People Power and Political Change

"There are two things about this book that strike me as really excellent. First, it’s the shortest of the five books under review. It’s very succinct and tightly written. The second thing that strikes me is its emphasis on “people power” – by which she means essentially the same thing as civil resistance, but particularly focusing on those crisis moments when there are millions on the streets and so on, the high points of civil resistance campaigns. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . April Carter has been a student of this subject for as long as Gene Sharp. She brings links between civil resistance and other related topics. For instance, she compares people power with doctrines of armed revolution, and sees similarities as well as differences. It’s very useful as an introduction to the subject, including a thoughtful survey of the literature and the early history of people power, going back to the 19th century. It’s also quite up to the minute, in that it encompasses the Arab revolutions. It’s a demonstration, it’s a movement and – in as much as it is civil – it is civil resistance. But the reason why I would hesitate to classify it as civil resistance in the same breath as these other cases is that it’s still very much at the stage of protesting in a slightly amorphous way, against a situation rather than against clear, specified targets. That is true, although in some cases they just couldn’t declare their real objectives. Had the Solidarity movement [in Poland] announced at any point before 1989 that their objective was the ending of the communist system per se, they would have been in some difficulty. But I think the Occupy Wall Street movement, and its analogues in many other parts of the world, including Britain, do demonstrate something really powerful. Namely, a justified sense that there is a huge global problem, that the people who are responsible for that problem or for making it worse have got away almost literally with murder, and that something has to be done about it. To that extent, I think it is a very welcome development. [ Editor’s note: this interview was conducted in 2011 ]"