Pillars of Support: Start Here

Introduction

What are Pillars of Support? Here is a curated collection of resources collated by the Commons librarians including introductory resources, videos, templates, case studies and exercises.

Pillars of support or pillars of power are institutions and sections of the society that supply the existing regime with sources of power required for maintenance and expansion of its power capacity. – Gene Sharp, Waging Nonviolent Struggle, Source

What are Pillars of Support?

Pillars of support analysis identifies the key institutions and groups that keep any political system in place – like pillars holding up a building. These typically include the military, police, civil servants, business leaders, religious institutions, media, and civil society.

If enough of these “pillars” stop supporting the current system (through strikes, defections, non-cooperation, or switching sides), even the most powerful government will collapse – just like a building falls when you remove enough supporting pillars. – Scot Nakagawa

Regimes and rulers are rarely capable of holding onto power on their own. Usually, they are supported by key institutions and groups. Without the consent of key institutions, a political system could not be maintained. This includes:

• The courts
• Police
• Media
• Military
• Businesses
• Religious institutions
• Schools
• Civil society
• Government bureaucrats, and so on.

These institutions help leaders maintain a smooth hold on power. The police and courts uphold the laws, the media can support dominant narratives, businesses maintain the economy, civil servants keep the system running.

If we think about these institutions and groups as the pillars holding up the temple of power, what happens when one (or more) of these pillars topples?

When enough of these institutions turn away from the dominant power holder you can redirect their power to your cause.

• Police and court officials might refuse to uphold unjust laws,
• Media and journalists might begin to hold the power holders to account,
• School administrators might refuse to teach government propaganda,
• Workers might withhold their labour, and so on.

A campaigner’s job is to strategically determine which pillars you can get to turn towards your cause.

The importance is also to “pull” them down rather than “push” them down. Otherwise, they might turn against the nonviolent movement and damage the struggle. The aim is to get them “over” to the nonviolent side or get their “approval”. – Waging Nonviolent Struggle

Political leaders’ power is threatened when the moral and material resources derived from these pillars are restricted or cut off. This may involve the refusal to perform ordinary acts (e.g., security forces disobeying orders to repress anti-government protesters or workers withholding their labor) or the performance of forbidden acts (e.g., news media praising protesters or teachers staging a walk-out). – Adam Fefer, Horizons Project, p 5

Where did this Concept come from?

Descriptively, the various structures that permit and sustain the day-to-day operations of government are referred to as its “pillars of support”… When important pillars of support are sufficiently undermined, the government, or the opposition, collapses just as a building will collapse upon itself when its support structure is weakened and gives way. – Robert Helvey, pg. 8

While power has at times traditionally been portrayed as a one-way system of coercion and control, exercised by the “haves” against the “have-nots”, various theorists, political scientists, philosophers and activists have challenged this view to demonstrate power as a social-relational force.

Power is not a one-way system, but is dispersed across society and institutions. Expert on nonviolent resistance, Gene Sharp, for example, was pivotal in demonstrating how power is often based on consent, with rulers and regimes propped up by the consent and support of citizens (Source). This means that if citizens remove their consent through acts of disobedience, the ruler’s power can be threatened.

Robert Hevley’s 2004 book On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict built on this idea. Helvey described how consent for power was often found in the cooperation of key institutions, such as the police, judiciary, education system, civil service, businesses and so on.

This means that withdrawing consent and engaging in an acts of noncooperation is not just up to individual citizens, but can be practiced by groups and institutions collectively. Helvey described these institutions as the “pillars of support” that prop up a regime. A regime, like a building, can be torn down by toppling the pillars of support.

…people do  not merely interact with a regime as individuals. Instead, their decisions about when and how they might cooperate are channeled through their various social and professional roles. The pillars allow for better strategic thinking on the part of those trying to force change. Activists can more clearly predict what it will take for a regime to fall. They can scheme about how they might undermine one or more of the various sources of social support for the system—removing the backing of the clergy, for example, or prodding the press to adopt a more critical posture—and thus place the rulers on an ever-wobblier foundation. – This is an uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping The Twenty-First Century, Paul Engler and Mark Engler, p. 92

Read further:

• On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: Thinking about the Fundamentals, Robert Helvey, 2004
  Also available in Azerbaijani, Burmese, Chinese, Spanish, Vietnamese.
• Col. Robert Helvey On Strategic Nonviolence

Introductory Resources

Pillars of Support
by Srdja Popovic, Slobodan Djinovic, Andrej Milivojevic, Hardy Merriman and Ivan Marovic, Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategiesf rom the book: CANVAS Core Curriculum: A Guide to Effective Nonviolent Struggle

“By themselves, rulers cannot collect taxes, enforce repressive laws and regulations, keep trains running on time, prepare national budgets, direct traffic, manage ports, print money, repair roads, train the police and army, issue postage stamps or even milk a cow. People provide these services to the ruler though a variety of organizations and institutions. If peoples top providing these skills and services, the ruler can not rule. Once we understand that this is the nature of political power in society, we must understand how power is exercised. The people are the main holders of power in society, but they are much more effective at exercising that power when they work together in the form of organizations or institutions, such as the police, civil servants, labor groups, business groups, etc. Some of these organizations may support your opponent, and others may support your movement.

We call these supporting organizations pillars of support because they support the power structure in society. At the beginning of a nonviolent struggle, it is likely that many of these organizations provide support to your opponent. If these organizations and institutions begin to withdraw their support from your opponent (and some may even start actively supporting your movement), your opponent will no longer be able to maintain control.” – 32

This resource is also available in other languages: Amharic, Bangla, French, Georgian, Hindi and Hungarian.

Pillars Of Support – The Upside Down Triangle
by Daniel Hunter

Learn about movements, power and the Pillars of Support also known as the Upside-Down Triangle from Daniel Hunter in the context of climate change.

Watch Videos

Understanding Pillars of Support

Learn more about the pillars of support in this short explainer video from The Horizons Project.

We Hold More Political Power Than We Realize – Pillars of Support Explained

Video by Choose Democracy. We can feel helpless when we look out at how powerful our political leaders seem. But politicians aren’t all powerful. The Pillars of Support is a tool that can help us organize smart movements and break down the structures of authoritarian regimes.

Pillars of Power

The Pillars of Power is a power analysis tool used to identify the institutions and individuals that support the issues you are working to undermine. It can be used to identify where to target your efforts to make the foundations of an oppressive structure or system fail. This video has been developed using content from Beautiful Trouble’s Toolbox, an interconnected web of the key strategies and tactics that have inspired people-powered victories & upended the status quo.

The Power and Promise of Nonviolent Action with Dr. Maria J. Stephan

Dr. Maria J. Stephan, former director of the program on nonviolent action at United States Institute of Peace and co-author with Erica Chenoweth of Why Civil Resistance Works (2010), joins the Center for Interfaith Dialogue for a talk on the relevance of nonviolence as an effective way to address political crisis. See from 30 minutes onwards for explanation and examples about the Pillars of Support.

How do Pillars of Support Strengthen Non-Violent Movements?

How Do Pillars Of Support Strengthen Non-violent Movements? Have you ever wondered how social movements achieve lasting change without resorting to violence? In this insightful video, we’ll explore how non-violent movements can weaken powerful institutions by focusing on their support systems. We’ll explain what pillars of support are and how they help sustain existing power structures. You’ll learn how movements influence these groups—such as police, military, civil servants, religious organizations, and business leaders—by appealing to shared values and moral principles. We’ll discuss strategies used to persuade these pillars to withdraw their backing, including symbolic actions, community outreach, and moral appeals. You’ll discover why this approach is both ethically sound and effective in building credibility and trust over time. The video also covers how understanding what motivates different pillars can help movements target their efforts more effectively. For example, encouraging police officers to protect protesters rather than repress them can shift the balance of power.

Tools and Templates

Pillars of Power Analysis: Identify the Institutions
by Beautiful Trouble

Pillars of Support
by Training for Change

Pillars of Support, see pgs 4-5
by Tipping Point UK

Noncooperation and Targeting Pillars of Support (in relation to authoritarianism)
by One Million Rising

Group Exercises

Group Exercise – Pillars of Support Tool, SNAP Guide: Synergizing Nonviolent Action and Peacebuilding
by The Endowment of the United States Institute of Peace, Nadine Bloch and Lisa Schirch, pgs 94 – 97

Identify the opponents’ sources of power and structures of support. There are two versions of this exercise. A simple, interactive theater version requires a chair or table or other object that can be lifted by four or five people. A more detailed version of this exercise can be done on paper, requiring large sheets of paper and markers.

Group Exercise – Analyzing power in society/Pillars of support/Powergraph
by Canvasopedia

Activists will study “pillars of support,” a concept that helps to identify what key groups may support a nonviolent movement’s opposition and what key groups are available to support nonviolent mobilizations. This will be followed by a discussion of how to shift the loyalties of your target group’s supporters so they can be mobilized by you. Then, the module will explore how power graphs visually depict societies so that participants can discern patterns in societal behavior, achievements of nonviolent movements and mobilizations, and practical plans for future campaigns.

Upside-Down Triangle: Understanding the Consent Theory of Power
by War Resisters International

The goal is to:

• identify the vulnerability of power structures.
• identify the pillars holding up the power structures we want to knock down.
• analyse the pillars with the goal of developing strategies to weaken them.
• 30 mins

Group Exercise – Challenging Pillars of Power 
by The Freedom Of Religion Or Belief Facilitators’ Toolkit

4 page in depth exercise (2 h 45 mins) exercise is best suited to civil society organisations, human rights defenders and faith leaders. The purpose is to:

• enable participants to deepen their understanding of a specific freedom of religion or belief (FORB) violation in their context by applying key concepts from the theory of non-violent struggle.
• help participants develop strategic action planning skills.

Understanding People Power: the Upside-Down Triangle
by 350.org

Use this to analyse the power of your campaign target.
15-30 mins, 5 – 50 people

Examples

Democracy

• Lessons from Around the World: Engaging ‘Pillars of Support’ to Uphold and Expand Democracy, Maria Stephan, 2024
• Bringing Down a Dictator
  A film that tells the inside story of how Milosevic was brought down by a courageous campaign of political defiance and massive civil disobedience.
• How To Make a Revolution: Every revolution is unique. But the men and women who brought down Slobodan Milošević are willing to show you how

In Serbia in the nonviolent movement against Milosevic’s regime, the nonviolent actors gave the military presents, talked to them in a friendly and joyful manner and by that technique easily made the soldiers realise that they actually had something in common: they lived under a repressive regime. When nonviolent actors then were to occupy Milosevic’s presidential residence neither the police nor the military intervened.” – Source

Marriage Equality

• When the pillars fall — How social movements can win more victories like same-sex marriage: Where insider politics fails, a transformational approach can turn the impossible into the inevitable
• When the pillars fall: how social movements can win more victories like same-sex marriage

General

• Save Our Safety Net DC (SOS DC)
  The campaign, driven by a multi-racial, mixed-class coalition, targeted the Mayor and City Council to demand increased taxes for the rich, successfully restoring the public safety net for tenants, single parents, and working class families.
• Case of the United Farm Workers
• By targeting the pillars that uphold police violence, Black Lives Matter is shifting power to the people
  From National Guardsmen laying down their shields to bus drivers refusing to take protesters to jail, activists are tapping into a powerful principle of nonviolence resistance.
• Pillars of Support Project, Horizons Project
  Each pillar/tactic cell in this table contains a brief “caselet” providing an overview of how a group in that pillar of support used that tactic to attempt to protect or advance democracy. Each caselet includes brief takeaway lessons learned, as well as online resources where you can learn more about the democracy struggle that informed the caselet.

Courses and Training

How Social Movements Win
by 350.org

Learn about the Pillars of Support in this free online course.

In depth Resources

Breaking Down Pillars of Support For Democratic Backsliding
by Jonathan Pinckney and Claire Trilling

Journal article – Can civil resistance counter democratic backsliding? Civil resistance campaigns are most effective when they shift the loyalty of regime “pillars of support.” Yet we know little about how loyalty shifts occur or the tactics that erstwhile pillars employ post-loyalty shift. And the literature has focused on civil resistance against autocracies, rather than democratic backsliding. To fill these gaps, we collect and analyze data on actions by resistance campaigns and four key pillars of support in a random sample of democratic backsliding periods. We find that civil resistance is associated with democracy protection, but success rates are lower than in campaigns against autocracies; that quiet diplomacy and relationship-building by activists are most effective in shifting pillar loyalty; and that noncooperation tactics by pillar actors are particularly successful. We further support these findings with an illustrative case study of the 2004 Ukrainian “Orange Revolution.”

Strategic Nonviolent Power: The Science of Satyagraha
by Mark A. Mattaini

Next Steps

Now that you understand more about the pillars of support, the people and institutions that uphold the status quo, you can ask yourself these questions from Nonviolent Struggle: 50 Crucial Questions by the Centre for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies CANVAS, (see pgs 32 – 35)

1. What pillars of support for the current regime exist in my country?
2. What pillars are crucial for my opponent’s survival? What pillars are crucial to my movement’s survival?
3. What is the basis for loyalty of people working in these crucial institutions and organisations?
4. How can these people be approached?
5. What are the primary reasons that people obey the government?

As you identify the current system’s Pillars of Support, you can begin the process of Power Analysis – Power and Power Mapping: Start Here

Explore Further

• Noncooperation
• Campaign Strategy: Start Here
• Power and Power Mapping: Start Here
• Coalition Building: Start Here
• Nonviolent Direct Action (NVDA): Start Here
• Protests: Start Here
• Civil Resistance Tactics in the 21st Century: Report and Webinar
• The Trifecta of Civil Resistance: Unity, Planning, Discipline
• Insider Outsider Activism: Films to Inspire