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How can civil resisters channel power for change?

Power flows from a transaction between the ruler and the ruled. If power were a liquid, it would find its source in the consent of the governed. Civil resistance works because people can give or remove their consent at will — turning it on, turning it off, like a faucet. Because the levels of consent vary from day to day, power is dynamic.

People obey out of interest, habit or fear, but mostly because they accept the ruler’s actions as right, appropriate, or justified. The approval of power is called legitimacy.

Each time people agree to government action or policy, they pump consent up the pipes of power. From there, consent is accumulated in the reservoir of legitimacy. The more people give their consent, the more legitimate the power.

Legitimacy gives the ruler the ability to obtain what he wants, to make people act more or less as he wishes. As power uses legitimacy every day, its reserves need to be replenished. If its sources dry up, legitimacy can be depleted.

When that happens, authority starts to fail. People's willingness to go along starts to waver. Spheres of influence start to shrink. The capacity to rule is compromised.

A contest for legitimacy

Civil resistance launches a battle for legitimacy — questioning the authority to rule, challenging the ability to command. Civil resistance is the use of smart strategies, tactics and actions to reduce, interrupt or otherwise disrupt the flow of consent into the legitimacy water tank. It also impacts the outflow.

When obedience is no longer voluntary, compliance has to be bought, or forced. This increases the economic, social and political costs of maintaining power for the ruler.

Access to material and human resources becomes difficult. Strikes and other forms of noncooperation exact a growing economic toll.

In response, the authorities must step up propaganda efforts. Repression must be inflicted to those who defy and disobey. More police and army have to be deployed. But repression of nonviolent resisters comes at a much higher political price, domestically and internationally. When the authorities commit brutal blunders, such as an attack on unarmed civilians, the legitimacy tank starts leaking profusely.

When important sectors no longer cooperate, and society becomes ungovernable, people start to doubt. The main backers and enforcers of the system, the police, the army begin to wonder. Perhaps the system is not as strong as it looked? The tower's pillars become shaky, for all to see.

Reduced inflow, increased outflow, punctured waterworks; when that happens, the alternative — your movement — can step in. Civil resistance has reshaped power.

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Philippe Duhamel

interTactica — a liberation blog

This is the ninth post in our series on "Why Nonviolent Struggle", a project to popularize the core concepts of civil resistance. These are to be published in tabloid form in various languages. You can also download today's piece as a pdf file. We invite your comments.

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