Erica Chenoweth

Like, you tried to have a coup, and so you're going to be impeached.

And they launched impeachment proceedings after one failed attempt because the ruling party tried to get around a quorum rule so that they didn't have to show up and actually participate in the impeachment proceedings.

The movement basically demanded that they show up and vote, and they did, and the president was impeached.

And then he tried to appeal it.

He lost the appeal in the Supreme Court.

Like, he's out and going to be held accountable for it.

So that's the way both a successful movement works and how to stop a coup and prevent it from happening again.

I think one of the things that's so powerful about the example is that they could credibly commit that they could bring the country to an orderly standstill.

That's why it worked.

And so I think the deterrent impact that they were able to have was profound.

And it's just a lesson to learn, I think.

It was actually when I was finishing my PhD in political science that I was invited to apply to go to a workshop on how to teach about nonviolent resistance.

And this was a topic I had never learned about, had not encountered in my research.

I studied terrorism and political violence exclusively at that time.

And so I wanted to go to the workshop to put it on my CV and, you know, draw on my network and

get free books and learn how to teach this topic.

And I just thought that the material was very interesting, but I noticed that there hadn't really been, like, a quantitative treatment of the question about whether nonviolent resistance was actually a realistic alternative to violence in different difficult settings.

You know, like in settings where we would typically expect people to use armed conflict to promote their...

agenda.

And so my colleague Maria Stephan and I, whom I met there, decided to team up and do such a study.