It's frankly astounding to me how these people can fall for their own bullshit.
Really? No protest with over 3.5% of the population has ever failed? Really?
I can think of 2 of the top of my head, the Catalonia independence protests and referendum, and the Hong Kong protests.
In both cases there was a significantly higher portion than 3.5% actively protesting, and what was the result? I dont see an independent Hong Kong or Catalunya anywhere, do you?
The fact of the matter is that violence is the Supreme authority from which all other authority is derived.
A protest where non-violence is guaranteed from the outset is a losing proposition against any determined opponent, and when protesting about things that matter that opponent will always be determined.
I suppose that a better outcome for this study would be "in matters where the outcome has no significant impact on the decision makers, a 3.5% threshold is sufficient to enact a change in the status quo".
Congrats, you spent all that effort and resources to get the political equivalent of a paint job.
It may feel that way but I think the commenter hit the nail on the head. The 3.5% of the population that the ruling group cares a out isn't 3.5% of some cities pop or even regions pop. It's all their constituents. I wonder if Hong Kong and Catalan had broad support outside of their local region if the outcome would be difference.
I wonder about the Scottish independence movement. Brexit could be an example where it was much higher than 3.5% but the outcome was close to the other direction.
The original trigger for the Hong Kong 2019 protests was a bill that allowed the government to approve ad-hoc extraditions to any other jurisdiction. On the surface this bill was 100% within the affairs of the local HKSAR government, and nobody in other parts of China was affected or really gave a damn whether it passed or not.
Carrie Lam, then Chief Executive, tried to get the bill passed by pulling Beijing into the picture. Given the tensions between Beijing and the common Hong Kong people at the time, it quickly escalated to a "national security" issue.
Note that, eventually, the original proposed extradition bill died a slow painful death. The original bill was a local issue, it failed, and hence the 3.5% rule held. (Hence it is incorrect to state that the protest failed. It wasn't a complete failure in this sense. Pyrrhic victory though.)
The independence movement (if you can call it that) obviously failed and protesters were rounded up by the hundreds (lots of riots trials pending). I don't know whether the failure is just due to the huge denominator of the whole Chinese population though. It's certainly a factor, but if you ask me, the stakeholders are not only all the Chinese people, but also international forces that have a vested interest in keeping the status quo in Hong Kong. Much like how the stance of USA influences Taiwan's status.
If the model is that nonviolent protest is always effective if we cross a certain threshold, but that every citizen of Hong Kong could be in the streets without crossing that threshold, this model is meaningless.
Nonviolent protests are critical and can absolutely bring about change, but it is a brutal and drawn out process and not some kind of magic bullet.
By that same metric, the same holds true for violent protests.
Some protests are doomed regardless of if they are violent or not. Some can only succeed if they are violent, some can only succeed if they are nonviolent.
I am not aware of any successful violent protests. I know of some violent revolutions, but if you go there, you better make sure you can actually compete with the opposition.
I must have expressed myself badly. I believe that, if you're engaged in a violent revolution, you have already failed; you will recapitulate the status quo, should you gain control of society. This is why I described nonviolent protest as critical. When I said the process was brutal, it was because nonviolent movements will be opposed brutally, not because brutality is any sort of virtue.
I was making a more nuanced point about this particular conversation, perhaps one that didn't really need to be made.
New research suggests that one nonviolent movement, Bahrain in 2011-2014, appears to have decisively failed despite achieving over 6% popular participation at its peak. This suggests that there has been at least one exception to the 3.5% rule, and that the rule is a tendency, rather than a law.
as another commenter pointed out, it may well have been over 3.5% of the Hong Kong population, but it was by no means over 3.5% of the Chinese population
You just illustrated why this is a flimsy, social sciences, propaganda piece.
3.5% of what? There are international, national, provincial, and local authorities, each with different constituencies, all of which overlap to some degree.
The preferred method of coup by powerful external forces who finance them are color revolutions - usually via arming violent extremist groups with controlled opposition leaders. That’s about all I need to know.
A lot of interesting things in this article and the work on what it is based.
Still, I think (that is a personal theory) one key element not mentioned here is what the protesters demand (how big will be the impact), and who will be impacted.
Recently, looks like more than 3.5% of the Lebanese population protested without any impact...But they were asking BIG changes, protesting against ALL the "elites" (and a big chuck of the bourgeoisie). Army leaders, politician around the spectrum, even some cleric had a lot to lose, and quite no one in a power position had anything to win.
In Tunisia or in Egypt, they were asking more freedom and a bit less nepotism (that is relatively cheap). Armies (and army leaders) had quite nothing to lose to support such big protests, and this "regime change" was an opportunity for a big chunk of the elite and of the "bourgeoisie" to "capture" more business and power.
I guess if 2.5 millions of French people would protest to end capitalism and make a big "equalization" of capital, their chances of achieving it by just protesting are 0. The stakes are too high, and all the element of the "power structure" would be totally against and ready to do a lot of think to preserve the status quo. Same protests regularly asking a 20% pay bump and more referendums like in Swissterland, would have serious chance to get something...
Really? No protest with over 3.5% of the population has ever failed? Really?
I can think of 2 of the top of my head, the Catalonia independence protests and referendum, and the Hong Kong protests.
In both cases there was a significantly higher portion than 3.5% actively protesting, and what was the result? I dont see an independent Hong Kong or Catalunya anywhere, do you?
The fact of the matter is that violence is the Supreme authority from which all other authority is derived.
A protest where non-violence is guaranteed from the outset is a losing proposition against any determined opponent, and when protesting about things that matter that opponent will always be determined.
I suppose that a better outcome for this study would be "in matters where the outcome has no significant impact on the decision makers, a 3.5% threshold is sufficient to enact a change in the status quo".
Congrats, you spent all that effort and resources to get the political equivalent of a paint job.