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Nonviolent Action

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Book cover Bottom-up Responses to Crisis

Part of the book series: Mercatus Studies in Political and Social Economy ((MSPSE))

Abstract

Nonviolent action involves private parties coming together to resist undesired actions from other groups both within or outside of society. Nonviolent action is decentralized and emergent in nature, and has played a role as a type of bottom-up response to crises. However, this form of action has largely been neglected as a potential solution to crisis in the literature. To address this gap, this chapter reviews the relevant literature on nonviolent action from the eighteenth century to contemporary scholarship and discusses open areas for future research.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The literature on nonviolent action is silent regarding the normative content of the goals of the nonviolent efforts. In principle, nonviolent action could be used for beneficial outcomes—for example, protecting or expanding human rights and civil liberties—or to harm certain people or groups—for example, undermining rights and liberties.

  2. 2.

    According to the NAVCO Data Project website (NAVCO n.d.): “The Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes (NAVCO) Data Project is a multi-level data collection effort that catalogues major nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns around the globe from 1900 to 2013. The project produces aggregate-level data on resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2013 (NAVCO 1), annual data on campaign behavior from 1946 to 2013 (NAVCO 2), and events data on tactical selection in a sample of 26 countries with major nonviolent and violent campaigns from 1991 to 2012 (NAVCO 3).”

  3. 3.

    For information on the center, see https://canvasopedia.org/about-us/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    Joshua Ammons & Christopher J. Coyne

  2. F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    Christopher J. Coyne

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  1. Joshua Ammons
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  2. Christopher J. Coyne
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Correspondence to Christopher J. Coyne .

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  1. F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    Stefanie Haeffele

  2. F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    Virgil Henry Storr

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Ammons, J., Coyne, C.J. (2020). Nonviolent Action. In: Haeffele, S., Storr, V. (eds) Bottom-up Responses to Crisis. Mercatus Studies in Political and Social Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39312-0_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39312-0_3

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