The phenomenon of civil resistance is often associated with the advancement of democracy. It is not easy to devise a method of proving the relative success of different methods of struggle. Often there are problems in identifying a given campaign as successful or otherwise. In 2008 Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth produced Why Civil Resistance Works, the most thorough and detailed analysis of the rate of success of civil resistance campaigns, as compared to violent resistance …show more content…
Criticisms of the central thesis of Why Civil Resistance Works have included forming judgement about whether a campaign is a success or failure is inherently difficult: the answer may depend on the time-frame used, and on necessarily subjective judgments about what constitutes success. Some of the authors' decisions on this are debatable. Similar difficulties arise in deciding whether a campaign is violent or non-violent, when on the ground both strategies may co-exist in several