How to transform autocracy to democracy: Learn the inside game/outside game strategy

When I consider the interplay between nonviolent civil resistance and a negotiated end to a most foul regime, I think about several luminaries and their wisdom. 

First, Dr. King, who wrote in his canonical Letter from Birmingham jail: 

"You may well ask, "Why direct action, why sit-ins, marches, and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are exactly right in your call for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. I just referred to the creation of tension as a part of the work of the nonviolent resister. This may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth."

Then, I turn to Bill Ury and the authors of Getting to Yes, who first taught me about the BATNA, the best alternative to a negotiated agreement. It's something a party to a conflict should be quite transparent about. For example, "Okay, ruler, we need you to either honor all human rights and civil rights or step down, and if you cannot manage to do one of those two things within the next four weeks, we are going to begin a deep national nonviolent resistance campaign that will impose some serious costs. This is your choice." In other words, Ury and Fisher might have called what Dr. King wrote about as a perfect example of the use of a BATNA. Dr. King and the movement didn't stop nonviolent civil resistance until they were invited to the White House to negotiate, which ultimately resulted first in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and then the 1965 Voting Rights Act. 

The third scholar activist who comes to mind in this is Mary Frances Berry, especially her 2018 book, History Teaches Us to Resist, in which she cogently explains all this as the inside game/outside game. The synthesis of them can look exactly like the above Civil Rights Movement example or any number of other uses of nonviolent civil resistance (the outside game) to drive actual policy or even regime change (inside game). 

Nonviolent resistance is not necessarily working outside the system, in other words. It is a legitimate tool for the goals that have temporarily exhausted all the available legal inside game avenues.

How to transform autocracy to democracy: Build an active website

How many times have you missed an event because no notice of it came to you? How many other people also had no notice and missed it?

Your website should have a notification list sign-up pop-up so that any visitor can easily enter their email or text # and get advance notices of all your events. A passive website with announcements for those who take the time to visit is utterly inadequate. 

As all the research shows, numbers matter. Recruitment via active outreach is a big help. 

If you have a complex array of events, published reports, and other possibilities for outreach, it may help to allow people to choose what categories of notices they want. For instance, if you are ramping up event after event, a list of types of notifications that subscribers can choose might be only events, not analysis, reports, interviews with experts, etc. Making it possible to tailor what they receive might make them more inclined to sign up and to read all messages you send them. If they are deluged by you with all the other categories, they may skip reading most or even all of your outreach. 

A brilliant and dedicated web manager is a massive key component these days in successful organizing against an autocrat. As we found in Arab Spring, they can make all the difference, even devising workarounds when the government attempts to block access or outreach capacity. Techies are as crucial as anyone to your leadership and effectiveness. 

In a somewhat dated, but still valuable, analysis[1] of the value of tech, Dan Shannon notes: 

"Today’s technology strengthens the powers of networks in three important ways: 

·       It allows for networks that are global in nature. Online or mobile-based organizing is not limited by geography, only by access, which even in developing countries is increasing rapidly.

·       It allows for networks with fewer barriers to entry. Lowering the entry point from attending a meeting to signing an online petition opens up networks to exponentially more people.

·       It allows for networks with more decentralized power. Today, a movement entrepreneur with a vision and an internet connection has the tools to create networks, launch campaigns, and organize millions."

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[1] https://www.bsr.org/en/blog/how-can-new-technologies-strengthen-social-movements

How to transform autocracy to democracy: Maintain fierce nonviolent discipline

During the Vietnam War many of the protests turned to violence, factions of the antiwar movement identified or fetishized Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, the Black Panthers, and even, God help us, Mao Tse Dong. This strand of the antiwar movement was pathetically easy for agents provocateurs to infiltrate and promote violence. 

Why would an agent of the police seek to convince a campaign to commit acts of violence?

Every time a campaign throws things at cops, or roughs up a corporate official of a war profiteering company, or tosses a brick through a war-voting politician's office, the media of course covers it. When the public sees such destructive actions they react in these understandable ways: 

·       They fear for their safety and decide not to participate in any public displays of opposition to the leaders or policies they don't like.

·       They begin to shift their point of view away from whatever the protesters advocate. 

·       They stop trusting the word of the protesters. 

·       They begin to shift toward understanding of, and even support for, the violent crackdown on the protesters. 

These reactions, of course, are exactly what hawkish politicians, war profiteers, and any police in league with them, want. This is how you destroy a campaign. It is how the Black Panthers were destroyed. It is how the peace movement failed for years to make progress to end the brutal slog of war in Vietnam. 

This is a predictable sequence of negative outcomes of campaign violence or what the public feels is violent.

My question to those who advocate violence is, "Since you should know that these are the actions conducted by agents provocateurs, why would you advocate for them?"

The late Rev. James Lawson referred to the Civil Rights Movement discipline as "fierce." He was America's first nonviolence trainer, and Dr. King called him the "architect" of the Civil Rights Movement. There is no substitute for that fierce discipline.

How to transform autocracy to democracy: Establish momentum

Rising up against dictators, autocrats, and aspiring authoritarians is virtually impossible when all organizing and focus is on achieving a primary goal in a huge outpouring. The birchbark fire is bright with blazing flames--and quickly dies out. A movement to overthrow a wannabe dictator needs a sequence of events over time, each aiming to achieve as much as possible in a few weeks so the victories can be felt and lauded--even as the next goal along the path to the final overarching goal is announced. 

Essentially, the message after the first success is, "Wow! We did it--great work, everyone! We won! That sets us up to do some wider work--join the movement if you've only been admiring it and pivot now to this next campaign if you have been one of the winners today!"

This doesn't mean choose easily done interim goals; they should be all you can accomplish in a few weeks, using your wisest hive mind. Some know history; some are intuitive social movement winners, some feel the state of the available media, some know the influencers and what mood they are in. Everyone is an expert in some facet and a strategic planning group attempts to incorporate the wisest intersectional thinking.

Like any plan, it needs reëvaluation periodically and adjustments as necessary--speed up, slow down, alter a subgoal, change the frame, or any other adaptation needed.

How to transform autocracy to democracy: Reject authoritarian's claim of "unity"

When aspiring autocrats seek power they frequently claim to be working to unite citizens, whereas once they have consolidated power that "unity" becomes an imposed set of practices that often exclude self-determination for the people who are now subjects, no longer citizens. This is clearly the case in dictatorships, such as the Karimov regime in Uzbekistan (Tutumlu, Önemli & Rustemov, 2025). Karimov's assertions are not unlike those that used to come from dictators like Saddam Hussein and Moammar Qaddafi, claiming a cultural indigenization of democracy even while ruling by brutal oppression and fear.

Academics and activists sometimes analyze such claims of a special form of democracy as anti-neocolonial, seeming to justify repression in the name of rejecting "Western" models of governance. Other academics and activists hew to a more benign indigenization paradigm that, for example, stresses indigenous concepts such as African ubuntu, a variant of empathic humanism that has a much more unconditional positive regard for all.

To promote a kinder gentler form of governance, be very aware of the duplicitous claim of unity that is leading toward a unity based on giving more power to the leader and none except forced obeisance to subjects of that leader. 

For instance, claims that it was liberating to strike down Roe v Wade and return the power to make laws about reproductive rights back to the states is a false unity assertion, not one that frees people or bolsters self-determination--ask women in states where abortion is basically outlawed. 

Clarity on claims of democracy as an aspiring autocrat defines it are either roundly rejected or that leader takes another step toward being a ruler.

Reference

Tutumlu, A., Önemli, B., & Rustemov, I. (2025). Deciphering dictators’ discourse on Indigenous democracy: a case of Karimov’s Uzbekistan. Central Asian Survey, 44(1), 64–84. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1080/02634937.2024.2393386

How to transform autocracy to democracy: Fight fraudulent electoral processes

There are generally two forms of fraudulent electoral practices: blatant fraud and electoral engineering (Szmolka, 2024).

Blatant fraud includes the easily identifiable abuses such as lying about "dead voters," ballot theft or destruction, obvious gerrymandering, targeted voter disqualification, polling place intimidation, and more.

Electoral engineering is less visible and includes more subtle but equally fraudulent practices such as patronage (which can burst into occasional high visibility and blatant fraud when a campaign donor is awarded an unelected government position, e.g. Elon Musk clearly linking his massive financial support for Trump's election to his desired DOGE). Some of the less visible but ethically dubious practices also include rewards for opposition party members remaining the loyal opposition, that is, nominally opposed but not fighting for much.

Pushing everyone who is elected to get much more active and effective is one way to fight the fraud and prevent, take down, or roll back autocracy.

References

Szmolka, I. (2024). Electoral engineering in autocracies: Effects of the 2021 electoral reform on Morocco’s parliamentary elections. Mediterranean Politics, 29(5), 700–728. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1080/13629395.2023.2194153 

How to transform autocracy to democracy: Protect refugees

How does protecting refugees help defend democracy? After all, research shows[1] that, in most cases, democracies permit the fewest entrance of refugees and autocracies permit the most.

However, as the International Refugee Assistance Project[2] and others point out, when refugees are denied due process and can be simply deported by autocratic fiat, the rights of all are correspondingly threatened, which means democracy itself is under direct threat.

How does a coup relate to forced migration in most cases? It depends. 

A coup that results in autocracy or a coup by democratic parties that fails to overturn an autocracy will likely send people fleeing the country. 

A coup that results in democracy, whether by a successful coup overthrowing an autocracy or a failed coup attempt to overthrow a democracy by autocrats, tends to produce no forced migration (Celestino, Lee & Kivimaki, 2025).

Protecting democracy is protecting refugees and protecting democracy prevents the emergence of a flight of refugees.

Reference

Celestino, M. R., Lee, S., & Kivimaki, T. (2025). Coups and refugee flows in autocracies and democracies. Journal of Ethnic & Migration Studies, 51(1), 159–178. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1080/1369183X.2024.2410775

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[1] https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/democracy-and-its-paradox-forced-displacement-reimagining-us-refugee-resettlement-program

[2] https://refugeerights.org/news-resources/100-days-of-defending-refuge