Civil Resistance and Democracy Promotion: A Comparative Study Analysis

This book examines transnational civil society-based democracy-promoting resistance activities in Asia in a global era, focusing on the cases of Myanmar and Palestine.

The work contributes to our understanding of the nexus between globalization, power and democracy by examining: (i) the ways in which globalization/global governance are influencing various resistance practices of the civil societies in Myanmar and Palestine, and what this means for local democracy promotion; and (ii) the ways in which these two civil societies influence and have a democracy-promoting impact on their respective communities. It is guided by the overarching question of how civil society-based resistance contributes to local democracy in Myanmar and Palestine. The book is structured as follows: both civil resistance cases begin with an overview of each country’s non-violent resistance history, and the findings are then presented for the two cases, i.e., the pro-democracy movements in the Saffron uprising in Myanmar and the Bil’in village struggle against the Israeli Security Barrier plans to build through their farmlands. Then follows a presentation of the life-story interview made with two members from the respective campaigns. A concluding chapter proposes some new theoretical insights for how civil resistance can impact on democracy. The book empirically and theoretically contributes to our understanding of how civil society-based resistance and democracy interrelate in a global era.

This book will be of much interest to students of civil resistance, democracy, Asian studies, Middle Eastern studies and international relations in general.

Michael Schulz is Professor in the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and author, most recently, of Between Resistance, Sharia Law and Demo-Islamic Politics (2020).