Erica Chenoweth

They killed and sexually assaulted and tortured over 100 people, some of whose bodies they dumped in the Nile River.

And in the aftermath of that event, the SPA wisely, I think, called for a general strike and mass non-cooperation.

And the reason I say it was incredibly wise and strategic is, again, it didn't necessarily put people in direct contact with those militias and security forces by calling for a massive strike.

four million strong demonstration, but instead say nobody's going to work until we have the opportunity to be at the table negotiating a peaceful transition to democracy.

And it was a remarkably effective maneuver.

Because not only did it help to keep people involved and engaged, but it also disrupted the day-to-day order of things so that the transitional junta didn't feel like it had a way out other than to work with some of the civilian representatives to negotiate an outcome.

That's right.

I think that's the basic theory.

The ruler does depend on so many people to stay in power.

Like, they're not doing it themselves.

And when very large numbers of people refuse to continue supporting them, things collapse rather quickly.

Movements have to do what Maria Stephan has argued, which is extend the nonviolent battlefield into constituencies upon whose cooperation the regime does depend.

So that's one kind of tricky factor that explains some variation, I think, in the outcomes of nonviolent movements.

Basically, there was an episode in which some of the protesters were provoked into using violence in one way or the other.

And there were a couple of social scientists who had been conducting surveys on opinions toward the movement before that event took place.

And then they were able to do surveys.

surveys after that event took place as well.

And what they found is that the average support for the movement dropped by about 12% in the aftermath of that event.

And the findings were qualified somewhat in the sense that among people who already were very supportive of the movement, there wasn't a very large drop.

But among people who were kind of adjacent to the movement politically, who were sympathetic to the movement before, or who were kind of not affiliated with the movement in any way, there was a much bigger decline in support.