Unarmed Insurrections: People Power Movement in Nondemocracies by Schock - Essay Example

Human history is fraught with people’s struggles for freedom and equality, for human rights and self determination. Early theorizing on social movements described these uprisings as rather psychological maladjustment problems or results of shared deprivation. But modern social movement theories take into account, more comprehensively, the varied undercurrents of the great flux that is a nation or a society, to explain social movements and their successes and failures. Kurt Schock, is the first ever social scientist who tried to put non-violent social movements on par with the strategic and pragmatic merits usually credited only to violent revolutions. Schock, in his book, Unarmed Insurrections: People Power Movement in Nondemocracies ( Schock, 2005), has made a study of the phenomenon of non-violent resistance in authoritarian contexts by taking the political movements in six countries as comparative case studies. The countries he put under this socio-analytical scanner are South Africa, Burma, Philippines, Nepal, Thailand and China. He further makes a distinction between the movements as those won a democratic victory and those who failed under repression. South Africa, Nepal, Philippines and Thailand are the winning examples of democracy, while Burma and China still remain under the autocratic rule. The study is limited in time, its purview being a rather historically short period which extents from 1980 to 2005. In his book, Kurt Schock’s attempt is focussed on evolving a set of cause-effect equations underlying these successes and failures. The social movements of Burma and South Africa are particularly significant to our review of this work, as the former failed just after reaching the brink of success, while the latter persevered and went up to the victory post in full glory and flamboyance. In view of the great momentum that both political movements achieved in late 80s, it was only natural to expect both to be victorious. The search for a reason to why this did not happen led Schock to point out certain factors key to the success of a non-violent social movement under an authoritarian regime. Kurt Schock says that, two basic conditions must be met for a resistance movement to contribute to political transformations. First, “the challenge must be able to withstand repression, and second, the challenge must undermine state power” (2005, p.49). These are the two broad yardsticks used to analyse the social movements in Burma and South Africa. He also theorizes that social and political transformation occurs only after a sustained period of challenge in which multiple forms of resistance are engaged (2005, p.53). Burma has a long history of British occupation. After the British, the Military Junta came to power and still wields total authority. Burma’s resistance against the oppressors is a prolonged saga of dissent as well as defeat. This struggle has a violent past led by ‘defrocked’ Budhist monks. A non-violent stream also was there parallel to this militant crusade and in 1988, this movement culminated in a mass protest. Election was held by the military government on May 27, 1990 yielding to public pressure. Aung San Suu Kyi and National League for Democracy won with a sweeping majority but military junta made a u-turn by refusing to accept the result. The next thing that the junta government did was to repress the freedom movement by arrests, threats and bloody massacres. Kurt Scock, in his book, has scrutinised the character of the 1988 uprising and reached at a set of conclusions on why the movement failed. He has pointed to the fact that the social movement in Burma was unable to form a coherent and decentralized umbrella organization. The organizational structure most effective in countering state repression, according to Schock, is network-oriented rather than hierarchical (2005, p.50). An umbrella movement with loose organisational structure can be more resilient because it is more flexible and able to create horizontal channels of communication. The commitment of the members will be more and the structure will be more open to innovations. The second factor refers to the political and social isolation in which the Burmese population existed as compared to nations more open to international communication ( Schock, 2005, p.111). “The more integrated a country is in the international system, and the more integrated its population is to international networks, the more likely that foreign states and trans-national social movements will be in a position to promote mobilisation and facilitate the success of social movements" (2005, p.154) has been one of the conclusions that Schock arrives at. When there are both violent and non-violent groups spearheading a struggle, at least seemingly independent from each other, Schock observes, a part of the elite of a country will be forced to ally with the non-violent protestors. This is partly because of moral reasons and partly because non-violent action is also able to promote capital flight and international sanctions. This support from the affluent section would put more weight to the cause of the protestors. But in Burma, the movement failed to have such support (2005, p.109) That the internal socio-political situation in Burma was not conducive to the success of the movement was also Schock’s explanation for the failure. The movement showed no resilience in the face of state repression. He states that, “… repression may increase or decrease mobilization depending on the presence or absence of other dimensions in the opportunity structure” (2005, p. 33) Powerful nations had no economic or strategic stakes in Burma and the protestors were not able to mobilise international support. So there was not enough international pressure on the military regime. India, Russia and China, who are the critical neighbours of Burma did never impart enough pressure to restore democracy in Burma and China and Russia even vetoed the Jan.2007 UN Security Council resolution for protection of human rights and democratic transition in Burma. The resistance movement had made mistakes in allowing the elections to be held under the aegis of the military government which suggests that they had no clearly defined goal. It also failed in opening new avenues of protest even after the elections were declared. There was no anticipation of a negative response from the rulers and no attempt to diversify the struggle in space and time. Schock concludes that in the case of Burma, the factors of failure were a collection of all the above mentioned. Also any movement to succeed, there had to be a sustained warfront erected, which in the case of Burma was not as old as in South Africa. Compared to South Africa, Burman resistance was in its early youth and it takes time to weary down the repressors. If we look at the South African situation, alternating periods of violence and non-violence can be seen as marking the prominent forms of protest. The African National Congress had initially carried out non-violent resistance against the apartheid governments in South Africa. However, events such as the 1960 Sharpeville massacre made ANC activists like Nelson Mandela to reconsider the path of armed resistance. Violent resistance continued till the United Democratic Front, the umbrella organisation of anti-apartheid movement was launched in August, 1983 with a protest march held in Cape Town. This was the beginning of a new epoch of non-violent action. Signature campaignes and rallies were held, the Parliament elections were boycotted in 1984 and a natinwide non-cooperation movement was launched. Next year saw the consumer boycotts as a new form of non-cooperation. Alternate system of governance in the form of local committees and people’s courts were established in 1985. Rent boycotts succeeded them in1986. Occupation of American consulate in 1988 was another example of disruptive non-violent intervention. Boycott of local elections and mass hunger strikes followed. All these different acts of non-violent commission and omission paved way to the end of the apartheid regime. Schock’s argument in favour of this change to non-violence is that the South African protestors as any other successful crusaders for political transformation opted methods of non-violence, not as a principled, moral stand, but as a very pragmatic strategic decision. The sociologist explains this further as, “unarmed insurrections typically involve pragmatic rather than principled non-violence. Pragmatic non-violence is characterized by a commitment to methods of non-violent action due to their perceived effectiveness, a view of means and ends potentially separable, a perception of the conflict as a struggle of incompatible interests, an attempt to inflict non physical pressure on an opponent during a struggle to undermine an opponent’s power (2005, p.17). The choice of non-violence is attributed by Schock to a number of changes that has happened in the global context. The capacity of states to repress by force has increased. On the other hand, the presence of trans-national actors like human rights organisations gives more space to non-violent action. Thirdly, the increasing use of communication technology by protestors provides them an added advantage. Non-violent resistance, to Schock, is not something to be equated with passive resistance. He reminds that the main propogators of passive resistance, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, had later on, abandoned this concept in order to escape the negative connotation of the term. “ Non-violent action is active- it involves activity in the collective pursuit of social or political objectives- and it is non-violent - it doesnot involve physical force or the threat of physical force against human beings. ( 2005, p.205). Schock redefines non-violent action as a set of tactics aimed not at persuading leaders to change their policies, but at making it impossible to enforce those policies. The example of South Africa fits into this argument as coerced negotiation by non violent action had ended the apartheid regime. Schock’s observation is that “Between 1983 and 1990, activists in South Africa used at least twelve different tactics within major campaigns aimed at challenging the entrenched power of the white regime.” (2005, p.64) He has listed the major among them as protest, persuasion, non-cooperation and non-violent creative intervention. The more diverse the methods of the struggle, the more diffuse the state’s repressive operations become, thus diminishing their effectiveness. He elicits the fact that in South Africa, the resistance movement “coordinated more than 700 organisations, a broad range of non-violent methods, national womens non-violent action, rallies, labour union strikes, school stay-aways, rent and consumer boycotts. ( Schock, 2005, p.59-60) Last, but not least, Schock reminds that a repressive state always faces any kind of resistance- whether it is violent or non-violent- with equal brutality and violence. Non-violence does not mean that the protestors meekly suffer physical attack. Repression is to be expected and success depends on the ability to lessen the impact and reach of such repression rather than to submit to it passively. This was also a major act of omission which the social movement in South Africa practiced by decentralising its activities. On the contrary, the protestors of Burma had to suffer huge casualties owing to their centralised organisational structure. Works cited Schock, Kurt, Unarmed Insurrections: People Power Movement in Nondemocracies, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. Read More