Maria Stephan | |
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 Maria Stephan in 2019 | |
| Nationality | American |
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Maria J. Stephan is an American political scientist. She is the former Director of the program on nonviolent action at the United States Institute of Peace. She studies authoritarianism, protest, and the effectiveness of violent and nonviolent types of civil resistance.
Stephan is from Vermont, and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at Boston College. [1] She then attended the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where she earned a Master of Arts degree in Law and Diplomacy and Doctor of Philosophy. [1] During her graduate education she was the recipient of a Harry S. Truman Scholarship, which is a graduate fellowship dedicated to public service. [1] She was also a J. William Fulbright Scholar. [1]
Before working with the United States Institute of Peace, Stephan worked at the United States Department of State where she was the lead foreign affairs officer for the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, [2] and at NATO headquarters. [1]
Together with Erica Chenoweth, Stephan wrote the 2010 book Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. The book studies the success rates of civil resistance efforts from 1900 to 2006, focusing on the major violent and nonviolent efforts to bring about regime change during that time. [3] By comparing the success rates of 323 violent and nonviolent campaigns, Stephan and Chenoweth demonstrate that only 26% of violent revolutions were successful, whereas 53% of nonviolent campaigns were successful. [3] [4] Of the 25 largest movements they studied, 20 were nonviolent, and they found that nonviolent movements attracted four times as many participants on average than violent movements. [3] They also demonstrated that nonviolent movements tended to precede the development of more democratic regimes than violent movements. [5] [6]
The authors coined a rule about the level of participation necessary for a movement to succeed, called the "3.5% rule": nearly every movement with active participation from at least 3.5% of the population succeeded. [7] [8] All of the campaigns that achieved that threshold were nonviolent. [9]
Why Civil Resistance Works won the 2012 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Prize from the American Political Science Association, which is awarded each year for "the best book on government, politics, or international affairs". [10] For Why Civil Resistance Works, Stephan and her coauthor Erica Chenoweth won the 2013 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. [11] In 2015 Stephan was the recipient of the inaugural Henry J. Leir Human Security Award, which is awarded by Institute for Human Security at Fletcher University for "outstanding Fletcher alumni who have made significant contributions to the scholarship and/or practice of human security". [12] [13]
Stephan's work has been covered extensively in media outlets like The Globe and Mail , [14] Vice , [15] NPR, [16] and Quartz . [17]
Nonviolence is the personal practice of not causing harm to others under any condition. It may come from the belief that hurting people, animals and/or the environment is unnecessary to achieve an outcome and it may refer to a general philosophy of abstention from violence. It may be based on moral, religious or spiritual principles, or the reasons for it may be strategic or pragmatic. Failure to distinguish between the two types of nonviolent approaches can lead to distortion in the concept's meaning and effectiveness, which can subsequently result in confusion among the audience. Although both principled and pragmatic nonviolent approaches preach for nonviolence, they may have distinct motives, goals, philosophies, and techniques. However, rather than debating the best practice between the two approaches, both can indicate alternative paths for those who do not want to use violence. These forms of nonviolence approaches will be discussed in the later section of this article.
A nonviolent revolution is a revolution conducted primarily by unarmed civilians using tactics of civil resistance, including various forms of nonviolent protest, to bring about the departure of governments seen as entrenched and authoritarian without the use or threat of violence. While many campaigns of civil resistance are intended for much more limited goals than revolution, generally a nonviolent revolution is characterized by simultaneous advocacy of democracy, human rights, and national independence in the country concerned.
Nonviolence International (NI) acts as a network of resource centers that promote the use of nonviolence and nonviolent resistance. They have maintained relationships with activists in a number of countries, with their most recent projects taking place in Palestine, Sudan and Ukraine. They partnered with International Center for Nonviolent Conflict to update Gene Sharp's seminal work on 198 methods of nonviolent action through a book publication. NI has also produced a comprehensive database of nonviolence tactics, which stands as the largest collection of nonviolent tactics in the world. They partner with Rutgers University to provide the largest collection of nonviolence training materials in the world.
A Force More Powerful is a 1999 feature-length documentary film and a 2000 PBS series written and directed by Steve York about nonviolent resistance movements around the world. Executive producers were Dalton Delan and Jack DuVall. Peter Ackerman was the series editor and principal content advisor.
Peter Ackerman was an American businessman, the founder and former chairman of Americans Elect, and the founding chair of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. Ackerman was the managing director of Rockport Capital, Inc and served as a member of IREX’s Global Advisory Council.
A political demonstration is an action by a mass group or collection of groups of people in favor of a political or other cause or people partaking in a protest against a cause of concern; it often consists of walking in a mass march formation and either beginning with or meeting at a designated endpoint, or rally, in order to hear speakers. It is different from mass meeting.
Henry J. Leir was an American industrialist, financier, and philanthropist. He is primarily known for his role in the post-World War II economic development of Luxembourg.
Civil resistance is a form of political action that relies on the use of nonviolent resistance by ordinary people to challenge a particular power, force, policy or regime. Civil resistance operates through appeals to the adversary, pressure and coercion: it can involve systematic attempts to undermine or expose the adversary's sources of power. Forms of action have included demonstrations, vigils and petitions; strikes, go-slows, boycotts and emigration movements; and sit-ins, occupations, constructive program, and the creation of parallel institutions of government.
The International Center on Nonviolent Conflict is an independent, nonprofit educational foundation, founded by Jack DuVall and Peter Ackerman in 2002. It promotes the study and utilization of nonmilitary strategies by civilian-based movements to establish and defend human rights, social justice and democracy.
The right to protest may be a manifestation of the right to freedom of assembly, the right to freedom of association, and the right to freedom of speech. Additionally, protest and restrictions on protest have lasted as long as governments have.
Nonviolent resistance, or nonviolent action, sometimes called civil resistance, is the practice of achieving goals such as social change through symbolic protests, civil disobedience, economic or political noncooperation, satyagraha, constructive program, or other methods, while refraining from violence and the threat of violence. This type of action highlights the desires of an individual or group that feels that something needs to change to improve the current condition of the resisting person or group.
Different Muslim movements through history had linked pacifism with Muslim theology. However, warfare has been an integral part of Islamic history both for the defense and the spread of the faith since the time of Muhammad.
Civilian-based defense or social defence describes non-military action by a society or social group, particularly in a context of a sustained campaign against outside attack or dictatorial rule – or preparations for such a campaign in the event of external attack or usurpation. There are various near-synonyms, including "non-violent defence", "civilian defence" and "defence by civil resistance". Whatever term is used, this approach involves preparations for and use of a range of actions – which can be variously called nonviolent resistance and civil resistance – for national defence against invasion, coup d'état and other threats.
Erica Chenoweth is an American political scientist, professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. They are known for their research work on non-violent civil resistance movements.
Global Peace System is a concept of global conflict resolution dependent on nonviolent processes to eradicate war. It relies upon a multi-strand approach to conflict resolution, incorporating broad social and political solutions. In contemporary peace and conflict studies, the concept of a global peace system has been evolving since the 1940s around the theory that there is a global infrastructure of peacebuilding and that there is a need for systems thinking in peacebuilding. The term "global peace system" was coined from the work of Robert Johansen, who explored the concept in 1978's Toward a Dependable Place.
Direct action originated as a political activist term for economic and political acts in which the actors use their power—such as economic or physical power—to directly achieve their goals. In contrast, actions that appeal to others might achieve their goals by, for example, highlighting an existing problem to the public or demonstrating a possible solution to authorities.
The radical flank effect refers to the positive or negative effects that radical activists for a cause have on more moderate activists for the same cause.
Dalia Ziada is an Egyptian award-winning writer. She is the author of "The Curious Case of the Three-Legged Wolf - Egypt: Military, Islamism, and Liberal Democracy" and other internationally acclaimed non-fiction books on Middle East politics. She currently works as the Chairperson of the Liberal Democracy Institute, and Executive Director of MEEM Center for Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean Studies.
The People's Peace Movement or Helmand Peace Convoy is a nonviolent resistance grassroots group in Afghanistan, created in March 2018 after a suicide car bomb attack on 19 March in Lashkargah, Helmand Province. The PPM calls for the military forces of both the government of Afghanistan and the Taliban to implement a ceasefire and advance the Afghan peace process. The group marched across Afghanistan to Kabul, where it met leaders of both parties and conducted sit-ins in front of diplomatic posts, before continuing its march to Balkh and Mazar-i-Sharif, arriving in September 2018.
