Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks argue that It is not a coincidence that women's equality is being rolled back at the same time that authoritarianism is on the rise. Political scientists have long noted that women's civil rights and democracy go hand in hand, but they have been slower to recognize that the former is a precondition for the latter. 

We are living in an age of mass political participation, and civil resistance has emerged as a mainstay of the many social movements active around the world. On this episode of "Behind the Book", we speak with Erica Chenoweth, Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard Kennedy School, about their new book, Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know, which provides a robust introduction to the theory and practice of civil resistance.

The International Council is a prestigious group of senior business leaders and former government officials who care deeply about—and financially support—the Belfer Center’s mission to advance research, ideas, and leadership for a more secure, peaceful world. As part of a Center-wide effort to strengthen our community’s diversity, the Council has increased the number of female members four-fold in recent years. 

A sweeping overview of civil resistance movements around the world that explains what they are, how they work, why they are often effective, and why they can fail.
 

We asked several of our experts in intelligence and political violence to share their thoughts on the U.S. Capitol Police statement that militia groups may be planning to blow up the Capitol and “kill as many members as possible” during the upcoming (and still unscheduled) State of the Union address.  Erica Chenoweth, Paul Kolbe, Farah Pandith, and Nickolas Roth share their views. 

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

Erica Chenoweth and Jeremy Pressman's research shows that the Black Lives Matter uprisings of summer 2020 were remarkably nonviolent. When there was violence, very often police or counterprotesters were reportedly directing it at the protesters.

The authors explain why over recent decades, militant groups with the kind of vast international network of affiliates, allies, and supporters that ISIS has assembled have proved difficult to defeat. Alliances have helped ISIS expand and gain influence in good times and have relieved pressure by deflecting attention toward affiliates in bad times. 

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.

The authors write that the demonstrations following the killing of George Floyd represent the largest sustained mobilization in the United States in their lifetimes. They detail the new geography of activism.