Foreign hand: Help or hindrance?

Book review of The Role of External Support in Nonviolent Campaigns: Poisoned Chalice or Holy Grail?

What happens when a nonviolent campaign anchored in a particular country receives international support from celebrities, advocacy organisations, diaspora groups and foreign governments? How is this external assistance viewed and interpreted by various domestic actors? To what extent do the campaigners actually benefit from solidarity statements, funds, coverage in global media, and online hashtags? Can well-intentioned but poorly planned gestures from supporters in other parts of the world land locals in trouble? 

As you mull over these questions, and the famous “toolkit case” involving climate change activist Disha Annappa Ravi, read Erica Chenoweth and Maria J Stephan’s new monograph titled The Role of External Support in Nonviolent Campaigns: Poisoned Chalice or Holy Grail?.  It has been published by ICNC Press, which is run by the International Centre on Nonviolent Conflict in Washington DC to produce low-cost and free resources on the subject of civil resistance for a diverse international readership. This monograph is free to download. It would be of interest to community organisers, scholars, journalists and policymakers. 

Dr Chenoweth is the Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School, and directs the Nonviolent Action Lab at Harvard’s Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy. Dr Stephan has been the lead foreign affairs officer in the US State Department, serving in Afghanistan and Turkey, and most recently directed the Program on Nonviolent Action at the US Institute of Peace. These credentials not only point to their expertise but also offer insights into their access, political locations, and possible biases. 

Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative research, the authors argue that “long-term investment in civil society and democratic institutions can strengthen the societal foundations for nonviolent movements.” Their findings suggest that “long-term technical and financial assistance to civic organizations, political parties, think tanks, youth movements, unions, and independent media has helped build the demand side for human rights, civic participation and government accountability.”

Title of the book: The Role of External Support in Nonviolent Campaigns: Poisoned Chalice or Holy Grail? 

Author: Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan

Publisher: ICNC Press

Price:  Free to download from https:// www. nonviolent-conflict.org/

The ideas presented here are worth exploring in relation to the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2019 and the protests against three new farm laws in 2020 — the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act. Both sets of protests have been met with a deluge of external support from foreign governments, intellectuals, activists, philanthropic foundations and media houses. Has this helped the protestors or put them in danger? 

The metaphors used in the second half of the title —“poisoned chalice” and “holy grail”— might be familiar to lovers of fiction but the book has no veiled references to Shakespeare’s play Macbeth (1623) or Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code (2003). The authors use “poisoned chalice” merely as shorthand for something that appears to be beneficial at first but eventually turns out to be harmful, and “holy grail” to mean something that is eagerly sought after because it has miraculous powers. 

The monograph focuses on eight case studies — the Bulldozer Revolution in Serbia (2000), the Orange Revolution in Ukraine (2004-2005), the Denim Revolution in Belarus (2006), the Green Revolution and Day of Rage in Iran (2009), the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia (2010-2011), the January 25 Revolution in Egypt (2011), the Syrian Uprising in Syria (2011-2013), and the Anti-al-Bashir movement in Sudan (2011-2013). South Asia is not covered in this selection. The authors also draw on over 80 interviews with activists, donors, human rights advocates and other stakeholders in these eight cases.  In addition to this, the authors have collected and analysed “original data on over 25,000 publicly-reported incidents of external assistance to all of the maximalist nonviolent campaigns operating worldwide between 2000 and 2013.” What are maximalist campaigns? The authors define them as campaigns with “major political goals, including removing an incumbent national leader or achieving territorial independence.” 

Dr Chenoweth and Dr Stephan admit that US officials are over-represented in their sample. However, they do not question whether the theoretical frameworks used to analyse external support to nonviolent campaigns are grounded in assumptions of American exceptionalism and white supremacy. They do point out that “external support in the form of financial assistance, diplomatic support, or transnational solidarity is most useful when it leverages good local strategies and networks.” Will this put to rest the suspicion that domestic dissenters are foreign agents or anti-national elements? Only the courts can answer this one.