Is it true that we only need 3.5% of the population to ‘change the world’?
You only need a small percentage of the population to achieve transformative social change, according to research by Harvard’s Professor Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, whose work into how social movements succeed or fail has returned to the spotlight in recent months among progressive campaigners.
Their key finding was characteristically summarised by the BBC in 2019 with its headline: ‘The '3.5% rule': How a small minority can change the world’. As the BBC’s correspondent noted:
‘Chenoweth found that nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to achieve their
goals as violent campaigns. And although the exact dynamics will depend on many factors, she has shown it takes around 3.5% of the population actively participating in the protests to ensure serious political change.’
The 3.5% rule quickly gained currency among progressives, with organisations, including Extinction Rebellion and the Center for American Progress, citing Chenoweth’s work as a motivating factor for mass mobilisations as a way to achieve change.
But is this really all it takes?
What does it mean to ‘take action’?
Campaigning organisations regularly exhort their supporters and the general public to ‘take action’, often by signing a petition, or adding their name to an open letter, or sharing a social media post. While such ‘low barrier asks’ can be the useful start of an individual’s campaign journey, they are not what the 3.5% is made up of.
For it to count, according to Chenoweth and Stephan, the action must have the following characteristics:
The action must be something that people physically take place in: an event of non-violent resistance.
It must be mass based and take place at a particular moment.
The campaign movement it’s a part of must be one with a ‘maximalist goal’, like overthrowing a government, not simply a change of policy.
The action must take place at the ‘peak moment’ of a campaign: 3.5% of the population must be taking action at its high point of power and activity. Having 3.5% of the population, for instance, take an action at the start of your campaign, but then have that support trail off, won’t cut it.
It is not a threshold that, if achieved, guarantees success. There are movements that reached 3.5% participation but still failed (though they are in the minority).
They are explicit that reformist campaigns, such as strikes for a pay rise in a particular workplace or demands on a government for a more ambitious climate target, are not what their research applies to, although they may succeed via other means.
So does non-violent resistance get results? Yes! (with a ‘but’)
This is not to pour cold water on campaigns and movements trying to get people out to a protest. Non-violent direct action and mass movements have a long and much-discussed track record of winning.
But the specifics matter. There is no magic number or whatever-the-non-violent-metaphor-for-a-‘silver bullet’ is, and each campaign is likely to respond with different tools at different times. To suggest that all we need to do is hit that 3.5% is not only incorrect, but it sets up our supporters for disappointment and can, ultimately, be self-sabotaging.
The Center for American Progress (CAP), one of the most influential US progressive campaign organisations, recently appears to have gone down this road, publishing an article on its website that claims:
‘How Peaceful Protest by Just 3.5 Percent of Americans Could Force Major Policy Changes From the Trump Administration
History shows that when just 3.5 percent of a population—about 12 million Americans—engage in peaceful protest, their demands become nearly impossible to ignore. This is particularly relevant today, as Americans continue to defend due process and health care rights amid a rise in authoritarian policies.’
CAP elaborates that:
‘If Americans who oppose the Trump administration’s policies effectively mobilize to
reach this number, they have a solid road map to ensuring that the government does not ignore their demands on issues such as deporting community members without due process, cutting vital health care and food programs to pay for millionaires’ tax breaks, and engaging in unprecedented power grabs.’
To return to our checklist above, this formulation meets criteria 1 and 2 – it takes place physically and is mass based – but it fails at 3 and 4: its goal is not maximalist, nor is it necessarily asking for action at a peak moment.
So what now?
We are living through a period of rapid change, unseen since the Industrial Revolution.
And so, it is not necessarily still the case that social transformation is akin to ‘the art of a strong and slow boring through hard boards’, as the sociologist Max Weber famously described politics.
But, to complete the quote, ‘passion and perspective’ are required now more than ever, and in particular for a clear vision of what does – and, just as importantly, doesn’t – work, especially when we make demands of our supporters.
