Why do some nonviolent movements succeed in challenging oppression and injustice where others get suppressed? Defining unarmed insurrections as "organized popular challenges to government authority that depend primarily on nonviolent action rather than on armed methods," Schock (sociology, Rutgers U.) comparatively explores this question through the six cases of South Africa, the Philippines, Burma, China, Nepal, and Thailand. He concludes with an assessment of the importance of a range of factors in the relative outcomes of nonviolent movements, many of which he feels have been neglected by the social movement literature, including international opportunities, the "radical flank effect," and the way social movements actively shape the political environment rather than just respond to it. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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Pinpoints reasons for successes and failures of nonviolent protest movements In the last two decades of the twentieth century, a wave of “people power” movements erupted throughout the nondemocratic world. In South Africa, the Philippines, Nepal, Thailand, Burma (Myanmar), China, and elsewhere, mass protest demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other nonviolent actions were brought to bear on a rigid political status quo. Kurt Schock compares the successes of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, the people power movement in the Philippines, the pro-democracy movement in Nepal, and the antimilitary movement in Thailand with the failures of the pro-democracy movement in China and the anti-regime challenge in Burma. Schock develops a synthetic framework that allows him to identify which characteristics increase the resilience of a challenge to state repression, and which aspects of a state’s relations can be exploited by such a challenge. By looking at how these methods of protest promoted regime change in some countries but not in others, this book provides rare insight into the often overlooked and little understood power of nonviolent action.
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