Ivan Marovic serving as a battering ram to break the door of the Deanery at Belgrade University during the 1996-1997 Student Protest. Photo by Miroslav Petrovic

The Path of Most Resistance: A Step-by-Step Guide to Planning Nonviolent Campaigns

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Introduction

The Path of Most Resistance: A Step-by-Step Guide to Planning Nonviolent Campaigns by Ivan Marovic is a practical guide for activists and organizers of all levels, who wish to grow their resistance activities into a more strategic, fixed-term campaign.

It guides readers through the campaign planning process, breaking it down into several steps and providing tools and exercises for each step.

Upon finishing the book, readers will have what they need to guide their peers through the process of planning a campaign.

The guide is divided into two parts:

1. The first lays out and contextualizes campaign planning tools and their objectives. It also explains the logic behind these tools, and how they can be modified to better suit a particular group’s context.
2. The second part provides easily reproducible and shareable lesson plans for using each of those tools, as well as explores how to embed the tools in the wider planning process.

“This planning guide covers a number of tools that help you answer the most important campaign questions:

1. What do you want to achieve (what is the campaign objective)?
2. What are you going to say (what is the campaign message)?
3. What are you going to do (which tactics are you going to carry out)?
4. What do you need in terms of resources and organization?

Tools in this guide aim to help activists and organizers better understand their internal capabilities and external environment, formulate appropriate objectives, define target audiences and analyze their perceptions, formulate a message, and decide which tactics are optimal for conveying this message.

Each tool is introduced and explained in greater detail for those who have never used it before. This explanation is followed by a step-by step account of how to use the tool in a workshop, whether it is a training workshop aimed at teaching participants about campaigns or a planning workshop with the aim of devising a specific campaign. In this sense, it is suitable for experienced and inexperienced activists alike, and is designed to be useful at all stages of a nonviolent movement for rights, justice, and freedom.

Tools are accompanied by modules that all together will take approximately 12 hours to complete—for example, during a weekend long campaign planning workshop. All materials needed to conduct such a workshop are identified in the respective modules and are available (or acceptable alternatives) at minimal material cost in most areas of the world.” – pg 4

Table of Contents

  • Nonviolent Civil Resistance Campaigns – 3
  • SWOT Analysis: Understanding Your Current Capabilities and the Environment – 9
    • Case Study: Otpor’s “He’s Finished” and “It’s Time” Campaigns – 10
  • Scenario Development: Anticipating Possible Outcomes – 19
  • Smart Criteria: Setting Campaign Objectives – 31
  • Spectrum of Allies: Mapping Stakeholders – 41
    • Case Study: U.S. Civil Rights Movement – 49
  • Perception Box: Analyzing Stakeholders’ Beliefs and Feelings – 51
  • Brainstorming: Conjuring Up Tactics – 61
  • Cost/Benefit Analysis: Picking the Best Idea – 69
  • Campaign Plan: Putting it All on Paper – 79
    • Campaign Plan (Template) – 89
  • Campaign Development Course – 89
  • Afterword – 97
  • Tables and Figures
    • Table 1: SWOT Matrix – 16
    • Table 2: Examples of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats – 18
    • Table 3: Scenario Development – 26 Table 4: Examples of BC, MO, CT, and WC Scenarios – 28
    • Figure 1: Strategy, Campaigns, and Tactics – 7
    • Figures 2 & 3: Blueprints – 8 & 9
    • Figure 4: Plan A and Plan B. – 29
    • Figure 5: Spectrum of Allies – 48

But campaigns are different. Unlike strategy, they need to be detailed, their objectives specific, their targets well defined, and their messages clear and straightforward. Campaigns must correspond to changing environments but must also support the long-term strategy. And since it takes time for campaigns to have an effect, it is more difficult to evaluate them. Unlike tactics, you must wait months before making changes based on an evaluation of the campaign’s effectiveness. – Ivan Marovic

Excerpts

Here is a sneak peek into the guide.

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About Author

Ivan Marovic was one of the leaders of Otpor, the student resistance movement that played an important role in the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia. After the successful democratic transition in Serbia, Marovic began consulting with various pro-democracy groups worldwide and became one of the leading practitioners in the field of strategic nonviolent conflict.

Explore Further

  • Campaign Strategy: Start Here
    Looking to start a campaign or improve your campaign strategy? Here is a list of manuals, templates, tools and other resources to get you started.
  • Changemakers’ Toolkit
    Welcome to the Changemakers’ Toolkit – a training resource for campaigners, activists, and changemakers of all kinds.
  • How to Create a Campaign
    How do you start a campaign for social change? Learn how to create a campaign using tools such as the Spectrum of Allies.
  • Campaign Planning: How to Get Started
    What is a campaign? and how do you start one? Here are ideas, steps and handouts from Campaign Bootcamp to help you get started with your campaign planning.
  • Campaign Accelerator Toolkit
    A toolkit to accelerate the planning process so we can get campaigns out the door faster to create more effective people powered campaigns.

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