Erica Chenoweth

So

That's a really key distinction and I think is probably what leads a lot of people to think that nonviolent resistance campaigns are naive, is that they think they're trying to change the mind of a brutal dictator when they're not.

They're trying to...

win a political fight among people who are neutral, who are kind of sympathetic to the regime but not actively supporting it, and certainly among people that are sympathetic to the movement but not actively supporting it.

And then the fourth factor that seems to be really important is for the movement to be able to develop some kind of organizational resilience and discipline so that when or if repression escalates,

that the movement is able to continue to recruit, to continue to maneuver as it needs to without falling into disarray.

And often what disarray means is, you know, some people start to say we need to use violence now and they just go do that, you know, without any kind of organizational cohesion.

And so we know that organizational cohesion leads to lots of things that help movements, including discipline.

Right.

Maria, Stefan and I analyzed about 323 cases of maximalist campaigns or revolutionary campaigns.

And I found that none of the campaigns seem to have failed after mobilizing three and a half percent of the population.

And 3.5% is a small number in relative terms, but very large in absolute terms.

So in the United States, that's like 11.5 million people.

In China, it's many tens of millions of people.

And so then we start to get a sense of the scale.

That it only counts participation.

It doesn't necessarily look at supporters of the movement or sympathizers with the movement.

And so it can be easy to sort of conclude, I think wrongly, that all you need is 3.5% of the population on your side.

I don't think that's what the data say.

It says that, you know, countries in which there have been