How does civil disobedience differ from other forms of unconventional participation?

1Political actors sometimes pursue their goals through occupations, strikes, boycotts, nonpayment of taxes and various other forms of non-compliance that aim to undermine the authority of powerful adversaries and pressure them to change course. These activities are discussed by activists and social scientists using the technical term of "non-violent action" (or alternatively "civil resistance", "non-cooperation" or satyagraha). [1] The basic idea of nonviolent action is to challenge the status quo through co-ordinated mass action that takes place outside official channels of participation. As the term suggests, it also entails a disciplined commitment to methods that do not involve violence ­ that is to say, the use of physical force to intentionally injure or kill other persons or to destroy property in a manner intended to intimidate. While this method is most often discussed by scholars in the context of resistance to dictatorships and colonial rule, it has also been applied in democratic and semi-democratic societies. In recent times, we have seen occupations of sacred lands by environmental and indigenous rights activists seeking to prevent the drilling of oil pipe lines. There are also migrant rights movements which aim to frustrate and obstruct the enforcement of immigration laws deemed unjust through the physical obstruction of deportation flights and other actions.

2In this paper, I offer a justification for the specifically coercive character of non-violent action and identify the legitimate role it has to play not only in authoritarian states but in plausibly democratic societies. [2] This position is not without controversy. The charge that a movement seeks to "coerce" and "threaten" opponents, rather than to persuade them through rational argument, is often invoked as a sign of hypocrisy and used by opponents to discredit a campaign. It appears to conflict with the principle of majority rule and a norm of respect for the decisions of fellow citizens as delivered in free and fair elections. The broad agreement among philosophers has been that protest in liberal democratic states should confine itself to communicative means, seeking to persuade others through an appeal to the "sense of justice" of citizens and political officials. [3] In turn, prominent practitioners of non-violent action ­ most notably Mahatma Gandhi ­ have often conveyed the impression that their methods rely solely upon an appeal to the conscience of their opponents, rather than any element of compulsion.

3In Section 1 of this paper I distinguish coercive non-violent action from other unconventional forms of political engagement, such as civil disobedience and conscientious refusal. In Section 2, I offer a normative and conceptual framework for the paper, setting out a definition and typology of coercion and an account of democracy based on the republican ­ or neo-republican ­ ideal of collective decision-making as a means to control the threat of domination. I then evaluate the two most systematic attempts to address the moral and philosophical issues raised by the use of coercion in movements of non-violent action. In Section 3, I examine the classical "attitudinal" view of Gandhi which holds that a campaign is not coercive if resistors possess the necessary attitudes of love and goodwill towards their opponents and do not wish them ill. In Section 4, I examine the "propositional" view of Vinit Haksar which presents the withdrawal of co-operation from political institutions as a "proposal to co-operate on honourable terms" and holds that this does not amount to coercion so long as the resistors' aims are morally justified. [4] I argue that each of these views seeks to downplay or deny the use of coercive tactics in a way that is ultimately unconvincing. Nonetheless, each offers crucial ethical and practical insights, which can inform an appropriate set of regulative principles for the conduct of resistance campaigns.

4In sections 5 and 6, I offer an account of what I term democratic coercion which I illustrate with reference to contemporary migrant and environmental movements. I argue that democratic coercion is justified as a means to counter relations of political domination that are severe (threatening the rights, opportunities and life chances of some group or future group of persons) and entrenched (distorting the conditions under which reason holds sway). It may be used as a surrogate tool of political action for those subject to various forms of political exclusion and as a remedial tool to counteract the dominating influence of powerful institutions, groups and classes over political decisions. The ultimate justification for democratic coercion lies in upholding freedom and democratic self-determination. The practice of non-violent action is an exemplary instance of its use because whether or not it involves explicit verbal threats to the authorities, the mobilisation of disruptive power implies that institutions and social relations will not be permitted to function smoothly in the absence of political change.

5While for some "principled" theorists and practitioners a commitment to non-violence derives from a comprehensive ethical or spiritual creed (that typically draws on elements of Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism or the teachings of the Gospel), for "pragmatists" a commitment to non-violence is understood in more secular terms as an efficacious political technique with which to challenge injustice. [5] Non-violent action is therefore distinct from pacifism since it does not necessarily presuppose an absolutist rejection of violence or indeed any particular moral judgement against those who use it. As we shall see, conscientious and pragmatic approaches typically differ in how they understand the essential mechanisms through which nonviolent action operates with conscientious practitioners placing greater emphasis on the moral conversion of opponents and pragmatists focusing on power, self-interest and other more strategic considerations.

6Nonetheless, both share the same broad conception of non-violent action as a means of prosecuting a political conflict outside of ­ and in opposition to ­ the established institutional channels of participation through various acts of protest, non-cooperation and intervention. The paradigmatic forms of non-violent action are strikes, occupations, boycotts and forms of mass civil disobedience that aim to undermine the authorities and frustrate the operation of economic, social and political systems deemed wrong or unjust. [6] What qualifies a particular action as an instance of non-violent action is not merely its absence of violence per se, but the social context in which the action takes place which establishes which activities are disallowed or otherwise subversive. Thus, while the activity of walking down the street is clearly non-violent, it only becomes an instance of nonviolent action when done in defiance of some rule or convention.

7The concrete effects of non-violent action may in practice be more destructive of life and property than the use of violence which directly threatens the personal safety of others. Consider for instance the boycott of a business that results in the business-owner facing financial ruin and no longer being able to materially provide for themselves. The impact on the well-being of the business-owner arguably constitutes a much graver injury than would result from a one-off physical beating. [7] Moreover, the logic of nonviolent action may be more subversive of conventional democratic procedural norms than violence. The logic of some acts of violence is largely performative, serving to express outrage at the authorities without fundamentally undermining their freedom to act, as with the set-piece clashes between police and protesters that sometimes accompany the summits of trans-national economic organisations. By contrast, a broad-based movement of non-violent action has the potential to paralyse key institutions within the state, or else frustrate the implementation of some specific law or policy, compelling a government to change course or stand down entirely.

8As a distinct mode of political action, non-violent action has received little sustained attention within normative theory where it has been assimilated it into a narrow set of debates about the definition and justification of civil disobedience in "nearly just" societies. [8] Yet while civil disobedience may be used as part of a broader movement of nonviolent action ­ either by itself or in combination with other techniques ­ it should not be confused with nonviolent action as such. In common with civil disobedience, non-violent action can be distinguished from institutionalised participation through official channels on the one hand and violent insurgent activity on the other. The concept of non-violent action, however, cuts across the traditional philosophical notion of civil disobedience understood as a deliberate, public breach of law that communicates political opposition to some law or government policy. In one sense, it is more `moderate' than civil disobedience since it potentially includes a wide range of legal actions alongside illegal ones, as for example with economic boycotts, work-to-rule or politically-motivated resignations. It also has a stricter commitment to non-violence built into its very definition. [9]

9In another, arguably more fundamental sense, it is more "radical" than civil disobedience in that it need not have the distinctive communicative character that is traditionally thought to distinguish civil disobedience. According to most philosophical accounts, civil disobedience functions primarily as a form of symbolic protest or speech act that dramatises a pressing social and political issue in the public sphere. In the words of John Rawls's classic account, civil disobedience appeals to the public's "sense of justice" and "while it may warn and admonish, it is not itself a threat". [10] The same basic analysis of civil disobedience as a communicative act is shared by Jürgen Habermas, Peter Singer and David Lefkovitz. [11] By contrast, while nonviolent resistance will frequently aim to engage and persuade others, it is not defined by a commitment to persuasive measures in the strict sense that civil disobedience is said to be. It targets pressure more directly at the perpetrators of some injustice rather than appealing to a third party audience of the reasoning public for support.

10More recent theories of civil disobedience ­ by the likes of Daniel Markovits, Kimberley Brownlee and William Smith ­ have proposed a role for constrained forms of coercion as a means to gain the attention of the media and political power-holders, bringing marginalised political discourses into the public sphere. [12] These accounts capture the vital historical role of political law-breaking as a response to the defects of the formal democratic process. Importantly, however, they specify that coercive measures should not aim to compel specific outcomes, which would be contrary to the duty to respect the entitlement of free and equal citizens to collectively determine law and policy through democratic procedures. Here, the use of coercive tactics is justified as a means to gain a fair hearing for one's efforts at reasoned persuasion rather than as an attempt to obstruct and reverse a particular measure directly. [13]

11In the classical Rawlsian account, the communicative character of civil disobedience is said to be tied to its basic "civility" as a mode of address that treats fellow citizens with the respect owed to them as autonomous agents whose views on political questions may differ from our own. This entails a fairly demanding set of constraints on how disobedience is to be conducted, including that activists should carry out their activities openly in public and that they should accept any legal punishment for their actions. [14] By contrast, insofar as scholars and practitioners of nonviolent action have proposed constraints on how it ought to be conducted, these flow from its defining commitment to the disciplined rejection of violence in the face of state provocation and brutality. A common theme underlying both principled and pragmatic approaches is the idea that by rejecting violent methods activists are embodying the ideals they wish to see realised, promoting the ideal of a peaceful, democratic society. [15]

12While civil disobedients must carefully choose the place and timing of their acts of transgression in order to achieve the maximum amount of publicity, practitioners of nonviolent action may simply ignore a rule or order without attracting attention through "disguised disobedience". [16] What matters here is the cumulative erosion of the authorities' power to act and not merely gaining a public audience. It follows that nonviolent action nearly always takes place as part of some social movement with sufficient numbers to have the desired impact. A social movement can be understood here as an informal network of individuals, groups and associations mobilising on the basis of a shared collective identity or set of political objectives. [17] Thus, while NGO's or political parties may form part of social movements or originate out of their activities, they themselves are not social movements.

13Non-violent resistance also differs from "conscientious refusal" in which an individual refuses to comply with a legal or administrative order on the basis of an ethical or religious commitment that is not justice-based, as with the pacifist who refuses to serve in the military. [18] The aim here is not to achieve reform but simply to avoid being accomplice to some perceived moral wrong through one's actions or inactions. Some such acts may function as a form of political participation that calls for the legal and institutional accommodation of a minority's non-public ethical commitments, as Emanuela Ceva has recently argued. [19] This would be the case for instance with the pacifist who publicly broadcasts their refusal with the aim of securing a more general exemption. An important difference however is that the practitioner of nonviolent resistance aims not merely to disassociate themselves from some wrong, or to secure exemption for a minority group, but to stop the wrong entirely by exerting political influence. It would entail, for instance, the systematic boycott of the military enlistment system as part of a co-ordinated mass action that aims to bring conscription itself to an end.

Coercion, domination and democratic legitimacy

14In this section, I set out a normative and conceptual framework for theorising when coercive resistance is justified. The discussion is to some degree stipulative since I cannot hope to offer a fully-fledged theory of coercion or democratic legitimacy here. On the most general level, coercion aims to influence the behaviour of others through non-voluntary means. It can be understood to involve either the threat of sanctions to deter an agent from choosing some course of action or the direct use of force to prevent them from choosing it entirely. [20] In the first case, agent X coerces agent Y to perform action A by applying sanctions to option B (and options C, D, E, etc.) so as to make option A more appealing by comparison. For example, trade unions threaten strikes if the government passes labour reforms. [21] In order to qualify as coercion, the threatened sanction must affect the interests of the target in a way that is significant though not necessarily irresistible. The government may, for example, grudgingly choose to accept the economic disruption caused by strikes as the cost for passing the reforms. Actions that are merely inconvenient to others ­ such as the temporary closure of a road for a protest march ­ are not coercive. After a certain point, however, the same action may pass a threshold where it affects the interests of others to a sufficient degree that it does count as coercive, as when the same road is closed by a protest for weeks or months on end.

15In cases of prevention, agent X uses force to compel option A on agent Y by removing option B (and options C, D, E, etc.) entirely from the set of options available to Y. [22] For example, a hacking group takes down a government department's computer systems in a way that paralyses its operations on an ongoing basis. Within the general category of preventative coercion is included the use of manipulation that influences an agent's cost-benefit calculations by deceiving them about their options, as for example when activists return false documents to government bureaucracies. In such cases, the use of deception is formally equivalent in its effects to the use of force in preventing an agent from accessing some option. The use of coercion stands in contrast to methods that aim to influence others by voluntary means through persuasion and rational argument, as with speeches, rallies, vigils, and other symbolic forms of political communication. Although both preventative and deterrent coercion may be said to condition the freedom of the target agent, they do so in different ways with deterrent coercion operating through the target's will in a way that still allows some small element of choice.

16The capacity to exercise coercion can be understood as a form of power, so that X has power over Y if X possesses the capacity to coerce Y to do A. Pre-eminently, the state has power over those subject to it thanks to the coercive application of the law which takes the form of both deterrence (in the form of fines and various other punishments for law-breaking) and prevention (in the form of police and prisons). Under the republican view, this power can be understood as a form of domination if X is able to coerce Y on an arbitrary basis without any say from Y. [23] In such a condition, Y is at the mercy of X who is in a position to decide Y's fate at their discretion without taking account of Y's needs, interests or desires. Y then experiences X's decisions as the product of an arbitrary or alien will over which they have no control. To be in such a condition, is to be dominated and hence to be unfree.

17A democratic regime under the republican view is one that minimises domination by ensuring that the will of government ­ and hence the coercive application of law ­ is subject to a suitable degree of popular control. Of course, the law limits our choices on a routine basis through coercive means, but what matters most for republicans is whether this is done in a dominating way in disregard for democratic procedures. To count as democratically legitimate all those subjected to the state's coercive power must have a say in how it is exercised. [24] This requires that they equal opportunities to influence and contest law and policy. They must have an equal chance to influence state decisions by participating in free and fair elections that impose a political direction on the government. But they must also be equally empowered to contest the outcome of those decisions through various institutional and civic means. [25]

18For republicans, the ex post contestation of law ­ through courts, tribunals, ombudsmen, civil society groups and social movement activism ­ helps to ensures that law is not distorted by private agents or by the tyranny of the majority. [26] It is a means for those subject to the state's power to check and test its decisions against their basic rights and interests. As I go onto argue, coercive acts of resistance can be understood as a means of legitimate political contestation in circumstances where the regular channels of participation cannot be relied upon. Before that, I turn to examine how thinkers and practitioners have attempted to reconcile the idealistic objectives of nonviolent action with its ostensible use of confrontational methods.

The attitudinal view

19The first approach I examine is that of Gandhi whose writings on satyagraha ­ or "truth force" ­ proved so influential for later practitioners and scholars of nonviolence. [27] Gandhi's understanding of non-violent resistance is bound up with a comprehensive spiritual cosmology and metaphysical outlook which holds that love is the supreme guiding force for all human affairs with an unbounded potential to correct injustice. For Gandhi, satyagraha rejects not only violence but all forms of coercion. Rather than compelling opponents to act justly, satyagraha seeks to convert them through the purifying force of innocent self-suffering. As Gandhi put it, "the more innocent and pure the suffering the more potent will it be in its effect." [28] He insisted that this method of "self-purification" aims to reach "the heart" of the oppressor and he frequently contrasted it with coercion through external means. [29]

20The satyagrahi willingly invited hardship, going to jail, marching long distances, and enduring baton blows by policemen. On Gandhi's instruction, they were supposed to carry out their actions not with anger and a thirst for revenge, but with a loving attitude towards their opponents. He therefore placed great emphasis on the moral and spiritual preparation of those who undertake non-violent resistance and the character of their relationship towards their opponents. Resistors were taught to reject not only the "outward" violence of physical force but the "inner" violence of hatred and resentment. [30] In turn, the actions launched by Gandhi involved boycotts of specific industries, the systematic violation of unjust laws, a withdrawal from the official court system, a refusal to serve in state positions, along with labour strikes and work stoppages.

21Each of these methods Gandhi understood as means of voluntary conversion. How can this be so? The thought behind Gandhi's stance appears to be that the loving demeanour and innocence of non-violent actors has an overwhelming, transformative impact on their opponents whose emotional and psychological condition is altered to such an extent that they no longer come to experience the activities of resistors as a limitation on their freedom. [31] Instead, they come to appreciate the error of their ways and identify with the resistors' cause. Through exposure to the purifying force of self-suffering, political opponents have their "eyes opened" and come to appreciate a truth that was previously hidden to them.

22This perspective gives a central role to emotional and psychological processes internal to the putative act of coercion that are thought to transform the preferences of the target agent. Consider a situation in which agent Y is faced with a choice between two options, A and B. They originally intend to choose B. Agent X then intervenes in Y's choices through a putative act of coercion in the form of nonviolent action. This intervention places a sanction on option B and in so doing makes it less appealing. As an instance of nonviolent action, however, the intervention has a purifying force to it that simultaneously transforms Y's preferences. Y then comes to reject B altogether and embrace A. Since the reason for this newfound choice is not the sanction itself, but Y's change of heart, no coercion has taken place.

23This is a compelling picture. There is no doubt that it captures at least some instances of nonviolent action, which by many accounts can have a deeply moving impact on those who witness it, leading them to reassess their chosen course of action in the face of the calm, resolute endurance of resistors. However, some problems remain. We may grant for the sake of argument the implicit presupposition that it is not possible to coerce an agent into performing an action that they intend to perform of their own volition. [32] However, the transformation of the target's preferences by the resistor's intervention remains at best a contingent feature of nonviolent action. There will still be a great many cases that do not have this transformative effect, which explains why movements must often continue and escalate their activities over time.

24A further possibility is that Gandhi did not see an action as being coercive if it is done in the interests of the target being coerced. Gandhi believed that the renunciation of oppression was ultimately in the best interests of the British who he saw as morally corrupted by their role in injustice. Yet even if we grant the fact that renouncing imperial rule of India was in the true, long-term interests of the British, this would not qualify Gandhi's actions as non-coercive. It would instead be a form of paternalistic coercion. This is because the relevant benchmark for judging the voluntariness of an agent's actions ­ and hence whether or not they are subject to coercion ­ is the concrete limitations placed on their choices regardless of what they ought to choose or might choose if they were more enlightened. When the state threatens fines for drivers not wearing seatbelts, for example, it makes sense to regard that as an instance of coercion regardless of the paternalistic intent.

25The effect of Gandhi's movement of boycotts, disobedience and non-compliance was to impose an economic and political cost upon Britain's imperial rule of India, rendering the status quo less appealing as an option relative to Indian independence. Indeed, this is precisely how the British authorities experienced it. Addressing both Houses of the Indian Legislative Assembly on July 1930, the British viceroy, Lord Irwin, rejected the view that noncooperation and civil disobedience is a "perfectly legitimate form of political agitation" since it involved a "deliberate attempt to coerce established authority by mass action". [33] The impact of this action was not trivial. When the boycott of British cloth was at its height, there was an 84% decline in exports from Britain to India. [34] Though it would be misleading to say the British were forced from power in India, the activities of the independence movement certainly acted as a potent deterrent to ongoing rule.

26Yet while Gandhi may not have been entirely accurate in describing how his nonviolent approach worked in every instance, there was arguably much wisdom in his emphasis on cultivating an elevated spiritual ethos and the right set of civic virtues. Karuna Mantena has called attention to the "realism" of Gandhi's perspective, and the understanding of human psychology and social relations upon which it relies, pointing out how the avoidance of aggression and hostility towards opponents was a way to diffuse anger and avoid enflaming egos. [35] The voluntary endurance of suffering reduced the likelihood of fear, anger, and other unpleasant emotions in opponents. Even where this did not result in their moral conversion, it helped avoid an escalation of the conflict into violence, paving the way for future co-operation and peaceful co-existence. Nonetheless, we might say that it is precisely because of the coerciveness of nonviolent resistance ­ that it worked by applying pressure to the will of opponents in a way that might provoke hostility and resentment ­ that the need for self-limiting style of moderation were so important.

The propositional view

27The second account I examine is that of Vinit Haksar who endorses Gandhi's view that civil resistance is non-coercive, though for different reasons. In Haksar's terms, a necessary condition of a coercive threat is that the proposer's "declared unilateral plan" (i.e. their proposed sanction) should be an immoral one. [36] Thus, the highwayman who tells the traveller "I'll spare your life if you give me your money" is utilising coercion since their declared unilateral plan is to take the traveller's life should their proposal be rejected and this involves the violation of a moral duty. [37] It follows from this view that morally justified civil resistance can be non-coercive "even where it frustrates the state from carrying out its evil policies". Resistance movements along Gandhian lines do not involve coercive threats, for Haksar, but instead a withdrawal of co-operation with the authorities and a "proposal to cooperate on honourable terms". [38] To judge whether a particular action counts as coercive, then, we must first have a certain amount of background knowledge concerning the moral rights and duties pertaining to the different agents involved. The Indian population had no moral obligation to use the British courts system, for instance, and hence their boycott of the courts was neither wrong nor coercive.

28Haksar's perspective has the merit that it avoids tarnishing something with the unwholesome label of coercion where it is wholly right and justified. It thus avoids the unwelcome suggestion that the British authorities were in any way wronged by the actions of the Indian independence movement. A basic problem with a moralised account of this kind, however, is that it runs contrary to the intuition that a threat can be coercive even if it would not be immoral to carry out the threatened act. A paradigm case is the criminal law which seems justified in threatening sanctions against those subject to it to enforce the moral rights and duties of individuals. However, we do not regard the criminal law as being any less coercive for that reason. Haksar ultimately bites the bullet and accepts the conclusion that the criminal law's use of sanctions, when fair and just, "do not coerce the will... of any citizens". [39] But he fails to provide sufficient reason to accept this deeply counter-intuitive conclusion.

29Haksar's perspective also fails to account for the special significance of an act being coercive ­ that is to say, of intervening in the choices of another agent through non-voluntary means. Consider the position of activists weighing up whether to engage in civil resistance against an injustice or to use purely persuasive means within the political structures available. These are both means for achieving the same morally justified end and yet each involves different ways of treating and relating to one's political opponents that merit attention. Within the moralised framework proposed by Haksar, substantive questions about the advantages of one type of approach versus another become obscured. It then becomes difficult for those who disagree about rights and justice to agree on any procedural norms of engagement at all since each will label identical cases in different ways depending on their particular substantive commitments.

30By defining coercion according to the immoral consequences it aims at, Haksar's account also prevents us from condemning something on the independent grounds that it is coercive. If we adopt Haksar's definition, the activists engaged in nonviolent resistance for a just cause would be able to carry out their actions without exposing themselves to the charge that they have used coercion to achieve their aims. In this sense, their "hands would be clean". But note that this cuts both ways. If we define coercion in terms of the injustice it aims at, then the activists would not be able to condemn the injustice of the regime on the independent grounds that it uses coercion against its political opponents. As Scott Anderson argues, the difficulty with making our assessment of whether a particular act is coercive depend on our prior thoughts about morality, is that sometimes the presence or absence of coercion is relevant to our moral judgments about a particular situation. [40] It is better to separate the justification of coercion from the definition of its use, acknowledging that coercion is a particularly powerful means of achieving one's ends, which may or may not be justified in particular cases.

Objectionable domination

31I take it that few would deny the legitimacy of coercive resistance to overthrow an oppressive, imperial regime such as the British Raj. But what about states that are plausibly democratic, with established electoral and constitutional channels for pursuing change? In the remaining part of this essay, I develop an argument for when coercive non-violent action is justified in such a context. I contend that it is legitimate as a surrogate or remedial tool of democratic political action where relations of political domination are sufficiently severe and entrenched. [41] As discussed, a relationship of political domination exists where those subject to the coercive power of the state experience its decisions as the product of an arbitrary will over which they have little or no control. To justify coercive resistance, however, the mere presence of arbitrary power alone is not sufficient.

32In a modern democratic system, there will regularly be cases in which some individual or group is in a position to exercise arbitrary power in some domain of decision-making. For instance, legislative majorities are constructed from electoral coalitions of interest groups, which can lead to some groups wielding an influence on policy-making that is wholly disproportionate to their support, compromising the norm of equal access to influence. However, this form of arbitrariness is not sufficiently objectionable to generate a demand for resistance so long as it is kept within certain bounds. Political domination must instead be severe in the sense that it substantially affects the rights, opportunities and life chances of some group (or future group) of persons. It is difficult to say much of detail about what counts as severe domination in abstraction from the social and political context involved. However, the over-riding concern is that some agent is abusing their access to arbitrary power to gain some benefit or advantage at the expense of others. It must be domination for some illicit purpose.

33There is also good reason to think that coercive resistance should be limited to cases where political domination is entrenched, by which I mean that it systematically downgrades and neutralises the controlling influence the people or part of the people have over political decisions. Where political domination is entrenched, decision-making is structurally biased in favour of certain social groups and interests whose power is insulated from challenge by ordinary constitutional measures or through persuasive efforts in the public sphere. This is the case where the political disempowerment of some group is such that they are not recognised as legitimate participants in public debate or else where the legislative process itself is captured by corporate interests. Here, there is little prospect that public deliberation will lead the powerful to accept outcomes that adversely affect them. Even communicative forms of civil disobedience that aims to bring ignored or neglected issues into public discussion cannot be relied on to effect change. The fact a particular issue has been brought to public attention through an act of protest does not ensure it will be given proper consideration in a context where relations of power systematically bias the terrain of collective decision-making. [42] It may simply be ignored by those disinclined to deliberate. The use of coercive resistance in this context is therefore a means to push for change by making the existing arrangements more costly to maintain.

Democratic coercion

34There are groups whose unequal status in political life affects their life chances in profoundly damaging ways. Perhaps most egregious is the case of undocumented migrants and refugees who are resident on a state's territory and yet lack citizenship rights to participate in collective decisions. While they may enjoy standing in judicial proceedings to contest their rights of entry, they lack any means to shape the state decisions they are subject to through voting leaving them vulnerable to exploitation, deprivation and abuse. Their formal exclusion intersects with informal barriers to participation in the form of a lack of material resources and various forms of social marginalization that compound their disadvantage. [43] Their precarious status is such that they lack even the political standing to make their case in the public sphere and would likely risk detention and deportation were they to openly transgress laws through communicative acts of civil disobedience. [44] In this context, there is a moral case for coercive resistance as a surrogate tool of contestation that aims to frustrate, reverse and obstruct the implementation of immigration laws that perpetuate domination. This would involve for example mass violation of immigration laws on entry and residence, efforts to physically block deportation flights or to overwhelm the immigration enforcement bureaucracy with false and misleading information.

35The use of coercion is also legitimate as a form of remedial political action with which to counteract the private domination of powerful individuals, social groups and institutions over political decisions. Thanks to various "post democratic" trends in contemporary politics, private actors wield an opaque influence over the political process through campaign donations, lobbying, "revolving doors" access to government and their wider manipulation of the media and public debate. [45] The use of coercive resistance in this context can be a means to "level the playing field" and neutralise the over-bearing power they enjoy. By undermining the capacity of private actors to impose their will unchecked, resistors thereby restore some limited parity in decision-making. This form of resistance has been used by movements of indigenous people and climate change activists opposing the drilling of oil pipelines on sacred lands through occupation of the property where construction is planned. [46] Notoriously, the companies involved in fossil fuel extraction enjoy significant leverage over the policy-making process which they use to undermine efforts at environmental protection. Under these conditions, the aim is not merely to publicise the dangers of drilling and climate change or to awaken the conscience of corporate executives, but to directly obstruct their actions and pressure the authorities to change course.

36There are certain plausible constraints on resistance which flow from the defining commitment to a democratic politics centred on minimising domination. First, the use of resistance should not aim to induce terror, fear or other destructive emotional states that are incompatible with rational forms of decision-making. [47] As I have described it, coercion is primarily aimed at influencing decisions by changing the incentive-structure for power-holders without over-whelming the possibility of deliberation altogether. This distinction helps clarify why, for example, the sabotage of laboratory equipment by animal rights activists might be thought legitimate in a way that "home visits" to scientists engaged in animal testing is not. Even where the latter involves no violence or destruction of property, it is a form of intimidation that exploits troubling psychological mechanisms.

37Second, taking up resistance does not absolve one of the need to make public arguments justifying one's actions where possible. Although the underlying logic of the action is not persuasive, there is still a legitimate democratic expectation that one attempts to engage others, including by providing some procedural explanation for the use of assertive measures. It is not sufficient to invoke the fact that political decision-making can be skewed by domination in the ways discussed to indicate that it has been distorted in the case under contention. Finally, those who undertake such resistance should enjoy a certain degree of representative legitimacy and accountability to those whose rights and interests are most directly affected. [48] For example, migrant and refugees should have oversight or input into resistance movements on their behalf within the constraints of what is feasible. This helps ensure that any potential intervention does not inadvertently harm those it purports to aid and perpetuate domination.

Conclusion

38In this paper, I have argued that non-violent resistance is not exempted from the category of coercive political action on account of contingent emotional and psychological processes associated with its use that may lead to the conversion of opponents. Neither does it qualify as non-coercive based on whether its aims are morally right and just. I have further argued that tactics which aim to frustrate, obstruct and reverse the application of particular laws and policies are justified not only against authoritarian regimes but in more open and democratic societies. Specifically, coercive resistance is justified as a surrogate and remedial form of political action where domination is severe and entrenched. Here, the use of coercive measures is not simply an attempt to influence deliberation, but an attempt to impact political decisions directly by applying sanctions to some course of action and changing the incentive structures within which decisions are made. This is justified on the basis of freedom and democratic self-determination given the pervasive reality of power asymmetries, social divisions and ideological biases within actually existing states.