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(English) Non-violent
resistance and the properties of states. A preliminary
study: Summary Most research
on non-violent resistance against repressive regimes is
about methods, strategy and tactics and how the resisters can best deal
with
them (or how they actually did). What seems to be of marginal interest
is the
character of the repressive regime against which the resistance is
directed. It
is as if the methods of non-violence basically have a general
application as
long as there is repression. Although this often works (but also can
fail), I think
that non-violent resistance can become more effective if we would know
more
about the properties of the states that have experienced non-violent
resistance. Since the theme
discussed here is new this article is mainly explorative.
I have selected 22 countries with major cases of non-violent resistance
and six
indexes for characterizing them, namely the Corruption Perceptions
Index; the
Failed States Index; the Democracy Index; the Index of State Weakness;
the
Global Peace Index and the Positive Peace. For these 22 countries I
examine and
evaluate the scores and ranks on these indexes. Because of the limited
and
explorative scope of this study, I have only concentrated on the
properties of
the countries concerned as such. The interaction between the
non-violent
methods and these properties has not been examined. Non-violent resistance and the properties of
states. A preliminary study Henk
bij de Weg
January 2013 1. Introduction In my
article “Nonviolent resistance and repressive
regimes”[1]
I analysed the relation between methods of non-violent resistance and
action
and the types of the regimes against which they are employed.
Especially, I
analysed there which types of methods of non-violent resistance are
most appropriate
against which types of regime. This analysis was mainly theoretical. In
the
present article I want to examine what the characteristics of the
regimes are against
which such methods have been used: If major forms of non-violent
resistance
have taken place in a country – whether the resistance was
successful or
whether it has failed – what were then the properties of the
states where the
resistance took place? My answer to this question will be descriptive
in the
first place, but the reason that I ask the question is not merely
descriptive.
The idea behind it is that if we know more about states where
non-violent
resistance has taken place this will help us in future to choose the
right
methods for new situations where we want to and need to resist
non-violently. Moreover,
if we know in what kinds of states non-violent resistance failed maybe
the
analysis will tell us a bit about the chances of non-violent resistance
in
future situations and about the chances to keep it non-violently. And
maybe it
will help us to develop more effective non-violent methods for such
situations. This
article is explorative in the first place. To my knowledge no such kind
of
study has been made before. For this reason and for practical reasons I
have to
limit myself. I’ll look only at the properties of states
where non-violent
resistance took place. Not much will be said about what these
properties mean
for the organisation of non-violence. It is supposed that it is useful
to know
them and my analysis suggests that it is so, but whether it is really
the case
and how these properties are relevant must be examined in later
studies, by me
or by others. In this sense the present study is only preliminary with
all its
flaws and shortcomings. One such a flaw is the implicit supposition
that because a property is present
it is
relevant for non-violent resistance. This need not be the case, of
course. Here
I simply want to present insights and ideas that may give handles for
later
research. 2. Selecting the countries For a first
selection of the countries where non-violent resistance has taken place
I have used
the table “Major Unarmed Insurrections in the Second and
Third Worlds,
1978-2001” in Kurt Schock 2005, p. 4. However, I have omitted
all cases before
1989, because important developments have taken place in and about that
year that
substantially have changed the political situation in the world (the
Fall of
the Berlin Wall in 1989 and with it the fall of communism in most
countries).
Just because of these developments non-violent resistance against
repression
got a new boost making new forms of resistance in new circumstances
possible,
leading to a revival of what is often called “People Power
Revolution”. I have made
an exception for the case of the resistance against the Marcos regime
in the
Philippines (1983-1986), which can be seen as the prototype of
non-violent
people power resistance and which came to a solution just before 1989.
I have
added also the resistance against apartheid in South Africa, which is
another
major case of people power and which ended successfully in 1990 but
started
already many years before 1989. On the other hand, I have not included
from Schock’s
list the non-violent revolutions in Eastern Europe and Mongolia that
took place
after 1989, since I have only recent data at my disposal for analysis
and since
the political structures of these former communist countries have
clearly changed
very much since then (just because of the non-violent revolution!). I
have made
an exception for the case of Serbia/Yugoslavia (the fall of
Milošević), which
took place much later, also because the Milošević regime was
not (and never has
been) old-fashioned communism. Moreover this non-violent revolution has
directly influenced non-violent resistance in several other countries
(for
instance Georgia 2003 and Egypt 2011). Since the
publication of Schock’s list, new non-violent uprisings have
taken place in the
world, which I have added, namely the cases of the Philippines (2001),
Georgia
(2003), Ukraine (2004), Burma (2007), Thailand (2010), Tunisia (2011),
Egypt
(2011), Bahrain (2011), Libya (2011), Yemen (2011) and Syria
(2011-present). Although
I haven’t omitted Nigeria from Schock’s list, I
doubt whether it is right at
place here, since in Nigeria there was no such a thing as a
“major unarmed insurrection”
in 1998-99, although there have been cases of civil nonviolent
opposition and
resistance and although a regime change from dictatorship to democracy
has
taken place. See for instance Dagne 2005. This brings
me to table 1 with a list of 22 countries and 25 cases of nonviolent
resistance
against repression that are examined in this study.
3. Selecting the properties to
be analysed For the
selection of the properties of the states that may be relevant for
non-violent
resistance against repressive regimes I have used several recent
studies that
order all or most countries in the world on characteristics that can be
considered
as indications of the social structure of the countries concerned.
Actually, my
selection of properties of states in this study is a bit arbitrary and
it has
been determined more by the studies available, my experience in the
field of
non-violence and my intuitive feeling of what might be relevant than by
an
explicit theoretical idea or argumentation. In fact it is also a bit
difficult
to give such an argumentation for my choice because of a lack of theoretical studies in the field of
non-violence. There are many studies that examine cases of non-violence
but most
are more or less descriptive or have a low theoretical level at most.
Especially studies that relate the field of non-violence to other
fields of
social research are almost absent. Schock 2005 is one of the few
exceptions.
Such being the case, my investigation must be seen as an attempt to
broaden the
field of non-violence research and as a step to raise its theoretical
level[2].
My aim here will be merely gaining a first insight in the value of some
structural properties of states for non-violence. Therefore this study
is mainly
explorative and my analyses are only tentative. My conclusions will be
merely
preliminary: they will be not more than hints or points of departure
for further
research. For
characterizing the structures of the countries selected above and
especially their
political structures, I have made use of the following indexes: - the
Corruption Perceptions Index 2011 of Transparency International[3]
(= CPI) - the
Failed States Index 2012 of Fund for Peace[4]
(= FSI) - the
Democracy Index 2011 of the Economist Intelligence Unit[5]
(=DI) - the Index
of State Weakness by Susan E. Rice and Stewart Patrick[6],
compiled with data up to 2006 (= WSI). - the
Global Peace Index 2012 and the Positive Peace Index of the Institute
of
Economics and Peace[7]
(=GPI) I refer to
these studies where these indexes are presented for a description and
explanation
of the lists and figures in the present article. Before I’ll
present and analyse the data, I want to point yet to an important
methodological restriction of my analysis. The data used for
classifying the
countries refer to 2011 or a few years before. However, the oldest
non-violent
movements in table 1 came already to an end in 1986. So there is a gap
of up to
25 years between the end of the non-violent movements in the table and
the data
that typify the countries involved. As a consequence, these countries
and
especially their political structures can have changed a lot since
then, in the
first place because the popular protests have been successful (and
that’s just why
I have omitted the former communist countries). For most indexes
presented here
older data are available and it would have been better to use figures
that
refer to the year just before the non-violent movement started or, in
case they
are not available, to use the oldest figures available. The aim of my
study is,
however, to get a first indication of the possible relation between
state
structure and non-violence resistance. My analysis is mere
brainstorming. In
order to keep this first analysis simple, I have used the same data for
the
same year for all countries. 4. The Corruption Index and the
Failed States Index I start my
analyses with comparing the scores of the countries on the corruption
index
(CPI) and the failed states index (FSI). In table 2 I have ordered the
countries
according to their CPI scores and in table 3 according to their FSI
scores.
4.1 The Corruption Index Let us
first look at the CPI score in table 2. The possible scores on the CPI
range
from 0 to 10 with North Korea and Somalia together as most corrupt
ranking 182nd
with a score of 1.0 and New Zealand as least corrupt ranking first with
a score
of 9.5. All 22 countries in the table, with the exception of Bahrain
with a
score of 5.1, have a CPI score lower than 5.0, “which means
they are considered
significantly corrupt”, as The
Guardian
remarks on its website where it presents the index.[8]
The highest score in table 2, again with the exception of Bahrain
(CPI=5.1), is
not more than 4.1. With the exception of Burma (CPI=1.5) there is also
no
country in table 2 that scores lower than 2.0, but in Burma the
non-violent
uprisings have failed and this is also the case for Bahrain, which is
on the
other end of the list. 13 countries of table 2, i.e. 59%, have a CPI
score
between 2.0 and 3.0. In the original list there are 69 countries with
such a
score, which means that 19% of these 69 countries have had a
non-violent
uprising against 6% of all other countries and only 1.6% (one country)
of all
countries with a score higher than 4.1. Of all countries with a CPI
score of
4.1 or lower 17% have experienced a non-violent uprising. Note that
the non-violent resistance has been suppressed by violence both in
Bahrain and
in Burma and that both countries have extreme CPI scores compared with
the
other countries in the list. There might be a relation with the extreme
values
of these scores and the violent suppression of non-violent actions, but
because
it concerns only two cases, no conclusions can be drawn. 4.2 The Failed States Index To put it
briefly, the Failed States Index (FSI) is a measure that indicates to
what extent
a country is able to control its territory. It is composed of twelve
indicators
like indicators for demographic pressure, massive movement of internal
refugees
and internally displaced persons, uneven economic development, and so
on. The
indicators can vary between 0.0 (best score) and 10.0 (worst score) and
they
are added in order to get the FSI. So the FSI can range from 0.0 to
120.0. It
will be no surprise that also here Somalia is on the wrong end of the
scale
with a score of 114.9. Most
stable
country is Finland with a score of 20.0. Let us look
at the FSI of our 22 countries in table 3. The relation between FSI
score and the
occurrence of non-violent resistance in the past is less marked than in
the
case of the CPI, although it is still present. In the 55 most stable
countries in
the original list no non-violent uprising has taken place and all but
six states
in table 3 belong to 50% weakest ones in the original table of 177
states. Even
more, all states score worse than the average (=middle) score of 60.0. When we
compare the lists for the CPI and the FSI, we see that there are no
striking
differences: The countries have roughly the same rankings in both
lists. An
exception is the Ukraine, which is much higher on the CPI list (152)
than on
the FSI list (58). Also Libya and Burma are markedly higher on the CPI
list
than on the FSI list, while for Georgia it is the other way round
(table 3). 4.3 Conclusions on the CPI and
FSI Now I want
to draw my first conclusions. States where non-violent uprisings have
taken
place (with success or without success) are mainly corrupt and unstable
states,
but not extremely corrupt or extremely unstable. The reason for the
latter is
maybe that extremely corrupt and extremely unstable countries probably
do not
have structures that can be used as a “mechanism”
by non-violent resisters. For
instance, non-violent resistance is not simply a process of open
protest, demonstrations
and the like, but it involves also a lot of networking, negotiating and
pressure, and the like. But these essential parts of nonviolent
resistance are
difficult to apply, if it is not clear what the factual centre of power
is and
who is in control, or if there are several competing centres of power.
This is
in agreement with the phenomenon that revolutions don’t break
out under extreme
poor conditions. Actually it would be interesting to examine whether
what is
said to be the case for revolutions in general is also true for the
occurrence
of non-violent resistance against repressive regimes and for
non-violent
revolutions, for instance that they happen during a regression after a
period
of rising living standards and rising expectations.[9]
Then the outbreak of non-violent resistance or a non-violent revolution
can be
seen as a special case of a general phenomenon. What is special of such
resistance or such a revolution is that it is non-violent. If it is
true that
this type of nonviolence is a special case of revolution in general (or
of
attempts to make a revolution) (and I think it is), then the question
is: What
are the objective conditions for the outbreak of an uprising or
revolution (and
there is already a huge literature on it) and what are the special
conditions
that an uprising or revolution is non-violent? My first
impression is that we do not get extra information, when we look at the
average
rankings of the 22 countries the CPI list and the FSI list (last column
in
table 2) or when we compare the rankings of the countries on the two
lists
(last column in table 3). But I guess that the CPI score of a country
tells us
more about the chance whether non-violent resistance will take place
than the
FSI score: Countries with non-violent resistance are rather corrupt
than
typically stable or unstable. But this is only a first impression and
the point
should be better examined. 5. The Democracy Index In my
article “Nonviolent resistance and repressive
regimes”[10]
I analysed what kind of methods of non-violent resistance and action
are most
appropriate to apply against what types of regimes. But is there any
relation
between the regime type and the occurrence
of non-violent resistance? In order to sort it out, let us look at
table 4, which
contains the scores of our 22 countries on the Democracy Index (DI).
The
countries have been ordered from most authoritarian to most democratic.
By way
of comparison I have also added the CPI scores and rankings and the FSI
scores and
rankings of the countries concerned.
The authors
of the Democracy Index 2011
distinguish four regime types: full democracies, flawed democracies,
hybrid
regimes and authoritarian regimes. I refer to table 5 for the details.
Even more
than for the CPI and FSI the scores on the DI in table 4 represent the
present
situation rather than the political situation at the moment that the
non-violent uprising took place, for the aim of non-violent resistance
is often
just bringing more democracy! And once the aim has been achieved the DI
will
improve. On the face
of it, the DI scores in table 4 give no indication of the chance that
non-violent resistance will happen in certain types of states. It is
possible that
this is caused by the fact that the table contains only the recent DI
scores
(for 2011) and not the scores for the moment that the non-violence
resistance
started in the countries concerned. However, when we skip South Africa
from the
list, a country
that has become clearly
more democratic after the end of apartheid in 1990, we can say that a
high rank
on the DI list (or, what is the same, a high score) makes it unlikely
that a
regime will be confronted with non-violent resistance: A rank of about
60 or
higher or a score of about 6.6 or higher makes it unlikely that
non-violent
resistance will take place directed at a regime change or a change in
the political
structure. Such resistance takes place only in the most flawed
democracies and
in what the composers of the list call hybrid and authoritarian regimes
(cf. table 5). Moreover, table 4
suggests
that non-violent uprisings are either likely to fail or will become
violent if
directed against regimes with a very low DI score. At least, this is
what
happened in five out of six countries with the lowest DI score examined
here,
namely in Burma, Syria, Bahrain, China and Libya. Also in the sixth
country, Yemen,
there has been much violence in reaction to the non-violent resistance.
All these
countries have authoritarian regimes with the exception of China, which
has
been classified as a low ranking hybrid regime by the composers of the
original
list. All countries
in table 4, with the exception of South Africa, have an average rank on
the CPI,
FSI and DI of 75 or less.[12] 5.1 The Democracy Index by
factor Let us look
now at the separate factors that make up the Democracy Index (table 6).
Electoral process and pluralism: The 22 countries are more or
less
evenly divided on this factor, having scores ranging from 0.00 to a
high 9.17.
However, it is striking that four of the five countries where
non-violent
resistance was crushed by violence score 0.00, while the fifth country,
Bahrain, also scores very low, namely 1.75, which is lower than any
other of
the remaining states. Apparently, the absence of elections or the
absence of
free elections clearly enhances the chance that non-violent resistance
will be
met by violence. Functioning of government: Almost all 22 countries (18
countries or 82%) have a low score on this factor, namely 5.00 or
lower. This
means that these countries have a badly functioning government. If we
skip
South Africa from the list (see the comments on table 4), the
significance of
this factor is even more striking. Political participation: Also here most countries
score
5.00 or lower, namely 17 countries (77%). Moreover, all countries with
a score higher
than 5.00 score lower on this factor than on the factor
“functioning of
government”. If we measure the dispersion of the scores on
the factor political
participation, and compare it with the dispersion on the factor
functioning of
government, we see that the dispersion of the scores on the former is
somewhat
lower than the dispersion of the scores on the latter: there are fewer
extreme
low values, fewer extreme high values.[13]
Generally we can say that our 22 countries are characterized by low
political
participation. Political culture: All countries have a more or
less average
score on this factor, ranging from 3.13 for Nigeria to 6.25 for South
Africa
and Thailand. Even the countries where non-violence resistance met
violence
have a more or less average score if not a bit above average. Was it
that the
political culture was not undeveloped that made that the insurgents
initially
saw chances for non-violent resistance despite the risk that it would
encounter
violence? It is something that has to be examined. On the other hand,
it is quite
well possible that this factor is not relevant, since most countries in
the
original table of 165 countries and 2 territories have relatively good
scores
on this factor. Only the democratic countries have clearly higher
scores, while
there are hardly very low scores. Civil liberties: All values are present and
the group of 22
countries as such has no special characteristics, albeit that all
countries
where nonviolent resistance was faced with violence score very low on
this
factor. In fact, these five countries have the lowest scores of the
whole group
with the exception of Yemen, but the non-violent resistance in Yemen
was countered
by rather much violence in comparison with the remaining 16 countries.[14] 6. The Index of State Weakness
in the
developing world The next
index I want to look at now is the Index of State Weakness in the
developing
world (Weak Sates Index or WSI for short) developed by Susan E. Rice
and
Stewart Patrick (table 7)
The Weak
States Index is a relative measure for the effectiveness of states of
the
performance on four dimensions: economic, political, security, and
social
welfare. States are called weak if they lack the capacity and/or will
to fulfil
their essential responsibilities in these fields. With the help of
indicators
states get scores for each dimension ranging from 0.0 (worst) to 10.0
(best).
The overall score is the average of the individual scores. Then the
states are
ranged according to the overall score. Rice and Patrick have computed
the WSI
only for 141 developing countries, which means that the most stable
countries
in the world are not in their list. In order to make the WSI rank
comparable
with the ranks of the countries in the other tables, I have assumed a
fictive
number of 177 countries (the number of countries in the original FSI
list) and
subtracted the WSI rank from this number. The result is what I have
called the
“reversed rank”. The table contains also the per
capita gross national income (GNI/cap)
for the countries concerned. I refer for further methodological details
to the
source of the table. The
composers of the list distinguish “critically weak
states” (bottom quintile;
rank 28 or lower; reversed rank 149 or higher), “weak
states” (second quintile;
rank 29-56 or reversed rank 121-148), and “states to
watch” (third and fourth
quintile; rank 57-112 or reversed rank 65-120). Although
the WSI and the FSI are related indexes, the former says more about the
social
aspects of government and the latter more about the territorial
aspects. Since
the WSI and the FSI use different indicators, the ranks of the
countries are
also different (table 8). Actually this is a bit surprising in view of
the fact
that prima facie the WSI and FSI
should have to refer to the same property: the absence (or presence) of
good
government. Moreover, the authors of the report on the WSI call the
weakest
states also failed states.
Let us now look in more detail at table 7. All
countries, with the exception of Bahrain (for which we have no WSI
score), fall
in one of the three lowest WSI categories, so they are more or less
weak
states. Although the individual ranks on the FSI and WSI are rather
different
in many cases, the same is true for the FSI: countries where
non-violent
resistance has taken place generally do not have really good government
structures
or they are even quite unstable. But for both indexes we see that the
countries
with non-violent resistance are not extremely
weak or unstable. In countries that are in, say, the lowest decile on
the WSI
or FSI scales (for instance Somalia, Iraq, Burundi or Côte
d’Ivoire)
non-violent resistance is not to be expected.[15]
In fact, non-violent resistance can occur in all countries in the
original list
from about rank 15 till about rank 120. The lowest countries are too
weak, too
unstructured, and/or to chaotic for making non-violent resistance a
practical
option. The top countries, including the strong countries that are not
in the
WSI list, are “too democratic” for non-violent
resistance: Protests can follow
the road of the normal democratic procedures, which does not imply, of
course,
that often they need to be supported by all kinds of non-violent
actions and
indeed are supported by such actions. But in democratic countries
basically
non-violence takes place within the
political structures and not against
the political structures.[16] In order to
get an impression whether the countries score better or worse on some
component
factors of the WSI than on others, I have computed the average scores
on these
factors for our selected countries (table 9). I have omitted Bahrain,
since I
have no data for this country. For calculating the average score for
Social
Welfare, I have omitted also Niger, since this country scores extremely
low on
this factor compared with the other countries.
What remains
to be checked then for table 7 is whether there is a relation between a
country’s per capita
income and the
probability of non-violent resistance. In table 7 we can see that the
countries
involved fall in all income categories. Non-violent resistance can
happen as
long as the income of a country is not extremely low (but it is to be
expected
that this fact can be explained better by other factors than by the per capita income as such[17]). 7. The Global Peace Index and
the Positive
Peace Index The last
index I want to consider is the Global Peace Index 2012 (GPI) which has
been
compiled for 158 countries by the Institute of Economics and Peace. The
report
on the GPI contains also a list of 108 countries with their scores on
what is
called the Positive Peace Index (PPI). I’ll discuss the
scores of the countries
concerned on this index as well (tables 10 and 11).
The Global
Peace Index ranks 158 states according to their level of peacefulness.
It is
composed of 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators for three
themes: the
level of safety and security in society; the extent of domestic or
international conflict; and the degree of militarisation. The lower the
score
the more peaceful a country is. For further details I refer to the
report. Also here
we see that the countries where non-violent resistance has taken place
are in
the lower range of the 158 countries for which the index has been
compiled. The
reason why it is so is probably the same as for the other indexes: The
countries higher on the list are the more democratic countries and in
these
countries there are other possibilities than non-violent resistance to
express
discontentedness with the political situation: the road through the
(democratic) institutions; although it may be so that the walk along
this road
is supported by non-violent action, if judged necessary. For the GPI,
the cases
of non-violent resistance considered here all took place in countries
belonging
to the 60% lowest ranking countries. There seems to be no minimum
ranking below
which non-violent resistance is unlikely to happen. Lowest ranking in
our list
is Nigeria (#148). Beneath Nigeria one finds countries like Pakistan,
Israel
and Russia, but also weak states like Iraq, the Democratic Republic of
Congo
and Somalia, where non-violent resistance will be difficult to realize,
to say
the least. If one looks at the positions of the countries that used
violence
against the non-violent resisters, it is to be expected to find them on
the bottom
side of the list. Indeed, there is a tendency to find them there (cf.
Syria
(147), Libya (147), Burma (139) and also Yemen (143), where also some
violence
has taken place against the resisters). However, Bahrain (118) and
China (89)
refute this tendency and in view of the small number of countries in
the
analysis, it is difficult to draw a conclusion. It is
striking that the order of the countries on this list is rather
different from
the order on the other lists discussed, maybe with the exception of
some low
ranked countries. 7.2 The Positive Peace Index In order to
describe what the Positive Peace Index represents, it is best to quote
the
report. The PPI measures “… the strength of the
attitudes, institutions, and
structures of 108 nations to determine their capacity to create and
maintain a
peaceful society. The PPI is based on a statistical framework which
groups
these attributes into eight key categories known as the
‘Pillars of Peace’.
These pillars have been identified as describing what underpins a
peaceful
society. This approach stands in contrast to the extensive quantitative
conflict literature which is predominately focused on understanding the
causes
for the outbreak of war or civil unrest. The PPI is different from the
GPI as the
latter uses the definition ‘absence of violence or fear of
violence’ to measure
peace. ... In contrast to negative peace, positive peace is about the
appropriate attitudes, institutions, and structures which when
strengthened,
lead to a more peaceful society.”[18]
The Pillars of Peace cover domains like the quality of government,
economic and
social climate, relations with neighbours and the like. Also on the
PPI the countries where movements of non-violent resistance have taken
place
rank relatively low, and just like for the GPI they belong to the 60%
lowest
ranking countries, with Nigeria almost at the bottom. It is striking
that Bahrain,
where the non-violent movement has been crushed by violence, is the
most peaceful
of our 16 countries according to its PPI score. How is it possible that
a
country that uses violence against peaceful protesters is ranked higher
than
all other countries that avoided massive violence when confronted with
a
non-violent protest movement? Has Bahrain really such a positive
attitude
towards peace compared with the other countries concerned as the PPI
ranking
suggests? It casts doubts on what it is that the PPI stands for or
whether its
operationalisation is correct. However, here it is not the place to
judge it,
and here I’ll suppose that the methodology behind both the
GPI and PPI are
correct. 7.3 Comparing the GPI and the
PPI It is
interesting to compare the ranks of the countries on the GPI and the
PPI. As
the report states: “This analysis allows the comparison of
the GPI to the PPI
to determine if nations have a positive peace surplus or deficit. This
gap is
the difference in ranking between the two indices and provides a basic
estimate
of a nation’s potential to improve or decline in peace. If
the ranking is lower
on the GPI than the PPI then there is an opportunity for an improvement
in
peace as the society has the attitudes, institutions, and structures
that are
associated with higher levels of peace. Similarly, the inverse scenario
suggests a fall in peacefulness may be more likely to occur. This is
referred
to as a positive peace deficit, where the PPI ranking is substantially
lower
than the GPI ranking, highlighting the weakness of the necessary
pillars to
sustain peace in a society.”[19]
In the last two columns of table 11 I present the data: first the GPI
ranks for
2011 (just as the report does in this case) and then the PPI ranks for
2012
(the only one available) minus the GPI ranks for 2011. For most
countries the
ranking on the PPI is higher than the ranking on the GPI. This means
that they
have an opportunity for an improvement in peace. This is not really
surprising,
for it is in line with the fact that the governments decided not to use
violence against the non-violent resisters, which suppose a positive
attitude towards
peaceful solutions, or a negative attitude towards violence at least.
In this
way it is remarkable that also Syria has an albeit small positive peace
surplus
in view of massive use of violence employed against peaceful protesters
during
the first stages of what is now a civil war. It is something to be
explained,
supposing again that the methodology behind the GPI and PPI is correct
(which
may be doubtful as we have seen in 7.2). The same could be said about
China,
weren’t it so that the demonstrations and their violent
suppression on the Tiananmen
Square took place already more than 20 years ago and much may have
changed then
in the political attitudes.[20] Four
countries have a clear positive peace deficit: the Philippines,
Thailand, South
Africa and Bahrain (while for Georgia the PPI and GPI ranks are the
same). To
start with the last country, for Bahrain this was to be expected in
view of the
violent reaction to the peaceful demonstrations in 2011. The peace
deficit in
the Philippines may be a consequence of the civil war in parts of the
archipelago. The causes of the positive peace deficits in Thailand and
South
Africa are more difficult to explain, and I’ll not speculate
on what they might
be. As such the relation between the GPI and PPI is one of the themes
that need
further investigation. Anyway, most countries with non-violent
resistance have
a positive peace surplus, but whether this surplus is a factor
contributing to
the occurrence of such resistance can only be said if we know the
relation
GPI-PPI for comparable countries where no non-violent resistance took
place, so
for countries that belong to the 60% lowest ranking countries for both
indexes. I want to
conclude my analyses by quoting a comment by the authors on the GPI and
PPI
report on the PPI: “One of the most notable observations is
that the same
attributes associated with peace are also associated with many other
positive
social and economic outcomes such as high levels of education, higher
GDP per
capita, low levels of corruption and high social cohesion. Seen in this
light,
the Pillars of Peace provide a foundation for thinking about how to
establish
the optimal environment for human wellbeing and potential to
flourish.” (p. 34)
In view of the other indexes I have analysed here, this would imply
that the
PPI would do as a predictor or indicator for the effectiveness of
non-violent
resistance or for whatever we would like to use it in relation to our
theme. In
very rough lines, the PPI and the other indexes agree, it’s
true, but when we
look at the details we see substantial differences, besides that the
PPI is
only available for a limited number of countries at the moment. So the
PPI
score does not give any indication of the chance that non-violent
resistance
will be met by violence, as the Democracy Index does for instance. Nor
does it
become clear when using the PPI that in some very unstable countries
(like Somalia)
non-violent resistance will not occur (cf the Failed States Index).
These are
only a few examples. The same is also true for the GPI. Therefore
employing other
indexes next to the PPI and GPI certainly makes sense. 8.
Conclusion In this
exploratory article I examined whether there is a relation between the
properties of states and the chances that the governments ruling that
states
will be confronted with non-violent resistance. Formulated in another
way, I examined
what the characteristics of the states are where non-violent resistance
against
the ruling regime has taken place. The reason for these questions is
the idea
that if such regimes are different from the
“average” regime, knowledge of
their characteristics may be employed to develop more effective methods
of
non-violent resistance or to adapt existing methods better to the
particular
situation where they are used. However, this article was only about the
characteristics of the regimes and not about methods and how to adapt
them. For
improving the non-violent methods still a lot of theoretical and
practical
research will be necessary. For reasons
of comparison I have discussed only countries where non-violent
movements have occurred
after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 (plus the Philippines and
South
Africa and without the former communist countries) for reasons given
above. What
this article shows is that further research into the characteristics of
the
regimes concerned will be worthwhile. Regimes, or rather repressive
regimes,
confronted with non-violent resistance are not average, even not when
democratic regimes are excluded from the analysis, since –
for obvious reasons,
I think – non-violent resistance not is to be expected there.[21]
Even more, once the characteristics of a regime are known, it is
possible to
predict when it is likely that a repressive regime will react with
violence and
when it will react with less extreme means when confronted with
non-violence. However,
much research has yet to be done. This study is only preliminary. Here I’ll
not repeat the results of my analysis in detail. They can be found in
the paragraphs
above where I consider several regime indicators. Anyway, the main line
is
clear: On almost each index discussed, countries with non-violent
resistance
movements have low scores but not extremely low scores. Generally, the
countries selected that used violence in order to suppress the
resistance have
the lowest scores on the indexes. I think
that already this general conclusion shows the value of an analysis of
the
characteristics of states (and their regimes) in the light of
non-violence. For
instance, the characteristics of the Syrian regime made it highly
probably that
it would reply with violence to any non-violent deed of resistance. And
indeed,
that’s what happened. Had the non-violent opposition realized
that before,
maybe they would have been more careful in organising demonstrations
against
the Assad regime and have looked for other ways of expressing
dissatisfaction
and confronting the regime. This
preliminary research has its limitations (and that’s why it
is preliminary). In
the introduction I have already pointed out that this study may contain
methodological flaws. Its most important shortcoming is that the scores
on the
indexes have not been taken on the eve of the outbreak of the
non-violent
resistance, but after a regime change has taken place, if not many
years later.
This may (and in many cases will) give
a
wrong view of the characteristics of the states analysed. Not a wrong
view of
what the characteristics of these states are now but a wrong view of
what they
were at the relevant moments. This is the first point that has to be
improved
in a follow-up research. It is a problem, however, that in many cases
the indices
we would like to use did not yet exist at the moments these conflicts
broke out.
An alternative would be to try to compute the indices afterwards or to
guess
how they might have been, with all chances of misjudgments (which
doesn’t imply
that the present indices are faultless). Many indices that are
available today go
ten years back at most, and some even have been computed for the first
time last
year. Another
shortcoming of this study is that the choice of the indices has been
rather arbitrary,
without a theoretical foundation. Also this can be done better and more
indices
have to be taken into consideration as well. Nevertheless,
or rather just because of these and other shortcomings of the present
study, a follow-up
study will be useful and it will certainly bring the cause of
non-violence a
step ahead. 9. References - “Arab
Spring”; on website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring - Dagne,
Ted, Nigeria in
Political Transition,
CRS Report for Congress, 2006; on website: http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/71824.pdf
-
“Corruption index 2011 from Transperancy International: find
out how countries
compare”, The Guardian, Datablog, on website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/dec/01/corruption-index-2011-transparency-international
- “Corruption
Perception Index 2011”, Transperancy International; on
website: http://www.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/
-
“Democracy index 2011. Democracy under stress”,
Economist Intelligence Unit; on
website http://www.sida.se/Global/About%20Sida/S%C3%A5%20arbetar%20vi/EIU_Democracy_Index_Dec2011.pdf
- “The
Failed States Index 2012 Interactive Grid”, The Fund for
Peace; on website: http://www.fundforpeace.org/global/?q=fsi-grid2012
- “Global
Peace Index 2012”, Insitute for Economics and Peace; on
website: http://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/2012-Global-Peace-Index-Report.pdf
- Rice,
Susan E.; Stewart Patrick, “Index of State Weakness in the
Developing World”,
The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., 2008; on website: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2008/2/weak%20states%20index/02_weak_states_index.pdf
- Robinson,
Sarah, “When Change Is Not Enough: The Seven Steps To
Revolution”, Feb. 20,
2008; on http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/when-change-not-enough-seven-steps-revolution - Schock,
Kurt, Unarmed Insurrections. People Power
Movements in Nondemocracies, University of Minnesota Press,
Minneapolis,
2005 - Weg, Henk
bij de, “Nonviolent resistance and repressive
regimes”; on website: http://www.bijdeweg.nl/Nonviolence.htm [2] In particular, I
think that the field of non-violence
research can get important insights from the resource mobilisation
approach.
This is beyond the scope of the present study, however. [3] http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/ I have also made use of the
clear
presentation of the data on http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/dec/01/corruption-index-2011-transparency-international [6] Rice and Patrick
2008. [8] http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/dec/01/corruption-index-2011-transparency-international [9] See for instance
Robinson 2008. But this revolution
theory has bene developed for economically advanced societies. However,
many
cases of non-violent resistance have taken place in economically less
advanced
countries or in economically rising countries. Therefore, it would be
interesting to examine whether non-violent revolutions (successful or
not
successful) also happen in situations of rising expectations that did
not come
out or has a setback in one way or another. [11] For a detailed description of
the methodology
behind DI see the source mentioned in table 4. [12] A quick computation will make
this clear. Thailand
is highest after South Africa with an average rank of 75 and the other
countries rank lower. [13] Measured by range
the dispersion for political
participation is 6.11 and for functioning of government is 7.85.
Measured by
average absolute deviation from the average score the values are 1.12
and 1.77
respectively. [14] See for instance
the death toll in the table “Summary
of conflicts by country” on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring
. [15] Which is not the
same as impossible, although I think
that the chances that it will succeed are low. [16] Note that in
countries like Romania and Poland, where
important non-violent resistance has taken place against the former
communist
regimes, such resistance just has lea to a change of the political
structure,
which makes that other ways of protest have become an option. [17] This is probably also true for
the high income
countries that are not in the list, but then for the absence of
non-violent
resistance. [18] http://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/2012-Global-Peace-Index-Report.pdf, p. 34. [19] Ibid. (see note 18) [20] Generally the
time gap can be a methodological problem
in my analyses as I have made stressed before. [21] Although democratic countries can have been confronted with non-violent action. For a description of the difference between non-violent action and non-violent resistance see the Introduction of my “Non-violent resistance and repressive regimes” on website0 http://www.bijdeweg.nl/Nonviolence.htm . terug
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