Chapter Two

1. Theoretical Aspect on Peace Studies

Major peace theory
 Democratic/ Liberal Peace Theory
 Peace Education Theory/Integrated Theories of Peace Education
 Peace and Conflict Sensitivity Theory
A. From Kant’s ‘Perpetual Peace’ to Democratic Peace

Because of his influential essay Perpetual Peace, published in 1795, Immanuel Kant is
widely regarded an intellectual precursor to modern democratic peace theory. In his
philosophical treatise, Kant proposes three mechanisms that foster peace among nations and
societies:
1. The presence of a ‘republican constitution’, which for Kant entails the requirement of
public approval before the government can decide on the use of military force,
2. The pacifying effects of close trade relations – what Kant termed ‘the spirit of
commerce’, and
3. A federation of states to overcome the condition of lawlessness in international politics.
While the third mechanism underlines the importance of international law, Kant’s argument
regarding the first two mechanisms essentially rests on utilitarian cost-benefit calculations. He
assumes that citizens would decide against war if they had to bear the costs themselves. Hence, if
citizens were given a say in decisions on war and peace, then this should foster peaceful
interstate relations. Likewise, if countries had close trade relations with one another, then Kant
presumes that it would be irrational for them to engage in armed conflict, since that would
threaten their mutual welfare.
Although Perpetual Peace is widely cited in democratic peace research, studies have
focused primarily on the first of the three mechanisms suggested by Kant, equating ‘republican
constitutions’ with the concept of representative democracy. Works in the rational choice
tradition have read Kant’s treatise as specifying the political costs that democratic governments
have to confront when initiating war. These costs can be severe, regardless of the target, due to
the likelihood of domestic opposition, public protest, legislative interference, and the loss of life
and national wealth. Hence, because political leaders generally tend to avoid these risks, they are
expected to be reluctant to use military force. Despite the focus on the effects of representative
democracy in most works on the democratic peace, some studies have sought to include all three
mechanisms developed in Perpetual Peace, conceiving of democratic institutions, economic
interdependence, and membership in international organizations as mutually reinforcing factors
that lead toward peaceful interstate relations.

Theoretical Explanations for the Democratic Peace

 From the early stages of the democratic peace research program, theories were developed
around two strands of explanations, emphasizing norms and institutions, respectively. An
influential normative argument holds that democracies externalize their domestic norms of
conflict resolution when interacting with other states in the international system. Proponents of
this argument assume that states intuitively apply their domestic democratic norms of political
competition and conflict resolution when dealing with other states. Thus, when democracies
interact with one another they abide by similar norms, emphasizing the peaceful resolution of
conflict through negotiation and political compromise. Yet, although democracies generally seek
to transfer their own norms to the international sphere as much as possible, they acknowledge the
anarchic and insecure nature of international relations. Hence, democracies externalize their
domestic norms only when interacting with fellow democracies, where reciprocity can be
expected. When engaging with non-democracies, however, democracies adapt to the norms of
the latter in order to avoid being exploited or threatened by predatory regimes.

At first glance, the externalization argument seems to offer an account for both the peaceful
relations between democracies and the occurrence of armed conflict between democracies and
non-democracies. However, if taken to its logical conclusion, then the externalization argument
implies that democracies should generally be less war prone than other regimes and that
democracy should only become involved in armed conflict when they are being attacked. Neither
of which seems to reflect the state of research on democracy and war involvement. Therefore, a
variant of the normative argument turned the attention to the role of mutual perceptions and the
social construction of in-groups and out-groups between democracies and non-democracies. The
argument suggests that democracies regard other states as legitimate when these reflect values,
institutions, and an ideology that is similar to their own. Specifically, countries are perceived as
trustworthy and predictable when they are governed democratically. By contrast, non-
democracies with despotic rule are perceived as possibly dangerous and unpredictable. Shared
norms constitute the collective identity of democracies. This can lead to peaceful relations
among them, but it also potentially fosters aggression vis-à-vis non-democratic regimes, because
these are regarded as oppressive and unjust toward their own population. Hence, emphasizing
perceptions and collective identity, the variant of the normative argument is better able than the
externalization argument to account for both parts of the dual finding of the democratic peace.

The second group of explanations evolves around political institutions. These explanations
comprise an array of arguments derived from the division of powers inherent in democratic
polities and the fact that decision-makers are accountable to various social groups, including
citizens, legislatures, bureaucracies, but also to private interest groups and the media. The
institutional constraints argument suggests that risk-averse democratic leaders are restrained in
their decision-making by a requirement for public support, especially for decisions on war and
peace where the human and material consequences can be immense. Hence, proponents of this
argument suggest that democratic leaders will not act against public opinion on such matters.
Given that citizens are generally assumed to be reluctant to go to war, an assumption that is
derived from the Kantian cost-benefit rationale, public opinion should pose a substantial check
against the war involvement of democracies.

The mobilization argument refers to the complexity of the military mobilization process. It
is argued that this effectively prevents democracies from any spontaneous military operations or
surprise attacks, even if the political leadership intended such operations. To prepare the country
for large-scale war, democratic leaders have to initiate a lengthy and often public institutional
process, seeking approval from the legislature and various government agencies along the way.
The duration of the mobilization process means that conflicts are given additional time for
negotiations, political compromise, and other means of conflict resolution – which contribute to
the peaceful settlement of conflicts between democracies.

Finally, the transparency argument holds that democratic institutions enable reliable signaling
in times of crisis. A major cause of war in international politics is rooted in the security dilemma,
which is fuelled by uncertainty about the intentions of other actors. Democratic institutional
procedures foster transparency and they enable a clear communication of political goals. Hence,
uncertainty is reduced and misjudgment about a leader’s intentions becomes less likely. Other
countries can thus correctly gauge a democratic government’s intent and domestic constraints.
Hence, if two democracies are involved in a dispute, then this should lead to political
compromise in the form of a negotiated settlement rather than a violent escalation.

Critiques of Democratic Peace Theory

Critiques of the democratic peace can be divided into four groups. An early strand of
arguments scrutinized the evidence in support of the empirical claim. However, by the end of the
1990s, this debate had been mostly resolved in favor of the democratic peace. The second group
of critiques takes issue with the causal logic of the explanatory approaches. The third set of
arguments provides normative criticism, directed particularly against the policy implications that
are being derived from the democratic peace. Finally, the fourth group of critics argues that
alternative explanations are better able to account for the observed phenomenon.

Concerning the causal logic of the democratic peace three important objections stand out.
First, critics hold that the conventional distinction between dyadic and monadic variants is not
justifiable. While the democratic peace appears to be a dyadic phenomenon, almost all
established theories of it are based on monadic mechanisms that imply a general peace proneness
of democracies, even though few proponents acknowledge this. Second, it has been criticized
that conflicting tendencies can be derived from existing theories. The causal logic can go in both
directions: toward peace, but also toward belligerent behavior. For instance, liberal norms can
equally provoke military intervention against non-democratic regimes as they might foster peace
between liberal democracies. And while institutional arguments often assume public war
aversion, the public can also be misled, misinformed, or outright aggressive – any of which could
lead toward democratic war involvement. Finally, some critics contend that reversed causality
could be the case. Countries become democratic only if their external environment allows them
to: while a hostile and conflict-ridden region seems to provide incentives to develop autocratic
state structures, peaceful parts of the globe enable countries to shift their resources to trade and
welfare and to democratize their political institutions.

Regarding normative critiques, two points stand out. First, due to its appeal to
policymakers, democratic peace theory has on several occasions been used to justify a policy of
external democratization by military force. This has sparked intense criticism from those who
regard the democratic peace as a cover for widespread forms of structural violence of Western
industrialized states against less-developed countries in the southern hemisphere. But proponents
of the democratic peace they have also protested against the political abuse of their theory for
policy purposes, specifically arguing that the theory never advocated forcible democratization
from the outside. Second, commentators bemoan the ahistorical treatment of democracy in many
studies. These critics hold that the democratic peace proposition is value-laden, being less about
democracy than about countries that apply to the Western model of liberal democracy.

Finally, in terms of alternative explanations of the democratic peace phenomenon, two lines
of argument have been particularly influential. First, critics from the realist school of
international relations contend that the system-wide allocation of material power remains the
predominant factor that influences war and peace, rather than domestic political institutions as
supporters of the democratic peace propose. Realists further question the stability of the
ideational structures suggested by the democratic peace. For them there is no guarantee that
states that are at present democratic will not, under certain systemic pressures, slide back to
authoritarianism at some point or another. Second, a liberal argument contends that capitalism
rather than democracy could be the driving force behind the peaceful relations of democracies.
Specifically, it is suggested that factors such as economic development, financial integration, and
a convergence of state interests can shift preferences toward trade and peaceful interstate
relations.

Liberal peace theory

After decades of gaining dust on the shelves of the academy, in the mid-1980s the liberal
peace thesis was dusted down and began to make a comeback. Today’s enthusiasts, such as
Michael Doyle and R.J. Rummel, have drawn heavily on the work of the 18th-century
philosopher Immanuel Kant, one of the earliest proponents of the thesis. In his 1795 essay,
‘Perpetual Peace: a Philosophical Essay’, Kant argued that countries with representative
governments were likely to behave more peacefully than those with authoritarian ones because:
‘if the consent of the citizens is required in order to decide that war should be declared, nothing
is more natural than that they would be very cautious in commencing such a poor game’. Nearly
two centuries later, Doyle picked up the mantle by arguing that the historical record showed that
democracies do not go to war with one another. Since then, there has been an explosion of
research supporting or critiquing the liberal peace thesis with different causal mechanisms being
suggested and scrutinized. Studies on the relationship between liberal democracy and inter-state
violence have been supplemented with research examining the relationship between liberal
democracy and intra-state violence. The work of R.J. Rummel has been important in this respect
with his findings mirroring earlier work on inter-state violence: those democracies are less likely
than non-democratic societies to experience domestic disturbances such as civil wars and
rebellions. It is proposed, therefore, that the liberal peace has a double impact: it promotes
pacific relations between states and domestic peace. These studies are often cited by policy-
makers as proof of the pacifying effects of liberal democracy as a strategy for promoting peace.
While liberalization in the economic sphere has been pursued since the late 1970s through
structural adjustment packages, it took until the 1990s, and a dramatic change in international
politics, for democratization and democracy promotion to become a core international priority.

The disintegration of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s heralded the collapse of
communism as an alternative model of development and political organization, and eliminated
an alternative source of international support from that provided by the US and its Western allies.
This left the door open for the international institutionalization of the liberal peace thesis through
an ideological reorientation by the UN, the EU, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),
the IMF and World Bank, national development agencies, and many international
nongovernmental organizations (INGOs). Liberal peace assumptions litter the policy documents
of the UN, the international financial institutions and Western governments. For instance, a 2005
document from the UK government’s Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit states that ‘full
democracies are least likely to undergo significant political upheaval and instability’. George W.
Bush and former US President Bill Clinton both expressed their support for the theory. In 1994,
Clinton said: ‘Ultimately, the best strategy to ensure our security and to build a durable peace is
to support the advance of democracy elsewhere. Democracies don’t attack each other’. These
assumptions are guiding the US-led ‘war on terror’. After 9/11, the US adopted a more assertive
strategy of democracy promotion believing democracy to be an antidote to terrorism – in the
Middle East this was conducted through the Middle East Partnership Initiative and the Greater
Middle East Initiative. It has also been used as a justification to invade Iraq and remove Saddam
Hussein. In a discussion on Iraq with Tony Blair, Bush declared:

The reason why I’m so strong on democracy is democracies don’t go to war with each
other. And the reason why the people of most societies is don’t like war, and they
understand what war means . . . I’ve got great faith in democracies to promote peace.
And that’s why I’m such a strong believer that the way forward in the Middle East, the
broader Middle East, is to promote democracy.

This belief in the pacifying effects of democracy has been given a sharp reality check by the
existence, throughout the region, of strong, popular Islamist movements, including Hamas,
which the US does not wish to come to power. The election of Hamas has been a severe wake-up
call for the US to face up to the fact that democratization may not always produce the results it
desires. Islamist movements have become major players in the Middle East, a result largely of
their efforts over the past few decades to build support from the grass roots upwards. Structural
adjustment packages imposed throughout the 1980s and 1990s had a highly negative impact in
the region resulting in a decline in state provision of social welfare, and increasing poverty and
inequality. This strengthened the Islamists who moved in to fill the welfare gap thus ensuring
their entrenchment within civil society and increasing their popularity. Therein lies the irony:
liberalization in the economic sphere provided a space for Islamists to build grass-roots support;
liberalization in the political sphere may well allow them to mop up and consolidate this support
through the ballot box.

B. Galtung‘s Positive Peace Theory

The basic point is that peace is a relation, between two or more parties. The parties may be
inside a person, a state or nation, a region or civilization, pulling in different directions. Peace is
not a property of one party alone, but a property of the relation between parties. Saying that in no
sense belittles the significance of the party's intent and capability to build peaceful relations. But,
like a marriage, it is not the sum of the capabilities of the parties. Which is why we can have
lovely people related in a less-than-lovely marriage. And vice versa.
What kind of relations can we have? Three types, it seems:
NEGATIVE, DISHARMONIOUS: what is bad for one is good for the other. Indifferent: a
non-relation, they do not care about the other.
POSITIVE, HARMONIOUS: what is bad-good for one is bad-good for other. In the real world
relations may be mixes of all three. When the negative relation is brought about with intent, the
party is an actor, we talk about direct violence, or harm, and about war if the actor is collective.
If the violence to a party is not intended (but watch out for acts of commission, more or less
intended!) it may be referred to as indirect, often caused by inequitable structures producing
harm - structural violence. And then the role of culture legitimizing either or both types of
violence: cultural violence.
From this follow two concepts of peace:
NEGATIVE PEACE: the absence of violence, like a cease-fire, like keeping them apart, not
negative but indifferent relations.
POSITIVE PEACE: the presence of harmony, intended or not. They are as different as negative
health, the absence of (symptoms of) illness and positive health, the feeling of wellness and the
capacity to handle some illness.
From this, then, follow three types of peace studies:
NEGATIVE PEACE STUDIES: how to reduce-eliminate negative relations.
POSITIVE PEACE STUDIES: how to build ever more harmonious relations.
VIOLENCE-WAR-ARMS STUDIES: the intent and capability to inflict harm.
The third, very frequently found, may be useful, but only when coupled with studies of the intent
and capability to build harmony. One approach to negative peace studies opens for peace and
conflict studies, seeing violence-war as the smoke signals from the underlying fire of a conflict.
And that leads to a major approach to negative peace: remove the conflict, by solving it or, more
modestly, by transforming it so that the parties can handle it in a nonviolent way, with empathy
for each other, and with creativity.
The root of a conflict is always a contradiction, an incompatibility or clash of goals which then
easily translates into a class of parties and violent behavior. At any stage in this process negative
attitudes may enter - and attitudes, behavior and contradictions then feed into each other in
vicious cycles. In the wake of those processes are traumatized parties and actors with festering
wounds on body, mind and spirit. That leads us to the two key tasks in search of, as a minimum,
negative peace:
Mediation to resolve the incompatibility, and Conciliation, healing the traumas, removing them
from the relation between the parties, and closure. If some closure is brought about without
conflict resolution we should not talk about conciliation but pacification - a non-starter. A useful
metaphor is to turn the page in the history of their relations, opening a blank page. If that page
remains blank, nothing positive, nothing negative, only indifference has been obtained. Arguably
better than hatred and harm, but a non-relation may easily remain one.

2. Examples of Nonviolence Resistance

A. INDIA: Movement for Self Rule
The Indian independence movement was a serious of activities whose ultimate aim was to end
the British raj and encompassed activities and ideas aiming to end the east India company rule
and British raj in the Indian sub-continent. The movement spanned a total of 90 years (1857-
1947) considering and militant movement against British Indian empire. The Indian
independence movement includes both protest (peaceful &nonviolent) and militant (violent)
mechanisms to root out British administration from India. It was a mass based movement that
encompassed various sections of society. It also underwent a process of constant ideological
evolution. Although the basic ideology of the movement was anti-colonial, it was supported by a
vision of independent capitalist economic development coupled with a secular, democratic,
republican, and civil liberation political structure. The work of these various movements led
ultimately to the Indian independence Act 1947.

B. The American South: Campaign for Civil Rights

The US Civil Rights Movement (1942-68) restored universal suffrage in the southern United
States and outlawed legal segregation. The movement’s overall strategy combined litigation, the
use of mass media, boycotts, demonstrations, as well as sit-ins and other forms of civil
disobedience to turn public support against institutionalized racism and secure substantive
reform in US law. Thousands were arrested in nonviolent protests as images of the
confrontations inspired widespread public support for the movement’s objectives. Hundreds of
thousands more participated in marches, boycotts and voter registration drives throughout the US
South. The movement helped spawn a national crisis that forced intervention by the federal
government to overturn segregation laws in southern states, restore voting rights for African-
Americans, and end legal discrimination in housing, education and employment.

The US Civil Rights Movement grew out of four hundred years of violent and nonviolent
conflict, rooted in the kidnapping and enslavement of Africans to work primarily in the
plantation economy of the US South. Abolitionists, for both principle and strategy, practiced
nonviolent resistance often in the period between colonization and the American Civil War
(most notably members of the historic peace churches–the Quakers, Mennonites and Church of
the Brethren). In addition to periodic rebellions, slaves would deliberately ruin equipment and
supplies, slow down work, fake illness, escape and practice dissembling. Their free allies
published letters and polemics, shielded escapees, purchased freedom for slaves and waged
direct action.

African Americans, despite facing harsh injustice, organize on a mass scale for equal access
to jobs and other rights in the face of widespread violence, with hundreds of African-Americans
lynched by white mobs in the early years of the 20th century and race riots led by white racists
decimate African-American communities in a number of cities across the country. The National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909 and 8,000
African Americans marched in silence down Fifth Avenue in New York City seeking fair wages
and jobs. Prominent black intellectuals, including W.E.B. Dubois and Wendell Johnson, were
among those present to “make America safe for democracy.” The Communist Party established
the American Negro Labor Congress in 1925 to advance the rights of African Americans. The
same year the mostly African-American Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters is founded, which
becomes an influential organization in the civil rights movement.

C. South Africa: Campaign against Apartheid

Against enormous odds, non-violent action proved to be a major factor in the downfall of
apartheid and the establishment of a democratic black majority government. This came despite
the fact that movement working for fundamental change in South Africa faced unprecedented
obstacles. Never had such a powerful and highly industrialized state been overthrown from
within. Opponents of apartheid faced a complex web of regulations which produced a rigid
stratification system which severely limited dissent by the oppressed majority. Apartheid South
Africa defied most traditional political analyses, due to its unique social, political, economic and
strategic position. It practiced one of history's most elaborate systems of internal colonialism,
with a white minority composed of less than one-fifth of the population in absolute control. The
ruling party was led by racialists who also possessed an unusual level of political sophistication.
They controlled some of the world's richest mineral deposits, including one-third of the earth's
known gold reserves. A modern military machine stood ready in an area which lacked any other
large conventional force.
The iconic struggle between the apartheid regime of South Africa and those who resisted it
illustrates the complexity of some cases of civil resistance. Originally the use of civil resistance
against apartheid was based on Gandhian ideas, which originated in South Africa in 1906 where
Gandhi was a lawyer working for an Indian trading firm. Soon the African National Congress
(ANC), founded in 1912, became the major force opposing the apartheid system’s oppression of
the 80% non-European population of the country. Using mostly legal tactics of protest during its
first four decades, the ANC became more militant in the early 1950s and began using nonviolent
direct action.
White South Africans (Afrikaners) monopolized control over the state and the economy,
including rich natural resources such as a third of the world’s known gold reserves. The
Afrikaners developed an explicit theology and philosophy of white racial superiority and a legal
and economic system enforced by a modern military and police force that deliberately excluded
nonwhites from economic and political power. Nevertheless, the system became increasingly
reliant upon nonwhite labor and isolated from international diplomacy and trade.
Discouraged about the lack of results from their nonviolent campaign, Nelson Mandela and
others called for an armed uprising, creating the Umkhonto We Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”)
that paralleled the nonviolent resistance. That, too, failed to tear down the apartheid system, and
in the end a concerted grassroots nonviolent civil resistance movement in coalition with
international support and sanctions forced the white government to negotiate.
Strategic Actions
The number of tactics used during the anti-apartheid struggle was enormous, and included the
following:
Protest and Persuasion
 Mass demonstrations, marches;
 Public declarations such as The Freedom Charter, adopted at the Congress of the People,
Kliptown, on 26 June 1955;
 Funeral marches and orations as occasions for protesting apartheid and remembering
victims of repression, especially when demonstrations were banned;
 Alternative press and advertising;
 Affidavits as a way of circumventing censorship (e.g., the South African Catholic
Bishops Conference used affidavits for a book, Police Conduct During Township Protests
in 1984);
 Memorials and anniversaries (e.g., church bells rung and vigils were held to
commemorate 1960 Sharpeville protestors shot by police, and Soweto Day was declared
to commemorate the 1976 uprising);
 Lighting candles every night during the Christmas season;
 Music was a major feature of the South African movement—singing, dancing, and
chanting freedom slogans was common;
 UN General Assembly Resolutions;
 A register of Artists, Actors and Others who have performed in South Africa was created
as part of an international cultural boycott;
 Symbolic clothing:
  Green, black and gold clothing symbolizing the banned ANC, and was worn even
in court during trials;
 Wearing ANC t-shirts;
 A black armband worn in Parliament by Independent MP Jan van Eck mourning
40 years of National Party rule;
 Naked protest parade of 200 men and women against an exhibition of electronic
weaponry in 1982;
 “Services of witness” called by Archbishop Tutu inviting “banned” resisters to
participate;
 University students in 1987 used chairs to form a profane word large enough to be read
by a circling police helicopter (a photograph appeared in the Weekly Mail);
 Flag burning, replacing the South African flag with the ANC flag;
 Graffiti: political slogans in public places to circumvent censorship;
 Humor: protestors wearing “Stop the Call-up” t-shirts to protest conscription were
ordered to stop building a sand castle on the beach, leading to jokes about such activities
as subversive
 Religious pilgrimages and worship services;
 “Keening”—public weeping and wailing by women outside the gates of parliament;
 Kneeling—marchers fell to their knees and begged the police to withdraw from their
township; after negotiations, a woman leading the protest asked the crowd to turn back
and the commanding officer withdrew his troops;
 Motorcades (e.g., buses, vans, and cars would drive into a city center during a boycott of
white shops);
 Negotiations with political officials as pressure from international and domestic anti-
apartheid forces reached its apex.
Noncooperation
 Strikes and “stay-aways” organized by labor groups, especially the Congress of South
African Trade Unions;
 Economic boycotts such as those organized by Mkhuseli Jack and others in Port Elizabeth;
 School boycotts;
 International sanctions, divestment, and boycotts;
 Sports and cultural boycotts;
 Rent boycotts;
 Establishment of alternative institutions – e.g.,
 The National Education Crisis Committee,
 Street committees and area committees,
 People’s courts,
 Alternative parks named after movement heroes (e.g., Nelson Mandela Park,
Steve Biko Park);
 Inter-racial bridge-building, social visits as social disobedience;
 Civil disobedience:
 A South African Council of Churches resolution (July 1987) questioned the
government’s legitimacy and laws such as the Group Areas Act, the Education Acts
and the Separate Amenities Act
 Use of an alternative birth registration system advocated by the South African Council of
Churches defying the Population Registration Act;
 The United States Chamber of Commerce proposed a civil disobedience program for
businesses in South Africa;
 Hunger strikes by political prisoners (1989) resulting in the release of hundreds of detainees
and increased caution in detention without trial;
 Refusal to serve in the South African military (leading to arrests of conscientious objectors);
 Informal “Unbanning” of themselves by resisters who had been banned by the regime (which
restricted their travel and activities and required them to report to authorities periodically as
well as prevented the press from quoting them);
 Clergy married couples forbidden to marry by the Prevention of Mixed Marriages Act
 School officials allowed non-white or mixed-race students to enroll in their all-white schools

Nonviolent Intervention
 Archbishop Desmond Tutu led a protest march to a whites-only beach in the Western Cape
(1989);
 Non-whites showed up at white hospitals and medical stations for medical treatment;
 The National Union of Mineworkers promoted a lunchtime sit-in at an all-white canteen, and
had black African workers use whites-only changing rooms and toilets, buses, as part of the
1989 Defiance Campaign;
 Marching without permits
 When “Run for Peace” joggers were ordered to disperse, they did so by running away from
the police but along the planned route (1985)
 Picnicking at the whites-only Boksburg Lake in defiance of apartheid regulations
Ensuing Events
South Africa now has a democratic government and universal suffrage allowing all South
African citizens to vote and hold political office. Nevertheless, a large proportion of its nonwhite
population suffers grinding poverty and the hopelessness engendered by unmet high
expectations, provoking widespread violence, crime, and civil unrest.
Although the nonwhite population gained what former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere called
“flag independence” by gaining the vote and electing an ANC-dominated government, the
country’s economy, civil service, and military remain largely dominated by the white minority,
forcing continued compromise and power struggles. The difficult transition was facilitated in
part by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, which
attempted to repair the gap between the races by getting the ugly truth of the apartheid regime
out into the open, enacting sentences on the worst offenders, and then seeking to find ways of
reconciling the conflicting parties.

D. Poland’s Solidarity Movement (1980 – 1989)

Nonviolent struggle against the authoritarian communist government in Poland began soon
after the communists stole parliamentary elections in 1946. However, it took over three decades
of civil resistance—waged over time with varying tactics and degrees of intensity—for Polish
society to begin organizing and consolidating itself in a broad coalition of social forces that
climaxed in the establishment of the Solidarność (“Solidarity”) as an organization and a
movement in August 1980. Solidarity, with its roots in trade unionism shook and delegitimized
the communist regime by exposing its ideological but false claims of being a free “workers’
state”. This popular movement created independent political space where alternative institutions,
activities, and discourses could develop and flourish. Solidarity always pursued its political
objectives with a high degree of nonviolent discipline as well as self-imposed limitations. Both
of these elements played a crucial role in a national compromise and peaceful transfer of power
in 1989. This negotiated transition ushered Poland onto the path of a successful democratization
that also carried important hallmarks of its civil resistance legacy.

Political History
Until the second half of the 1970s, social groups that opposed the communist government
were not united and their activities were not well coordinated. The lack of a broad coalition to
unite various opposition forces played an important role in their failures.
In 1956, workers went on the streets of Poznan, the fourth largest city in Poland, to demand
economic and political changes and their demonstrations were brutally suppressed by communist
authorities, with some hundred people killed. Many intellectuals, who still hoped to reform the
system from within, did not support the workers in their more radical demands. In 1968, a
similar fate awaited students and intellectuals who pressed for greater political freedoms.
Workers were brought in to stage demonstrations against student “hooligans” and
“troublemakers” and the communist rulers crushed the students and intellectuals with ease. In
1970, workers demonstrated on the streets of major coastal cities and demanded higher wages
and economic reforms. Forty-five workers were killed and thousands were wounded during the
unrest while intellectuals and students stayed at home and watched passively the unfolding
tragedy. However, when a subsequent workers’ revolt in 1976 against price hikes resulted in
hundreds of workers being arrested, the intellectuals joined the strikers. Intellectuals had already
been galvanized by their mobilization against amendments to the Polish constitution in 1975 that
reinforced the leading role of the communist party in society and committed Poland to eternal
comradeship with the Soviet Union, which was seen as a vivid illustration of Poland’s loss of
state sovereignty. In response to the massive arrests of workers in 1976, some intellectuals set up
the Committee for the Defense of Polish Workers that raised money to pay for workers’ legal
defense in the courts and aid for their families. A year later, the Movement for the Defense of
Human and Civil Rights was established by a group of opposition members to hold the
communist government accountable to its international commitments, which included
recognition of human rights standards that it had voluntarily signed. In 1977, the killing of a 23
year-old anticommunist activist, most likely on the orders of the security services, galvanized the
student body all over the country and led to the establishment of independent student
organizations. A system of underground education was institutionalized in 1978 when the
Association for Academic Courses was created. It offered covert teaching of alternative history,
literature, philosophy, sociology, and economics in private apartments and church buildings. The
underground opposition press flourished as well, and by the end of 1979 it boasted with more
than 400 different publications and periodicals.
The year 1978 witnessed the election of the Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul
II. He was the first non-Italian pope since the beginning of the sixteenth century. The Pope’s
1979 visit to his native country brought millions to the open air masses in Warsaw, Krakow, and
Czestochowa. During a pilgrimage that was broadcast on state TV and radio, the Pope spoke
openly about human rights and the right to freedom of expression and conscience. For the first
time in Polish communist history a massive social mobilization and participation had occurred
without the visible presence of police or the state’s security forces. For decades, Poles referred to
their government as “they” without defining what “us” meant. But as Adam Michnik, one of
Solidarity’s leaders, observed, Poles could finally visualize “us.” People realized that their
strength was in numbers and this helped to break a collective barrier of fear. As a result, by the
end of the 1970s, people’s self-organization and a broad coalition of workers, intellectuals,
students, members of the Catholic church and peasants became a potent force for change in
Polish society. Their mass nonviolent mobilization was characterized by the establishment of a
covert parallel polis alongside the existing authoritarian system in order to liberate society from
the control of the ruling party without overtly challenging its dominance.
By the end of the 1970s, a deteriorating economic situation led to massive strikes in the
summer of 1980 that involved all social groups and all regions in Poland. Starting from the
Gdansk shipyard under the leadership of Lech Walesa, a factory electrician, and spreading
quickly to other work places, the workers organized a free trade union named Solidarność
(“Solidarity”). When the government bowed to Solidarity’s demands and allowed legalization of
Solidarity in September of 1980—the first legal free trade union in communist Central and
Eastern Europe— the official membership of the movement grew within a couple of weeks to
almost 10 million people; 80% of the state employees, including communist party members,
joined the newly legalized trade union. Threatened by the scope and pace of the growing
opposition and fearful of a possible Soviet military intervention (although to this day historians
dispute whether such intervention was possible or likely) the leaders of the Polish military
decided to impose martial law on December 13, 1981. Consequently, hundreds of Solidarity
leaders were rounded up and detained and all legal opposition organizations closed down.
However, the declaration of martial law failed to achieve the communist government’s
objectives. The opposition movement, although weakened, survived and reorganized itself
underground. Its arrested leaders found themselves replaced by other activists who avoided
detention and by a number of female organizers, who in the absence of their arrested male
colleagues took leadership positions in the underground press and other Solidarity structures. By
1984, all Solidarity leaders were released and martial law was lifted. The communist government
was not strong enough to crush Solidarity but neither was Solidarity ready to take more coercive
actions to reach for power.
Consequently, between 1982 and 1988 Poland was in a political stalemate between the state and
society while the economic situation deteriorated further. During these years the communist
government was well aware that it had neither the internal power nor the outside legitimacy to
implement any substantive economic reforms. By the end of 1988, with a rising number of
strikes and protests, and general economic malaise among the Polish population, the communist
government was ready to re-engage with Solidarity. It agreed to re-legalization of the trade union
movement and open negotiations on a possible political transition. With its self-limiting
philosophy of nonviolent struggle and the support of the Catholic Church, Solidarity was in a
position to consider the offer of negotiations and accept a pacted transition, even though that
meant a preservation of the economic and social status of the ruling elites.

As a result of the roundtable discussions between the opposition and the government, which
lasted from February until April 1989, an agreement was reached to hold free elections to a
pacted parliament in June 1989. The elections brought a decisive victory for Solidarity. In
August 1989, the region’s first noncommunist prime minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, was
appointed by the Polish parliament to head a new government with a broad popular mandate to
implement wide ranging economic and social reforms to stabilize the country.
Strategic Actions
Solidarity members’ actions cannot be analyzed independently from the phenomenon of the
Solidarity movement itself. The power of Solidarity as a mass resistance movement derived from
an intangible fabric of civic capital created by a thick web of human interactions and
underground activities and institutions whose purpose was to free the society from the control of
the government. This generated forces no less powerful or important for waging civil resistance
and its eventual success than the impact of specific strategies and tactics.

Solidarity was not merely an opposition movement; it was, to paraphrase Vaclav Havel, a
collective experience of living within the truth. Solidarity was an extraordinary mobilization of
citizens from all walks of life united in protest against living in a communist lie. Solidarity was a
massive societal polity organized independently outside the realm of the state that encompassed
a number of historical, cultural, philosophical and human experiences. As such it was a
socializing force that promoted behavioral attitudes based on mutual responsibility, solidarism,
assistance, trust, loyalty; a teaching force that offered lessons in decentralized modes self-
organizing and participatory democratic governance; an empowering force that endorsed
egalitarianism, individualism, and independence; and finally, a nonviolent force with its strict
nonviolent discipline and belief in the greater effectiveness of nonviolent actions over other
means of a political contestation.
Ensuing Events
Twenty years later after the roundtable talks and first democratic elections in Central Europe,
Poland is a full-fledged democracy with a relatively strong civil society (in comparison with
other Central European states), competitive media and an increasingly consolidated
parliamentary system based on a constitutionally strong executive and a popularly elected post of
the president. The main socio-political cleavages in recent years have evolved around the role of
religion and the Catholic church in public life, including state education; the effectiveness of
transitional justice in dealing with collaborators of the former communist regime; and
spectacular corruption scandals that besieged the Polish political scene in the last decade.
Generally, however, Poland is seen as a success story in its democratic transformation. Various
factors played a role in this successful democratic transformation. They include, among others,
Poland’s integration with NATO (which reinforced the principle of democratic civilian-based
control over armed forces) as well as negotiations with and eventual membership in the
European Union (which helped to strengthen the rule of law, democratic institutions and civil
society organizations).
The Polish population’s use of civil resistance to achieve a democratic transition has also
affected how democracy has developed and consolidated over the past two decades. The legacy
of a Polish civil resistance is particularly discernable in four major democratic changes:
1. After the roundtable discussions between the communist government and the opposition,
Solidarity leaders had only two months (from mid-April to mid-June 1989) to prepare for the
first open and free election in Poland since 1946. It was the self-organizing experience
gained during the underground civil resistance, the well-developed underground press
(already legal by that time), and the extensive network of volunteers that gave Solidarity an
important advantage over the communists in that election.
Solidarity ran a breathtaking campaign and eventually won all but one (taken by an
Independent candidate) contested seats in the pacted elections in June 1989.

2. The design and implementation of major decentralization reforms in the second half of 1989
—which established 2,600 self-governing rural and urban communes with considerable
governing powers, financial resources and legal status—had all the hallmarks of the
Solidarity movement. Underlying these reforms was a philosophy of decentralized
governance with autonomous local institutions and a non-political, civic organization in
charge of training tens of thousands of local civil servants and political officials in
governance and empowering local councils and administrations.
3. Poland’s civil resistance heritage was also reflected in the emergence of a “rebellious civil
society” between 1989-1993 whose roots went back to the tradition of street protests and
demonstrations like those used against the communist state in the 1980s. During the first
years of transformation, Poland experienced the largest number of protests, and lost work
 days due to strikes among all the countries in Central and Eastern Europe. However, as
Ekiert and Kubik emphasize in their book, contrary to common belief, the rebellious civil
society strengthened Poland’s young democracy and served as a safety valve for expression
of diverse interests by different social and economic groups at a time when political parties
were weak and interest groups forming.
4. Poland’s foreign policy during the first years after 1989 was shaped by the worldviews of the
Solidarity movement and avoided being hijacked by jingoistic sentiment. Good neighborly
relations with Germany, Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania, oftentimes despite a difficult
history and problems with Polish ethnic minorities in those countries, were established
surprisingly quickly. This was a direct result of a philosophical and ethical reevaluation of
international relations and Poland’s new place in a democratic Europe that occurred within
the Polish opposition movement during the decades-long civil resistance struggle.

3. Peace and its antithesis

Terror is violence that is committed by a person, group, or government in order to frighten
people and achieve a political goal.

Terrorism
 Terrorism has become the most prominent security issue of the early 21st century
 A “suspect”
 growing and mutating over the years: between 2006 and 2013; there were over 90.000
terrorist attacks; causing over 130.000 deaths
 Studies have found more than 200 definitions of terrorism. In fact, Simon (1994) reports
that at least 212 different definitions of terrorism exist across the world;
 In a study of terrorism, Alex P. SCHMID and Albert J. JONGMAN (SCHMID,
JONGMAN, 1984), analyzes the content to 109 definitions of terrorism, finding
frequency of the concepts used:
• Violence and force (occurring in 83.5% of definitions)
• Political reasons (65%)
• fear, emphasis on terror (51%)
• threat (47%)
• Psychological effects and anticipated reactions (41.5%)
• Discrepancy between the targets and victims (37.5%)
• Shares intentional, planned, organized and systematic (32%)
• Method of combat strategy and tactics (30.5%)
 Some Scholarly definitions
 Yonah Alexander: terrorism is “the use of violence against random civilian targets in order to
intimidate or to create generalized pervasive fear for the purpose of achieving political
goals.”
 Walter Laqueur: “Terrorism is the use or the threat of the use of violence, a method of
combat, or a strategy to achieve certain targets… [I]t aims to induce a state of fear in the
victim, that is ruthless and does not conform with humanitarian rules… [P]ublicity is an
essential factor in the terrorist strategy.”
 The use of violence or threatened use of violence, in order to achieve a political, religious, or
ideological aim.
 James Lutz: "Terrorism involves political aims and motives. It is violent or threatens
violence. It is designed to generate fear in a target audience that extends beyond the
immediate victims of the violence.
Legal definitions
League of Nations Convention Definition of Terrorism (1937): terrorist acts are “all criminal acts
directed against a State and intended or calculated to create a state of terror in the minds of
particular persons or a group of persons or the general public.”
OAU Algiers Convention
(a) any act which is a violation of the criminal laws of a State Party and which may endanger the
life, physical integrity or freedom of, or cause serious injury or death to, any person, any
number or group of persons or causes or may cause damage to public or private property,
natural resources, environmental or cultural heritage and is calculated or intended to: (i)
intimidate, put in fear, force, coerce or induce any government, body, institution, the general
public or any segment thereof, to do or abstain from doing any act, or to adopt or abandon a
particular standpoint, or to act according to certain principles; or (ii) disrupt any public
service, the delivery of any essential service to the public or to create a public emergency; or
(iii) create general insurrection in a State; (b) any promotion, sponsoring, contribution to,
command, aid, incitement, encouragement, attempt, threat, conspiracy, organizing, or
procurement of any person, with the intent to commit any act referred to in paragraph (a) (i)
to (iii).
 National definitions
U.S. Department of State: terrorism is “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated
against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine state agents.”
U.S. Department of Defense Definition of Terrorism: terrorism refers to “the calculated use of
unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to
intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious,
or ideological.”
Ethiopian Definition of terrorist
The draft Proclamation states that anyone who-with the purpose of "advancing a political,
religious or ideological cause" and intending to "influence the government;“
 "Intimidate the public or section of the public;" [or]
"To destabilize or destroy the fundamental political, constitutional, economic or social
institutions of the country“
-commits: an act that causes death or serious injury; an act that creates risk to the safety or health
of the public; kidnapping or hostage taking; serious damage to property; damage to natural
resources, the environment, or the historical or cultural heritage;
or "endangers, seizes or puts under control, causes interference or disruption of any public
service"-is subject to punishment by "rigorous imprisonment from 15 years to life or with death."