Excerpt from From Dictatorship to
Democracy by Gene Sharp
8
Applying Political Defiance
IN SITUATIONS IN WHICH THE population feels powerless and frightened, it
is important that initial tasks for the public be low-risk, confidence-building
actions. These types of actions – such as wearing one’s clothes in an unusual
way – may publicly register a dissenting opinion and provide an opportunity for
the public to participate significantly in acts of dissent. In other cases a
relatively minor (on the surface) nonpolitical issue (such as securing a safe
water supply) might be made the focus for group action. Strategists should
choose an issue the merits of which will be widely recognized and difficult to
reject. Success in such limited campaigns could not only correct specific
grievances but also convince the population that it indeed has power potential.
Most of the strategies of campaigns in the long-term struggle should not
aim for the immediate complete downfall of the dictatorship, but instead for
gaining limited objectives. Nor does every campaign require the participation
of all sections of the population.
In contemplating a series of specific campaigns to implement the grand
strategy, the defiance strategists need to consider how the campaigns at the
beginning, the middle, and near the conclusion of the long-term struggle will
differ from each other.
Selective resistance
In the initial stages of the struggle, separate campaigns with different
specific objectives can be very useful. Such selective campaigns may follow one
after the other. Occasionally, two or three might overlap in time.
In planning a strategy for “selective resistance” it is necessary to
identify specific limited issues or grievances that symbolize the general oppression
of the dictatorship. Such issues may be the appropriate targets for conducting
campaigns to gain intermediary strategic objectives within the overall grand
strategy.
These intermediary strategic objectives need to be attainable by the
current or projected power capacity of the democratic forces. This helps to
ensure a series of victories, which are good for morale, and also contribute to
advantageous incremental shifts in power relations for the long-term struggle.
Selective resistance strategies should concentrate primarily on specific
social, economic, or political issues. These may be chosen in order to keep
some part of the social and political system out of the dictators’ control, to
regain control of some part currently controlled by the dictators, or to deny
the dictators a particular objective. If possible, the campaign of selective
resistance should also strike at one weakness or more of the dictatorship, as
already discussed. Thereby, democrats can make the greatest possible impact
with their available power capacity.
Very early the strategists need to plan at least the strategy for the
first campaign. What are to be its limited objectives? How will it help fulfill
the chosen grand strategy? If possible, it is wise to formulate at least the general
outlines of strategies for a second and possibly a third campaign. All such
strategies will need to implement the chosen grand strategy and operate within
its general guidelines.
Symbolic challenge
At the beginning of a new campaign to undermine the dictatorship, the
first more specifically political actions may be limited in scope. They should
be designed in part to test and influence the mood of the population, and to
prepare them for continuing struggle through noncooperation and political
defiance.
The initial action is likely to take the form of symbolic protest or may
be a symbolic act of limited or temporary noncooperation. If the number of
persons willing to act is small, then the initial act might, for example,
involve placing flowers at a place of symbolic importance. On the other hand,
if the number of persons willing to act is very large, then a five-minute halt
to all activities or several minutes of silence might be used. In other
situations, a few individuals might undertake a hunger strike, a vigil at a
place of symbolic importance, a brief student boycott of classes, or a
temporary sit-in at an important office. Under a dictatorship these more
aggressive actions would most likely be met with harsh repression.
Certain symbolic acts, such as a physical occupation in front of the
dictator’s palace or political police headquarters, may involve high risk and
are therefore not advisable for initiating a campaign.
Initial symbolic protest actions have at times aroused major national
and international attention – as the mass street demonstrations in Burma in
1988 or the student occupation and hunger strike in Tiananman Square in Beijing
in 1989. The high casualties of demonstrators in both of these cases points to
the great care strategists must exercise in planning campaigns. Although having
a tremendous moral and psychological impact, such actions by themselves are
unlikely to bring down a dictatorship, for they remain largely symbolic and do
not alter the power position of the dictatorship.
It usually is not possible to sever the availability of the sources of
power to the dictators completely and rapidly at the beginning of a struggle.
That would require virtually the whole population and almost all the
institutions of the society – which had previously been largely submissive – to
reject absolutely the regime and suddenly defy it by massive and strong
noncooperation. That has not yet occurred and would be most difficult to
achieve. In most cases, therefore, a quick campaign of full noncooperation and
defiance is an unrealistic strategy for an early campaign against the
dictatorship.
Spreading responsibility
During a selective resistance campaign the brunt of the struggle is for
a time usually borne by one section or more of the population. In a later
campaign with a different objective, the burden of the struggle would be
shifted to other population groups. For example, students might conduct strikes
on an educational issue, religious leaders and believers might concentrate on a
freedom of religion issue, rail workers might meticulously obey safety regulations
so as to slow down the rail transport system, journalists might challenge
censorship by publishing papers with blank spaces in which prohibited articles
would have appeared, or police might repeatedly fail to locate and arrest
wanted members of the democratic opposition. Phasing resistance campaigns by
issue and population group will allow certain segments of the population to
rest while resistance continues.
Selective resistance is especially important to defend the
existence and autonomy of independent social, economic, and political groups
and institutions outside the control of the dictatorship, which were briefly
discussed earlier. These centers of power provide the institutional bases from
which the population can exert pressure or can resist dictatorial controls. In
the struggle, they are likely to be among the first targets of the
dictatorship.
Aiming at the dictators’ power
As the long-term struggle develops beyond the initial strategies into
more ambitious and advanced phases, the strategists will need to calculate how
the dictators’ sources of power can be further restricted. The aim would be to
use popular noncooperation to create a new more advantageous strategic
situation for the democratic forces.
As the democratic resistance forces gained strength, strategists would
plot more ambitious noncooperation and defiance to sever the dictatorships’
sources of power, with the goal of producing increasing political paralysis,
and in the end the disintegration of the dictatorship itself.
It will be necessary to plan carefully how the democratic forces can
weaken the support that people and groups have previously offered to the
dictatorship. Will their support be weakened by revelations of the brutalities
perpetrated by the regime, by exposure of the disastrous economic consequences
of the dictators’ policies, or by a new understanding that the dictatorship can
be ended? The dictators’ supporters should at least be induced to become
“neutral” in their activities (“fence sitters”) or preferably to become active
supporters of the movement for democracy.
During the planning and implementation of political defiance and
noncooperation, it is highly important to pay close attention to all of the
dictators’ main supporters and aides, including their inner clique, political
party, police, and bureaucrats, but especially their army.
The degree of loyalty of the military forces, both soldiers and
officers, to the dictatorship needs to be carefully assessed and a
determination should be made as to whether the military is open to influence by
the democratic forces. Might many of the ordinary soldiers be unhappy and frightened
conscripts? Might many of the soldiers and officers be alienated from the
regime for personal, family, or political reasons? What other factors might
make soldiers and officers vulnerable to democratic subversion?
Early in the liberation struggle a special strategy should be developed
to communicate with the dictators’ troops and functionaries. By words, symbols,
and actions, the democratic forces can inform the troops that the liberation
struggle will be vigorous, determined, and persistent. Troops should learn that
the struggle will be of a special character, designed to undermine the
dictatorship but not to threaten their lives. Such efforts would aim ultimately
to undermine the morale of the dictators’ troops and finally to subvert their
loyalty and obedience in favor of the democratic movement. Similar strategies
could be aimed at the police and civil servants.
The attempt to garner sympathy from and, eventually, induce disobedience
among the dictators’ forces ought not to be interpreted, however, to mean
encouragement of the military forces to make a quick end to the current
dictatorship through military action. Such a scenario is not likely to install
a working democracy, for (as we have discussed) a coup d’état does little to
redress the imbalance of power relations between the populace and the rulers.
Therefore, it will be necessary to plan how sympathetic military officers can
be brought to understand that neither a military coup nor a civil war against
the dictatorship is required or desirable.
Sympathetic officers can play vital roles in the democratic struggle,
such as spreading disaffection and noncooperation in the military forces,
encouraging deliberate inefficiencies and the quiet ignoring of orders, and
supporting the refusal to carry out repression. Military personnel may also
offer various modes of positive nonviolent assistance to the democracy
movement, including safe passage, information, food, medical supplies, and the
like.
The army is one of the most important sources of the power of dictators
because it can use its disciplined military units and weaponry directly to
attack and to punish the disobedient population. Defiance strategists should
remember that it will be exceptionally difficult, or impossible, to disintegrate
the dictatorship if the police, bureaucrats, and military forces remain fully
supportive of the dictatorship and obedient in carrying out its commands.
Strategies aimed at subverting the loyalty of the dictators’ forces should
therefore be given a high priority by democratic strategists.
The democratic forces should remember that disaffection and disobedience
among the military forces and police can be highly dangerous for the members of
those groups. Soldiers and police could expect severe penalties for any act of
disobedience and execution for acts of mutiny. The democratic forces should not
ask the soldiers and officers that they immediately mutiny. Instead, where
communication is possible, it should be made clear that there are a multitude
of relatively safe forms of “disguised disobedience” that they can take
initially. For example, police and troops can carry out instructions for
repression inefficiently, fail to locate wanted persons, warn resisters of
impending repression, arrests, or deportations, and fail to report important
information to their superior officers.
Disaffected officers in turn can
neglect to relay commands for repression down the chain of command. Soldiers
may shoot over the heads of demonstrators. Similarly, for their part, civil
servants can lose files and instructions, work inefficiently, and become “ill”
so that they need to stay home until they “recover.”
Shifts in strategy
The political defiance strategists will need constantly to assess how
the grand strategy and the specific campaign strategies are being implemented.
It is possible, for example, that the struggle may not go as well as expected.
In that case it will be necessary to calculate what shifts in strategy might be
required. What can be done to increase the movement’s strength and regain the
initiative? In such a situation, it will be necessary to identify the problem,
make a strategic reassessment, possibly shift struggle responsibilities to a
different population group, mobilize additional sources of power, and develop
alternative courses of action. When that is done, the new plan should be
implemented immediately.
Conversely, if the struggle has gone much better than expected and the
dictatorship is collapsing earlier than previously calculated, how can the
democratic forces capitalize on unexpected gains and move toward paralyzing the
dictatorship? We will explore this question in the following chapter.
9
Disintegrating the Dictatorship
THE CUMULATIVE EFFECT OF WELL-CONDUCTED and successful political
defiance campaigns is to strengthen the resistance and to establish and expand
areas of the society where the dictatorship faces limits on its effective
control. These campaigns also provide important experience in how to refuse
cooperation and how to offer political defiance. That experience will be of
great assistance when the time comes for noncooperation and defiance on a mass
scale.
As was discussed in Chapter Three, obedience, cooperation, and
submission are essential if dictators are to be powerful. Without access to the
sources of political power, the dictators’ power weakens and finally dissolves.
Withdrawal of support is therefore the major required action to disintegrate a
dictatorship. It may be useful to review how the sources of power can be
affected by political defiance.
Acts of symbolic repudiation and defiance are among the available means
to undermine the regime’s moral and political authority – its
legitimacy. The greater the regime’s authority, the greater and more reliable
is the obedience and cooperation which it will receive. Moral disapproval needs
to be expressed in action in order to seriously threaten the existence of the
dictatorship. Withdrawal of cooperation and obedience are needed to sever the
availability of other sources of the regime’s power.
A second important such source of power is human resources, the
number and importance of the persons and groups that obey, cooperate with, or
assist the rulers. If noncooperation is practiced by large parts of the
population, the regime will be in serious trouble. For example, if the civil
servants no longer function with their normal efficiency or even stay at home,
the administrative apparatus will be gravely affected.
Similarly, if the noncooperating persons and groups include those that
have previously supplied specialized skills and knowledge, then the
dictators will see their capacity to implement their will gravely weakened.
Even their ability to make well-informed decisions and develop effective
policies may be seriously reduced.
If psychological and ideological influences – called intangible
factors – that usually induce people to obey and assist the rulers are
weakened or reversed, the population will be more inclined to disobey and to
noncooperate.
The dictators’ access to material resources also directly affects
their power. With control of financial resources, the economic system,
property, natural resources, transportation, and means of communication in the
hands of actual or potential opponents of the regime, another major source of
their power is vulnerable or removed. Strikes, boycotts, and increasing
autonomy in the economy, communications, and transportation will weaken the
regime.
As previously discussed, the dictators’ ability to threaten or apply sanctions
– punishments against the restive, disobedient, and noncooperative sections of
the population – is a central source of the power of dictators. This source of
power can be weakened in two ways. First, if the population is prepared, as in
a war, to risk serious consequences as the price of defiance, the effectiveness
of the available sanctions will be drastically reduced (that is, the dictators’
repression will not secure the desired submission). Second, if the police and
the military forces themselves become disaffected, they may on an individual or
mass basis evade or outright defy orders to arrest, beat, or shoot resisters.
If the dictators can no longer rely on the police and military forces to carry
out repression, the dictatorship is gravely threatened.
In summary, success against an entrenched dictatorship requires that
noncooperation and defiance reduce and remove the sources of the regime’s
power. Without constant replenishment of the necessary sources of power the
dictatorship will weaken and finally disintegrate. Competent strategic planning
of political defiance against dictatorships therefore needs to target the
dictators’ most important sources of power.
Escalating freedom
Combined with political defiance during the phase of selective
resistance, the growth of autonomous social, economic, cultural, and political
institutions progressively expands the “democratic space” of the society and
shrinks the control of the dictatorship. As the civil institutions of the society
become stronger vis-à-vis the dictatorship, then, whatever the dictators may
wish, the population is incrementally building an independent society outside
of their control. If and when the dictatorship intervenes to halt this
“escalating freedom,” nonviolent struggle can be applied in defense of this
newly won space and the dictatorship will be faced with yet another “front” in
the struggle.
In time, this combination of resistance and institution building can
lead to de facto freedom, making the collapse of the dictatorship and the
formal installation of a democratic system undeniable because the power
relationships within the society have been fundamentally altered.
Poland in the 1970s and 1980s provides a clear example of the
progressive reclaiming of a society’s functions and institutions by the
resistance. The Catholic Church had been persecuted but never brought under
full Communist control. In 1976 certain intellectuals and workers formed small
groups such as K.O.R. (Workers Defense Committee) to advance their political
ideas. The organization of the Solidarity trade union with its power to wield
effective strikes forced its own legalization in 1980. Peasants, students, and
many other groups also formed their own independent organizations. When the
Communists realized that these groups had changed the power realities,
Solidarity was again banned and the Communists resorted to military rule.
Even under martial law, with many imprisonments and harsh persecution,
the new independent institutions of the society continued to function. For
example, dozens of illegal newspapers and magazines continued to be published.
Illegal publishing houses annually issued hundreds of books, while well-known
writers boycotted Communist publications and government publishing houses.
Similar activities continued in other parts of the society.
Under the Jaruselski military regime, the military-Communist government
was at one point described as bouncing around on the top of the society. The
officials still occupied government offices and buildings. The regime could
still strike down into the society, with punishments, arrests, imprisonment,
seizure of printing presses, and the like. The dictatorship, however, could not
control the society. From that point, it was only a matter of time until the
society was able to bring down the regime completely.
Even while a dictatorship still occupies government positions it is
sometimes possible to organize a democratic “parallel government.” This would
increasingly operate as a rival government to which loyalty, compliance, and
cooperation are given by the population and the society’s institutions. The
dictatorship would then consequently, on an increasing basis, be deprived of
these characteristics of government. Eventually, the democratic parallel
government may fully replace the dictatorial regime as part of the transition
to a democratic system. In due course then a constitution would be adopted and
elections held as part of the transition.
Disintegrating the dictatorship
While the institutional transformation of the society is taking place,
the defiance and noncooperation movement may escalate. Strategists of the
democratic forces should contemplate early that there will come a time when the
democratic forces can move beyond selective resistance and launch mass defiance.
In most cases, time will be required for creating, building, or expanding
resistance capacities, and the development of mass defiance may occur only
after several years. During this interim period campaigns of selective
resistance should be launched with increasingly important political objectives.
Larger parts of the population at all levels of the society should become
involved.
Given determined and disciplined political defiance during this
escalation of activities, the internal weaknesses of the dictatorship are
likely to become increasingly obvious.
The combination of strong political defiance and the building of
independent institutions is likely in time to produce widespread international
attention favorable to the democratic forces. It may also produce international
diplomatic condemnations, boycotts, and embargoes in support of the democratic
forces (as it did for Poland).
Strategists should be aware that in some situations the collapse of the
dictatorship may occur extremely rapidly, as in East Germany in 1989. This can
happen when the sources of power are massively severed as a result of the whole
population’s revulsion against the dictatorship. This pattern is not usual,
however, and it is better to plan for a long-term struggle (but to be prepared
for a short one).
During the course of the liberation struggle, victories, even on limited
issues, should be celebrated. Those who have earned the victory should be
recognized. Celebrations with vigilance should also help to keep up the morale
needed for future stages of the struggle.
Handling success responsibly
Planners of the grand strategy should calculate in advance the possible
and preferred ways in which a successful struggle might best be concluded in
order to prevent the rise of a new dictatorship and to ensure the gradual
establishment of a durable democratic system.
The democrats should calculate how the transition from the dictatorship
to the interim government shall be handled at the end of the struggle. It is
desirable at that time to establish quickly a new functioning government.
However, it must not be merely the old one with new personnel. It is necessary
to calculate what sections of the old governmental structure (as the political
police) are to be completely abolished because of their inherent
anti-democratic character and which sections retained to be subjected to later
democratization efforts. A complete governmental void could open the way to
chaos or a new dictatorship.
Thought should be given in advance to determine what is to be the policy
toward high officials of the dictatorship when its power disintegrates. For
example, are the dictators to be brought to trial in a court? Are they to be
permitted to leave the country permanently? What other options may there be
that are consistent with political defiance, the need for reconstructing the
country, and building a democracy following the victory? A bloodbath must be
avoided which could have drastic consequences for the possibility of a future
democratic system.
Specific plans for the transition to democracy should be ready for
application when the dictatorship is weakening or collapses. Such plans will
help to prevent another group from seizing state power through a coup d’état.
Plans for the institution of democratic constitutional government with full
political and personal liberties will also be required. The changes won at a
great price should not be lost through lack of planning.
When confronted with the increasingly empowered population and the
growth of independent democratic groups and institutions – both of which the
dictatorship is unable to control – the dictators will find that their whole
venture is unravelling. Massive shutdowns of the society, general strikes, mass
stay-at-homes, defiant marches, or other activities will increasingly undermine
the dictators’ own organization and related institutions. As a consequence of
such defiance and noncooperation, executed wisely and with mass participation
over time, the dictators would become powerless and the democratic defenders
would, without violence, triumph. The dictatorship would disintegrate before
the defiant population.
Not every such effort will succeed, especially not easily, and rarely
quickly. It should be remembered that as many military wars are lost as are
won. However, political defiance offers a real possibility of victory. As
stated earlier, that possibility can be greatly increased through the
development of a wise grand strategy, careful strategic planning, hard work,
and disciplined courageous struggle.
