Unarmed Insurrections: People Power Movements In Nondemocracies: 22 (Social Movements, Protest and Contention) - Softcover

Schock, Kurt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816641935 ISBN 13: 9780816641932

Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2004

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Kurt Schock is associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University and a member of the graduate faculty in global affairs.

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0816641935
• ISBN 13: 9780816641932
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256