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We offered a practical definition of nonviolent struggle earlier in this series. We now turn to "civil resistance", a term often used as a synonym of nonviolent action. Is there a difference between the two? Why use one over the other? Drawing from a new release on the subject, find out what the rationale is for using "civil resistance" as a term that covers most of the ground associated with nonviolent action, without some of its unwanted aura of ascetic faith or doctrine.

So what exactly is civil resistance?

CIVIL RESISTANCE is a type of political action that relies on the use of nonviolent methods. It is largely synonymous with certain other terms, including 'nonviolent action', 'nonviolent resistance and 'people power'. It involves a range of widespread and sustained activities that challenge a particular power, force, policy, or regime — hence the term 'resistance'. The adjective 'civil' in this context denotes that which pertains to a citizen or society, implying that a movement's goals are 'civil' in the sense of being widely shared in a society; and it denotes that the action concerned is non-military or nonviolent in character.

Civil resistance, precursors of which can be found throughout history, has been used in many types of struggle in modern times: for example, against colonialism, foreign occupations, military coups d'état, dictatorial regimes, electoral malpractice, corruption, and racial, religious, and gender discrimination. It has been used not only against tyrannical rule, but also against democratically elected governments, over such issues as maintenance of key elements of the constitutional order, preservation of regional autonomy within a country, defence of minority rights, environmental protection, and opposition to involvement in certain military interventions and wars.

Civil resistance operates through several mechanisms of change. These are not limited to attempts to appeal to the adversary. They can involve pressure and coercion-by increasing the costs to the adversary of pursuing particular policies, weakening the adversary's capacity to pursue a particular policy, or even undermining completely the adversary's sources of legitimacy and power, whether domestic or international. An aim of many campaigns is to bring about dissension and defections in the adversary's regime and in its basis of support. Forms of action can be very varied, and have included demonstrations, vigils, and petitions; strikes, go-slows, and boycotts; and sit-ins, occupations, and the creation of parallel institutions of government. Campaigns of civil resistance involve strategy-i.e. projecting and directing the movements and elements of a campaign.

There is no assumption that the adversary power against which civil resistance is aimed necessarily avoids resort to violence: civil resistance has been used in some cases in which the adversary has been predisposed to use violence. Nor is there an assumption that there cannot be various forms of understanding or cooperation between civil resisters and certain governments or other entities with a capacity to use force. Often the reasons for a movement's avoidance of violence are related to the context rather than to any absolute ethical principle: they may spring from a society's traditions of political action, from its experience of war and violence, from legal considerations, from a desire to expose the adversary's violence as unprovoked, or from calculations that civil resistance would be more likely than violent means to achieve success in the particular situation that is faced.

From Civil Resistance & Power Politics: The Experience of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to the Present, Oxford University Press, 2009.

This attempt at a definition of civil resistance draws on a wide variety of sources, including suggestions and published work by Peter Ackerman, April Carter, Michael Randle, Jacques Semelin, and Gene Sharp.

The term 'civil resistance' has frequently been used in connection with some types of non-violent campaign. Gandhi used it on many occasions. Why use the term civil resistance' rather than one of its many near-synonyms?

Civil resistance is one type of the broader overall phenomenon of 'nonviolent action'. Many have seen 'nonviolent action' as the over-arching concept, which famously encompasses a vast array of types of activity. Other near-synonyms for civil resistance have included also 'passive resistance', 'civilian resistance', 'civil disobedience' and 'satyagraha'. Each of these terms has its own particular uses and connotations. However, 'civil resistance' is the most satisfactory general term to cover struggles that were 'civil' in the senses that they had a civic quality, relating to the interests and hopes of a society as a whole; in some cases the action involved was not primarily disobedience, but instead involved supporting the norms of a society against usurpers; and the generally principled avoidance of the use of violence was not doctrinaire.

Definitions of all these terms leave certain questions unanswered. The most obvious problem is that certain campaigns that might on the surface appear to be non-violent in character are not necessarily perceived as such when the context is taken into account. In Northern Ireland in May 1974, the Protestant majority organized an impressive fourteen-day general strike, but the purpose, and effect, of this non-violent action was to bring down a power-sharing executive which had been established in an attempt to bring peace to the troubled province. Other examples of strikes that are non-violent in themselves, but involve a risk of violent consequences, might include a strike by hospital staff with no alternative arrangements for the patients; or a strike, without notice, by air-traffic controllers, creating immediate risks to aircraft in flight. Such possibilities prove the proposition that definitions of abstract nouns maybe excellent at capturing the core of particular concepts, but always involve problems at the periphery.

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Philippe Duhamel
interTactica — a liberation blog

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