demonstrative strategies are often particularly effective because they rob nations, authoritative institutions, the military or police of the moral right to retaliate with high levels of force. Non-violent resistance can also be more effective in gaining wider public sympathy as well as international support through global media coverage. Thus one of the slogans of young Czech university students in 1989 had been 'We have no weapons . . The world is watching' (Ackerman & Duvall 2000, p4). It can also sap the will of military and police forces and divide leadership, who often begin to sympathise with the popular cause, e.g. in the Philippines in 1986, in Moscow in 1991, in Iran during 1979 this was the case. At times, mixtures of non-violent and low violent strategies can be used, though usually these two aspects need to be sharply distinguished to avoid repressive reprisals that seem justified and allows the rallying of internal regime support (Ackerman & Duvall 2000, p7; Ackerman & Kreugler 1994, pp43-45). However, these activities are strategically highly active, and are designed 'to fight' the authority of colonial or repressive governments (Ackerman & Duvall 2000, p5).

We can summarise some of the main strategic implications of these trends: -

Non-violent demonstration and resistance can be extremely effective not just within democracies, but also against weakening authoritarian regimes and colonising powers (see Albert 1985). Some philosophers, such as John Rawls, have argued that civil disobedience can only be effective in basically democratic states with a shared sense of justice (for a critique, see Murphy 1998). In international and transitional terms, this view will have to be modified. As we shall see, strong 'nonviolent conflict maybe be shown to precede, abet, and defend the democratizing process' and that such action is the means 'by which civil society first asserts, and then defends itself from counterattack' (Ackerman & Kreugler 1994, pxxiii).
Limited successes are also possible against an overwhelmingly strong military occupier, e.g. in Norway against the Germans during World War II, even though an overthrow of the enemy may be impossible (Randle 1994, p86). Likewise, Tibetan and other minority groups have been able to made their views known internationally with protest actions that are of low violence, though often clamped down ruthlessly by the PRC when viewed as forms of 'splitism' or revolt.
Non-violent campaigns based on people power require the ability to organise groups at the grass-roots level, even if no overarching organisation is possible. Therefore grass-roots groups, religious organisations, human rights groups, unions or political parties often can help provide such organisational frameworks, even on an ad hoc basis. Loose cooperation among several such groups, rather than centralised leadership, is often effective.
International media coverage and interest can be a major factor, sometimes moderating how far military or coercive force can be applied. Likewise, internet, email, phone and fax campaigns (changing messages, or via networks) can be mounted to begin to mobilise international civil society against oppressive regimes. These tools can also be used to impact on mainstream politics and electoral campaigns overseas, and change international perceptions of the costs of 'doing business' with such regimes (see Foot & Schneider 2002).
People power campaigns are often only effective 'when the time is right', i.e. a large number of factors come together. Often they a preceded by a long period of undermining the support base of the regime, e.g. this was the case in the Philippines and Poland in the 1980s.
Non-violent popular campaigns are also most effective when the military and security forces have either declared their neutrality, as occurred at first in Iran in 1978, have been split and divided, as in Philippines in 1986 and Moscow 1991, or when it has been demoralised, as seems to have been the case in Czechoslovakia in 1989, or indeed, have joined the reformers, as occurred in Romania during the overthrow of the totalitarian Ceausescu regime.
More loosely coordinated people-power campaigns have been targeted at regional and global institutions ranging from the APEC agenda, World Bank and IMF policies (e.g. in Thailand, Washington D.C.), major protests against the WTO through 1999-2003 (e.g. in Seattle 1999 and Cancun 2003), and ongoing pressure on the accountability and policies of the G8 over several years. However, diverse groups take part in this protests (unions, environmentalists, pseudo-anarchists, NGO-groups) using diverse strategies (dialogue, street protest, direct attacks on police and institutions). In such a setting, it may be very hard to sustain a controlled low-violent strategy, and hard to control negative and positive global media images (see Solomon 2000). In part, reactions against 'globalisation-from-above' may not have yet generated a strong core of cosmopolitan policies that provide a path for coherent strategies (see further below). The long-term issue is whether such campaigns can make global and IGO-based institutions more accountable and open, as well as influencing their agenda and policies. In the case of reform of the WTO, we can see of the mixed methods at Cancun in 2003, which put poverty 'on the agenda', but did not lead to strong outcomes: -

In opening the WTO session Wednesday, amid protests that grew deadly, Mexican President Vicente Fox pleaded with delegates to make poverty "the enemy that must be conquered, We cannot continue closing our eyes while millions of people remain poor."