 
!
!
Vol. 5, Issue 2 May 2012 """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""! ! Book Review: Nonviolent Revolutions: Civil Resistance in the Late 20th Century. 2011. By Sharon Erickson Nepstad. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Vol. 5, Issue 2 May 2012
Author: Kristen A. Traynor Kent State University Department of Political Science 302 Bowman Hall Kent State University Kent, OH 44242 Email: ktraynor@kent.edu ______________________________________________________________________________ BOOK REVIEW: NONVIOLENT REVOLUTIONS: CIVIL RESISTANCE IN THE LATE 20TH CENTURY. 2011. BY SHARON ERICKSON NEPSTAD. Nonviolent revolutions became increasingly common throughout the 20th century. As word spread about the successes of these civil resistance movements, other people or groups would attempt to try similar means to attain their own political goals. However, the idea of nonviolent revolutions was not merely a 20th century phenomenon. Several nonviolent activists got their ideas from the works of Henry David Thoreau, written in the 19th Century. Also, as Nepstad rightly points out, nonviolent revolutions continue to occur today. In Nonviolent Revolutions: Civil Resistance in the Late 20th Century, Nepstad seeks to answer the question of which conditions and which strategies and tactics lead to the success or failure of a civil resistance. Through the use of secondary sources, the author discusses six cases of nonviolent revolution in various regions of the world. To control for confounding factors, Nepstad has chosen civil resistance attempts that occurred during the same time period, the last decade of the Cold War Era. Nepstad creates three categories to classify the regimes that the resisters attempted to topple. These types are socialist, military, and personal dictatorship, and each category is discussed through two case studies of nonviolent revolutions. Overall, the theoretical section of the book and its findings contribute to both academic and practical literature, but several methodological issues have slightly limited the explanatory ability of this work.