More on Unarmed Insurrections
Howard Barrell, who I interviewed last week about the end of apartheid, has passed along an amendment to one of his remarks:
Kurt Schock has pointed out to me—and I accept—that I misrepresented the argument he puts forward in his book Unarmed Insurrections: People Power Movements in Nondemocracies….I implied in the interview that Schock had suggested a deterministic argument regarding the decline of violent revolutionary movements and the ascendance of nonviolent "people power" movements. On this basis, I added that current insurgencies, such as that in Afghanistan, might, if they succeed, "play havoc" with his view.
In fact, in the book, Schock merely analyses a trend towards people power movements; he is careful not to derive any broad prediction from the trend. So there can be no question of havoc threatening his view.
How I came to make the error I cannot account. But I did. And I apologise.