How to Win Well

Civil Resistance Breakthroughs and the Path to Democracy

By Jonathan Pinckney

Get the paperback

Available wherever books are sold. Any profit goes back into new research and writing workshops.

Buy the paperback

Download the free PDF

How to Win Well

About the book

How do nonviolent resistance movements oust dictators? What effects do these different ways of ousting dictators have on countries’ long-term political trajectories? In this special report, I trace the pathways through which civil resistance movements of the last seventy years have removed dictatorships and the impact of these different pathways on levels of democratic progress. I find that pathways that involve campaign initiative, institutional mechanisms, and building cooperative norms – particularly negotiated transitions – tend to lead to the highest levels of democratic progress.

Topics

Democracy & Authoritarianism

Written for

Scholars

About the author

Jonathan Pinckney

Jonathan Pinckney is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the department of Sociology and Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and an external associate at the Peace Research Institution of Oslo (PRIO). He researches extra-institutional political contention in non-democracies, with a particular focus on nonviolent civil resistance. Jonathan received his PhD in International Relations from the University of Denver in March 2018, his MA also from the University of Denver in 2014, and his BA in International Affairs from Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts in 2008. He was a 2012 recipient of the Korbel School’s Sie Fellowship and a 2016 recipient of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict’s PhD fellowship.