The purpose of this study is to analyze the overall rhetorical structure of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during 1960-1968. The criteria used in this study were adapted from: Joseph R. Gusfield, "Protest, Reform, and Revolt - A Reader in Social Movements;" Dan F. Hahn and Ruth Gonchar, "Studying in Social Movements: A Rhetorical Methodology;" Kurt Lang and Gladys Lang, "Collective Dynamics;" Leland M. Griffin, "The Rhetoric of Historical Movements;" Herbert W. Simons, "Requirements, Problems, and Strategies: A Theory of Persuasion for Social Movements." Gusfield's definition of a movement as "socially shared activities and beliefs directed toward the demand for change in some aspect of the social order" is utilized. To examine the rhetorical structure, it is necessary to divest it from the complex structural aspects of a movement. Simons' theory of the "grand flow" of a movement's persuasion guided this study. The rhetorical requirements of a movement are introduced in Chapter I. The requirements tend to fall into the following sub-categories: the ideology, the strategy, the goals, the membership, and the leadership. Chapter II is devoted to the setting during which the movement was founded. It includes a brief history of social unrest in civil rights struggles in the United States between the years 1950-1960. Chapter III examines the structure of SNCC based upon the philosophy of love and nonviolence, approximately 1960-1964. Chapter IV examines the structure of SNCC based upon a philosophy of hatred and rejection, approximately 1964-1968. The chapter also includes a postscript discussing SNCCts progressive movement away from the philosophy of nonviolence after 1968.

Previous research has found that nonviolent campaigns are conducive for democratization, but variation in democratic outcomes still remains a puzzle. I address this research gap by analyzing whether democracy assistance that promotes political participation, civic political culture, and enabling environment for civil society before and during nonviolent campaigns can help explain why some countries democratize after regime changes initiated by nonviolent campaigns while other countries do not. I argue that sustained democracy assistance help maintain mass mobilization and build democratic institutions after the old regime has been removed. By using the method of structured focused comparison, I investigate based on data from USAID and OECD what kind of democracy assistance Tunisia and Egypt received before and during their nonviolent campaigns. I find that neither Tunisia nor Egypt to any great extent received the kind of sustained democracy assistance I hypothesized could impact democratization. I therefore conclude that it seems unlikely that democracy assistance had the kind of significant impact that could explain the different outcomes in Tunisia and Egypt. Lastly, I discuss how research on nonviolent campaigns could inform policymaking and contribute to designing more strategic democracy assistance in the future.

Abstract: What explains the use of violence in extra-institutional political campaigns? Domestic groups challenge host states using both nonviolent and violent tactics. While Gandhi’s struggle for India’s independence is perhaps the most famous example of nonviolence, many of today’s bloody civil wars also started out as nonviolent movements. In a world eager to support the self-determination of marginalized groups, both nonviolent and violent groups receive support from foreign actors. Despite this, theories on the use of violence by these groups remain untested empirically.  This paper uses panel data to quantitatively investigate the proposition that external support of extra-institutional political movements causes an increase in the use of violence. A logistic regression model finds no statistically significant relationship between the provision of external support and an increased use of violence in primarily nonviolent campaigns. An additional test on a sample of violent non-state groups finds that battle-related deaths increased when external support was provided in the previous year, a result significant at 99% confidence.

Research suggests that adolescent health requires both reducing problem behavior and promoting the development of social competence. There is strong support for the influence of parenting practices on both aggressive and competent behavior. However, there has been little research to date focused on parental messages, or the verbal communication parents provide to their children, about aggressive and effective nonviolent responses to conflict. The present study used hierarchical regression to examine parental messages supporting fighting and parental messages supporting effective nonviolent responses to problem situations in relation to adolescent aggressive and effective nonviolent behavior. These relations were expected to be moderated by adolescent gender. Additionally, the unique influence of parental messages was explored, relative to the effects of parental behavioral modeling of antisocial and prosocial acts. Messages supporting fighting and messages supporting nonviolent responses were analyzed as distinct constructs in the current study, and were expected to produce different patterns of influence on each adolescent behavior. Discrepancies based on respondent (parent or adolescent) were also anticipated. Participants included a predominantly African American sample of 105 adolescents and a parent or caregiver, who were assessed as part of a larger project evaluating the effects of a neighborhood intervention. As hypothesized, youth reports of parental messages supporting nonviolent responses were significantly related to lower levels of youth aggression, even when controlling for parental modeling. Youth reports of parental messages supporting nonviolent responses also predicted higher levels of effective nonviolent behavior, but these effects could be better accounted for by parental modeling. Contrary to expectation, parental messages supporting fighting did not significantly predict adolescent aggression or effective nonviolent behavior, and only minimal support was found for the moderating influence of gender. As anticipated, youths’ perceptions of parental messages were better predictors of their behavior than were parents’ reports. Overall, the current study’s findings have important implications for violence prevention efforts, and call for continued research.

Studiens syfte har varit att undersöka huruvida individer som väljer att utbilda sig i en kommunikationsmodell upplever förändring i interaktion med andra människor efter avslutad utbildning. Studien är kvalitativ och grundar sig på en hermeneutisk forskningsansats vilket innebär att vi har tolkat några individers upplevelser av sin utbildning i Nonviolent Communication (NVC), både före, under och efter utbildningen. Vi har använt oss av semistrukturerade intervjuer med en man och åtta kvinnor. Åldern på respondenterna har varierat och de har arbetat eller arbetar inom olika sociala yrken. I tolkningen av det empiriska materialet spelar Randall Collins begrepp interaktionsritualer en viktig roll i tydningen av utbildningstillfällets betydelse för respondenterna. Moira Von Wrights tolkning av George Herbert Meads olika begrepp är vår andra huvudteori, och den blir relevant i förhållande till den perspektivväxling som många av respondenterna beskriver att de upplevt efter utbildningen. Von Wright beskriver två möjliga perspektiv människor betraktar varandra på i interaktion, ett punktuellt och ett relationellt perspektiv. Arlie Hochschilds begrepp emotionellt arbete är relevant eftersom NVC som modell handlar om att förstå känslornas betydelse. Ulla Holms tankar om empatins två riktningar fyller även dessa en viktig funktion i uppsatsen eftersom vi tolkar det som att respondenterna pendlar mellan den känslomässiga empatin och den intellektuella empatin och att båda behövs. I uppsatsen finns en sammanfattning av intervjuerna med respondenterna, där de beskriver hur de har formats och påverkats av sina upplevelser under och efter sin utbildning i NVC. Det har även framkommit att respondenternas intentioner är att leva upp till ett relationellt förhållningssätt och att möta andra individer som ett vem, vilket är Von Wrights begrepp, och att denna förmåga ökat efter utbildningen. Men det har även visat sig att det finns omständigheter som styr respondenterna mot ett punktuellt perspektiv och i interaktion möter andra som Von Wrights begrepp ett vad. Dock finns det en medvetenhet hos respondenterna när förflyttningen mellan att möta och se andra som ett vem till ett vad eller tvärtom sker.

By examining Gandhi as a political organiser it may be possible to bridge the gap between two interpretations of his importance -- one which focuses on his propagation of nonviolence "as a way of life", the other- which treats him as a pioneer in the use of nonviolence "as a conflict technique. " Gandhi named his philosophy and his method of action, "satyagraha". Between 1915 and 1922 he emerged as the organiser of local satyagraha campaigns in Bihar and Gujarat. He moved quickly, however, to leadership of further struggles at a national level, in particular the hoxlatt Satyagraha in 1919 and Noncooperation eighteen months later. The thesis explores, through a series of case studies, how Gandhi developed his methods as he moved over a period of about five years from local to national scale. At the national level, Gandhi failed to take India by storm as he had hoped through organisations founded by himself to propagate his principles like the Satyagraha Sabha and the Swadeshi Sabha. He therefore forged alliances with political figures from other perspectives within the Khilafat movement and the Indian Rational Congress who nonetheless were prepared to follow his direction. A principal means which Gandhi developed for generating solidarity between the nation's educated "classes" and the "masses" and for mobilising people short of civil disobedience, was the promotion of campaigns of constructive work. This is particularly clear in his planning and leadership of the Noncooperation movement. Presentation of nonviolent action in the West, by overstressing the "conflict" aspect of satyagraha and neglecting the "constructive", has been one-sided. The importance in Gandhi's method as an organiser of a concept of constructive programme and its application in practice suggests that advocates of nonviolent action as a technique should look more closely at the balance between the two aspects in his approach. The thesis concludes with a review'of the rules and stages in Gandhi's satyagraha campaigns which have been proposed in the work of Joan Bondurant.

In this study violent and nonviolent prisoners were differentiated on the basis of life history and psychometric variables. Life history data were collected from institutional files and from a biographical questionnaire. Psychometric procedures consisted of the Mini-Mult Prisoner Questionnaire and the Bender-Gestalt. In summary, the variables included in the discriminant function suggest that the violent subjects were more psychopathological than the nonviolent subjects. The violent subjects evidenced behavioral problems at a young age in appropriately expressing anger. They appeared to have limited behavioral repertoires in attaining their desires outside the immediate gratification through aggressive means. They were also more emotionally alienated and less socially skilled. The violent subjects received more negative feedback during childhood and were incarcerated at a younger age, They were more overtly hostile and also more lacking in cognitive ego mastery. In contrast, the nonviolent subjects apparently learned during childhood to repress their anger to a greater extent. They also seemed to modulate their anger by withdrawing from direct interpersonal conflict.

abstract: Why and when do political actors use violence? This project answers these questions by exploring the dynamics of the interactions between state authorities and political dissidents. Both the state and the dissidents face the dilemma of using violence to achieve their political goals. While structural factors influence state violence and dissident violence, I contend that we need to examine how the dynamics of the state-dissident interactions shape these actors’ political behavior. This project first asks if nonviolent methods of resistance are effective--and perhaps even more successful than violent methods--why do opposition movements ever resort to violence? I argue that the efficacy of nonviolent resistance changes over time. When the likelihood of demobilization increases, dissident movements doubt the effectiveness of nonviolent resistance and weigh violence as an alternative tactic. The first chapter of this dissertation shows that the failure in expanding the size of a movement over several periods provides increases the risk of demobilization, and so dissident violence. I also argue while the expansion of the movement decreases the risk of dissident violence, a sudden and large expansion in the size of the movement overburdens its monitoring and sanctioning capacities, which raises the risk of dissident violence. These arguments are supported empirically using two different datasets. In the second theoretical part of this project, I examine the effects of foreign interventions on the dynamics of state repression and dissident violence. I find that the diplomatic statements and efforts such as disapproving state behavior, asking for political reform, and threatening to impose economic sanctions and to deploy military forces either did not have a significant effect, or increased state repression and decreased state concession during the Arab Spring. Finally, the last part of this project contributes to the literature on the formal modeling of dissent-repression by developing a recursive model of political violence dynamics. In addition to addressing several drawbacks in the literature, this model endogenizes the mobilization and demobilization of the movement and explains how these changes affect dissident violence. Due to the complexity of the developed mathematical model, I use a computational model to find the optimal outcomes. This computational model also can be used for simulating the state’s and the dissidents’ behavior under different scenarios. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Political Science 2018

Adaptive capacity is essential for organisations to be able to adapt to the sustainability challenge, and change its course. Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is an interpersonal communication tool that enables a user to move from a language of judgements to a language of needs by using 4 steps: observation, feelings, needs, and request. As communication is essential to the adaptive capacity of a social system, this thesis explores the question: How does Nonviolent Communication support the adaptive capacity of organisations? Through a mixed methods approach (semi-structured interviews and surveys with NVC trainers, organisational representatives and employees), the effects of NVC on communication in 3 sample organisations in the Netherlands (a school, NGO and research institute), is explored. Quantitative survey results show that NVC has a positive to very positive effect on common organisational communication dynamics. Qualitative data supports this finding and shows that NVC brings positive effects of increased understanding, listening, and progress in work related issues through an increased awareness of one’s own and other’s needs and feelings. When linking these results to adaptive capacity of organisations, it is concluded that NVC directly supports the adaptive capacity elements of trust, diversity and learning, and indirectly supports common meaning and self-organisation.

This thesis presents a quantitative study that aims to investigate whether Brian Martin is right in his theory about how more powerful actors have a greater capacity to prevent outrage and anger after opressions and thus suffer less from political jiu-jitsu, a process in which oppression becomes counterproductive. This is done by looking at whether more powerful regimes getaway more easily with repressing nonviolent campaigns. By designing a measuring scale for the scope of political jiu-jitsu, the connection between the scope and three different aspects of power - national capacity, wealth and state oppression - is investigated. The results shows that the more powerful the oppressive states are in terms of national capacity and wealth, the less extensive political jiu-jitsu. On the other hand, a higher degree of state oppression results in more extensive political jiu-jitsu. The results linked to the degree of staterepression are statistically significant and it can thus be said that the differences in the extent of political jiu-jitsu are not due to chance. The results indicate that more powerful states getaway with repressing nonviolent campaigns more easily, if power is measured in terms ofnational capacity or wealth. If, on the other hand, power is measured in the amount of noppression, it is more costly for the states that exercise more oppression.