Civil Resistance and Conflict Transformation

<p>This book investigates the decision-making process rationale and determining factors which underlie the strategic shifts of armed movements from violent to nonviolent resistance. </p><p>The revival of global interest in the phenomenon of nonviolent struggle since the 2011 Arab Spring offers a welcome opportunity to revisit the potential of unarmed resistance as an alternative pathway out of armed conflicts in cases where neither military (or counter-insurgency) nor negotiated solutions have succeeded. This volume brings together academics from various disciplinary traditions and offers a wide range of case studies – including South Africa Palestine and Egypt – through which to view the changes from violence to nonviolence within self-determination revolutionary or pro-democracy struggles.</p><p>While current historiography focuses on armed conflicts and their termination through military means or negotiated settlements this book is a first attempt to investigate the nature and the drivers of transitions from armed strategies to unarmed methods of contentious collective action on the part of non-state conflict actors. The text concentrates in particular on the internal and relational factors which underpin the decision-making process from a change of leadership and a pragmatic re-evaluation of the goals and means of insurgency in the light of evolving inter-party power dynamics to the search for new local or international allies and the cross-border emulation or diffusion of new repertoires of action. </p><p>This book will be of interest to students of security studies peace and conflict studies political sociology and IR in general.</p>