In the past decade, myriad studies have explored the effects of nonviolent resistance (NR) on outcomes including revolutionary success (short-term and long-term) and democratization, and how nonviolent mobilization can play a similar role to violence in affecting social change in some settings. This special issue seeks to advance scholars' and policymakers' understanding of the role of nonviolence by tackling some key assumptions in existing work that are complicated by historical and contemporary realities of deepening polarization worldwide. This issue addresses four key areas within conflict and peace research that limit scholars' and policymakers' ability to make sense of NR: (a) the fragmented nature of civil resistance campaigns in terms of supporters and demands; (b) the increasing prevalence of authoritarian or anti-egalitarian nonviolent campaigns; and (c) the complicated nature of revolutionary success. Cutting across all three of these substantive areas is another key area, which is: (d) the United States as an increasingly salient site of conflict and contention.

Major nonviolent protests with higher levels of youth participation are more likely to be successful, according to a study by the United States Institute of Peace in collaboration with Harvard Kennedy School professor Erica Chenoweth and lecturer Zoe Marks.

NPR's Ari Shapiro speak with political scientist Erica Chenoweth, who studies civil resistance movements, about the protests China and Iran.

The authors write that this is a moment of great hope for Iran but also great worry. Although the extensive frontline participation of women in protest movements often makes them more effective, it also raises the stakes dramatically. Defeat of today's protesters could be followed by an even deeper patriarchal backlash. 

In the Foreign Affairs interview, Host Daniel Kurtz-Phelan discusses with Harvard's Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks why autocrats fear women, why feminist movements are such a powerful tool against autocracy, and what the assault on reproductive rights in the United States signifies for American democracy.

The Gazette spoke with Erica Chenoweth, Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard Kennedy School and a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Chenoweth studies mass protest movements, civil resistance, and political violence, and is the author of "Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know." 

The authors share what they learned by counting the protests during the past four years.

This article argues that the decreased success of nonviolent civil resistance was due not only to savvier state responses, but also to changes in the structure and capabilities of civil-resistance movements themselves. Perhaps counterintuitively, the coronavirus pandemic may have helped to address some of these underlying problems by driving movements to turn their focus back to relationship-building, grassroots organizing, strategy, and planning.

After 400 years of systemic discrimination against black people in America, the volcanic reaction to video of the brutal killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis has pushed America to another major inflection point in its seemingly endless struggle with race. Hundreds of thousands of Americans, both black people and allies from other racial identities, have taken to the streets to decry police brutality and systemic discrimination, and to demand change. PolicyCast Host Thoko Moyo welcomes Harvard Kennedy School Professors Khalil Muhammad and Erica Chenoweth for a discussion on the demanded change.

Nonviolent resistance scholar Erica Chenoweth explains the key ingredients of successful social movements.