Remembering One of the Inspirations of the Arab Spring

Editor’s note: Political scientist and non-violence scholar Gene Sharp passed away on January 28, 2018, a week after his ninetieth birthday. His three-volume study, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, was first published in 1973. It was inspired by the thinking of Mohandas K. Gandhi, A.J. Muste, and Henry David Thoreau and is considered a “monumental classic” in the field of political science. But it was Sharp’s shorter 2002 work, From Dictatorship to Democracy, that found its way into the hands of anti-authoritarian activists in the Arab world. The book was used in workshops in Egypt years before the uprisings began.

James L. VanHise conducted an interview with Sharp for The Progressive—one of the last before Sharp’s death. It appeared in the magazine in April/May 2017, but we are republishing it today on the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the uprising in Tunisia that would launch the Arab Spring in 2011.

Nonviolence, Power, and Possibility: The Life of Gene Sharp

I have been granted a rare interview with Gene Sharp, who has been studying political power, violence, and dictatorships for more than sixty-five years. Jamila Raqib, executive director of the Albert Einstein Institution, an organization Sharp founded in the 1980s, meets me at the weathered East Boston row house that serves as both the institution’s headquarters and Sharp’s home. Raqib punches in the door codes and we enter.

As I begin setting up my microphone, I can see this is no lavish think-tank office. The institution, which at its height in the 1990s held workshops and met with resistance leaders and government officials all over the world, has been reduced to a paid staff of two: Raqib and Sharp. I see plaster crumbling around an electrical outlet, revealing the wood beneath. One wall of the small cluttered room is lined floor to ceiling with sagging bookshelves. The iMac on Sharp’s work desk is nearly hidden by piles of books and papers; pinned to the wall behind it are several hand-lettered signs providing basic computer operating instructions.

Sharp, now eighty-nine, spent much of his life in the academic world, holding positions at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs for more than thirty years and retiring as a tenured professor at Southeastern Massachusetts University (now called the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth). He has written numerous books and monographs, including a massive study of people power called The Politics of Nonviolent Action. His most famous booklet, From Dictatorship to Democracy, can be found in the hands of activists all over the world.

Activists have used Sharp’s ideas to change the course of history, from Serbia to the Arab Spring. Yet because his approach to studying nonviolent conflict is unique, his work is often misunderstood, applied in ways that jeopardize successful outcomes, he says.

Some journalists have dubbed Sharp “the Machiavelli of nonviolence.” He rejects the label “pacifist” and has refused to have his work lumped into the category of peace studies, dismissing many of the peace researchers he’s known as “quite naive.” In fact, Sharp sees conflict as inevitable and even desirable.

At some point, when negotiation and compromise fail, people require an effective means to defend their core values. Sharp’s years of research have convinced him that nonviolent techniques, if used strategically, can be as effective as violence in such situations. His theories are based on a hard-headed realism that Machiavelli would appreciate, because to Sharp it’s all about power—wielding it and denying it to the opponent.

Sharp is pushed into the room in a wheelchair. He lives alone, except for a caregiver who attends to him a few hours a day. He has a scruffy gray beard. Shaving is not among his most pressing concerns.

Raqib introduces us. I mention to Sharp that we’ve met before, when I interviewed him in California in 1983. He does not remember. His speech is slurred and forming words seems to require a good deal of effort. When I first speak to him, he cocks his head and cups his ear, so I speak louder.

Much has changed since Sharp began his search for alternatives to violence. I begin our interview by asking if his ideas are still relevant in today’s world.

“Absolutely,” he says. “They’re not based on a superficial image of what’s going on.”

Sharp’s core idea is universally applicable. It is essentially a theory that power underpins political associations.

When he began studying nonviolence in graduate school, Sharp quickly understood that all rulers required the cooperation of their subjects in order to govern. 

He also recognized that people throughout history have used nonviolent methods—strikes or boycotts, for example—to gain concessions from governments and other powerful institutions.

To refine these ideas, Sharp analyzed hundreds of historical cases of nonviolent action. He realized that the power of rulers is not monolithic, but rather derives from the populations over which they rule. Furthermore, people have the ability to challenge that power by simply withdrawing their cooperation. 

Sharp’s great insight was that nonviolent actions often succeed when the ruler’s sources of power are severed. It was a simple idea, but it meant that there is a rational basis for understanding this phenomenon. Nonviolent action entered the realm of political realism. 

Sharp’s great insight was that nonviolent actions often succeed when the ruler’s sources of power are severed.

What had previously appeared to be random nonviolent incidents, largely ignored by historians, could be recognized as part of a pattern, categorized, and analyzed. Sharp eventually identified 198 different methods of nonviolent actions that had been used throughout history.

Could tyranny, he wondered, be successfully resisted by nonviolently undermining the pillars of support that kept dictators in power? This is the question Gene Sharp has spent his life trying to answer.

When I ask Sharp what makes his theory of nonviolence relevant under all sorts of conditions, he is quick to answer: “I think it strikes at the origin of political power.”

“So, no matter what the setting . . . ”

“Yes,” he interrupts. “It may not be successful. It may not be noticed even, at the time. But it’s there as a potential.”

Improvised nonviolent struggles have occurred frequently in the past, their significance largely overlooked by historians. When the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, obstruction by Czech officials and the noncooperation of ordinary citizens stalled the Soviet takeover of their government for eight months. In 1944, petitions, protests, and strikes led to the downfall of General Jorge Ubico, a dictator who had ruled Guatemala for more than a decade. Even the American Revolution was largely nonviolent during its initial stages, with boycotts, tax refusals, and the formation of parallel governments seriously weakening Britain’s hold on the colonies.

In the twenty-first century, Sharp’s theories, with their greater focus on planning and strategy, have been credited with helping inspire the nonviolent ouster of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia and the subsequent “color revolutions” in Georgia and Ukraine. But it was the series of nonviolent uprisings in the Middle East known as the Arab Spring that brought him the greatest fame. First, President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia fell, and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak followed. Movements sprang up across the region. The New York Times wrote an article about Sharp headlined “Shy U.S. Intellectual Created Playbook Used in a Revolution” and suddenly reporters were beating a path to the unmarked door of the Albert Einstein Institution.

“It was never thought that Arabs could do this, that Muslims could do this,” Sharp told The Nation in 2011. “Now the Muslims are doing it. . . . In Egypt, it’s unbelievable. The stereotypes are all gone.” 

The best thing for the United States to do, Sharp urged, was to get out of the way. “These people are capable of freeing themselves,” he said. “No outside messiah was needed. It’s a great realization.”

But for various reasons, the hope sparked by the Arab Spring rebellions faded almost as quickly as it arose. In Syria, nonviolent protests collapsed into a vicious and ongoing civil war. Sharp, who calls this “a great tragedy,” feels a deep personal connection to the struggle because democratic rebels had visited the Institution before the Arab Spring in 2011. They had studied Sharp’s writing and seemed committed to using nonviolent methods. This approach, he tells me, “was regarded as basic to the struggle against the existing rulers of Syria, who were not nice.”

Nonviolence, Sharp agreed, was a good choice for the Syrian rebels because it avoids head-to-head confrontation. One of Sharp’s basic tenets is that resistance groups should always pit their strengths against their opponents’ weaknesses—never the other way around. Using violence against a regime with virtually unlimited military capabilities is a recipe for bloody defeat.

At first, the Syrian revolution seemed to be going well. A primary goal of nonviolent insurgency is to undermine the regime’s pillars of support, especially the security forces.

“They were having a major effect on the loyalty of the existing Syrian army and they were aiding mutiny by urging the rest of the soldiers also to mutiny, and if that had continued the struggle would have been over years and years ago,” says Sharp, his voice rising with emotion. “The army was walking out. And instead of pushing to walk out more, someone said, ‘Let’s turn the guns around.’ ” This was a grave error because now “they had the army fighting the army with guns, and that was the end of the nonviolent struggle.”

Were it not for this “great sadness,” Sharp continues, “these years and years of violence and the involvement of the superpowers in the struggle would never have happened.” Many  nonviolent revolutions eventually gave way to new authoritarian regimes, most notably in Egypt. Sharp, in his writings, warns that the period after toppling a dictator is one of great danger, and continued resistance is necessary as other anti-democratic rulers attempt to fill the power vacuum.

But these failures might also be blamed on insufficient preparation. In Sharp’s view, a sustainable revolution requires the participation of many robust citizens’ groups that can operate independently from the government.

The idea of an empowered population is central to Sharp’s political vision, and relevant even to democratic societies, where governments and big corporations are becoming increasingly centralized and alienated from the people. He sees this trend as a primary threat to human freedom. Even when those in power grant rights and privileges to their citizens, those gains can be easily reversed if the people are powerless and too reliant on the government.

In Social Power and Political Freedom, perhaps Sharp’s most radical book, he lays out a vision of society where the gradual adoption of nonviolent sanctions would diffuse power throughout the population. This shift in power relationships would be driven by the development of new, independent grassroots organizations designed to replace the functions of centralized institutions controlled by elite groups at the top. 

But how could a society comprised of multiple centers of power hold together? As I put it to Sharp, “Wouldn’t they engage in conflict with one another?”

“They may, and that’s not necessarily bad.”

In Sharp’s estimation, a potentially factious society is a small price to pay for freedom. The alternative—a submissive population dependent on a powerful central authority—is fertile ground for the ascent of tyrants. 

In Sharp’s estimation, a potentially factious society is a small price to pay for freedom. The alternative—a submissive population dependent on a powerful central authority—is fertile ground for the ascent of tyrants.

Given his emphasis on grassroots empowerment, I’m curious about his take on the recent presidential election. “Does it really matter who’s President?” I ask.

“Yes it does,” he answers emphatically. Then, in what I take to be a direct allusion to Donald Trump, he continues: “There is use for nonviolent resistance and protest in that situation.”

Sharp, ever the pragmatist, sees elections as a tool through which people can wield power. But it is far from being the only tool. “We need to examine how all events can help to shape the options that are available,” he says.

In fact, a number of nonviolent campaigns—in Serbia, Ukraine, and Georgia, for example—have used elections, combined with more coercive nonviolent weapons, as the framework to remove their rulers. Carefully and objectively evaluating the situation, and exploiting opportunities when they appear, is key to Sharp’s strategic conception of nonviolence.

Sharp has always viewed himself as an iconoclast. Although he has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize four times, and in 2012 was widely favored to win, it didn’t happen. He was not disappointed or surprised because, as he puts it, his work is too unconventional—it challenges “the basic assumptions of political science and politics, and the basic assumptions are not accurate, are not complete.”

Sharp says his work challenges “the basic assumptions of political science and politics, and the basic assumptions are not accurate.”

“You’re implying you think your work is groundbreaking,” I say.

“I never use those words,” he replies. Sharp is a modest man. But, after pause, he reconsiders: “Yes, I guess so.”

Still, among some in academia, Sharp remains an outlier—and he knows it. 

As he tells me, “I don’t see where conventional political thinking has been permanently impressed with the unique groundbreaking significance of the technique.”

While it would be tempting to see someone who has devoted his life to finding an alternative to violence as a dreamer or crusader, over the years Sharp has consistently presented himself as staunchly realistic and strangely ambivalent about his life’s work.

That ambivalence was on display when I asked him in 1983 if he thought violence might be justified under any circumstances.

“I really don’t deal with the question of justification,” he told me. “If someone believes he should join the army, I don’t say, ‘Well, you’re not my friend anymore.’ I say, ‘Well, good luck.’ Because the question of justification is not one that interests me. Maybe it should.”

He is equally noncommittal this time when I ask if the world’s continuing violence was a source of despair, or if he was optimistic about the future.

“I don’t consider myself in terms of optimism and pessimism,” he says. “I just ignore that.”

I ask if he thinks the use of strategic nonviolence will continue to propagate, or just remain a possibility.

“Maybe both,” he answers.

If Sharp is a passionate advocate for anything, it is the need for more in-depth study of strategic nonviolence. The technique is fraught with complexities, and researchers like Sharp have barely uncovered the tip of the iceberg. He is convinced more analysis and experimentation can make it far more powerful.

Even after decades of research and writing, Sharp sees “a huge amount” of work still to be done. That’s why he finds it so irritating that he is slowing down. He had started writing a book on political power, but since returning from a stay in a nursing home, he says he has forgotten how to use his computer.

“Yes, I’m trying, but it has not been going well in the past year,” he tells me. “A lot’s been done on the book. But in the last six months, my head has not been working very well and so it’s stuck. I’ve been trying to get back to it.”

When I ask Sharp what is the major thing people haven’t understood about his work, he says, “I don’t think they understood how it related to political power. That’s why it’s so important that I get this last book finished.”

In fact, Sharp’s life has been consumed by research and writing. He could be enjoying a comfortable retirement, rather than fretting about how much work there is left to do. Never married, he has had few outside interests besides cultivating orchids on the top floor of his building. I wondered if he had any regrets about his life.

“Maybe it wasn’t as nice as it could have been,” he muses. “I don’t know. I don’t worry about that.”

I tell him it may have come at great cost, but he has certainly contributed a lot of important knowledge to the world.

“I don’t know that for sure,” he says.

But activists in repressive societies around the world who are reading his books and launching their own liberation campaigns would beg to differ. People in extreme conflict situations often assumed theirs was a choice between violence and submission. Sharp’s work helped them see a third possibility. And perhaps the greatest influence of this quiet, humble man is yet to come.

“I personally think that people will be writing books about you for many years,” I tell him.

“That’s very kind. I’m sure that’s not the plan—whoever makes the plan,” he says with a grin.

Sharp has not lost his sense of humor. As I get ready to leave, he struggles to rise from his wheelchair to shake my hand. Sensing the commotion, his caregiver rushes in from the other room.

“Are you OK, Gene?” he asks.

“I’m going to stand up,” says Sharp.

“To do what?” the concerned caregiver asks.

“Dance,” replies Sharp.