Dudouet, Véronique (ed.); Civil Resistance and Conflict Transformation: Transitions from Armed to Nonviolent Struggle – Book review

Civil Resistance and Conflict Transformation: Transitions from Armed to Nonviolent Struggle, edited by Véronique Dudouet (2015), researches a key phenomenon that has previously gained much less attention than it deserves. This book describes and systematically analyzes the amazing and counter-intuitive trend of armed liberation groups that, after decades of frustrated attempts with military means, opted for a strategy of nonviolent resistance mobilizations. We regularly hear the claim of frustrated activists who reject peaceful protest since it ‘does not work’, and instead they turn their hopes towards ‘stronger’, violent means of struggle. Thus, Civil Resistance and Conflict Transformation shows by major examples that the opposite is also common—how seasoned guerilla groups transform to employing methods of nonviolent struggle.