Defending Democracy section: Intro to the research, strategy, and practice for defense against authoritarianism.

Tracking Authoritarian Takeover section: Categories, charts, and trackers to see and track the undermining of democracy towards authoritarian breakthrough.

Defending Democracy

Research, strategy, and practice of resisting authoritarian regimes.

Why Protest?

Mass mobilizations are needed for a sustained anti-authoritarian campaign. They aren’t spectacle for their own sake. They don’t change everything overnight, but they do three things that no other tactic can do:

1. 1. Make the scale of opposition legible to the participants, the uncommitted middle, and the authoritarians.

   2. Transform private discontent into public identity. This is raw material for our sustained organizing.

   3. Shift the cost calculus for elites. Every institution has to recalculate what compliance with authoritarian forces costs them.

Protests

• Show decision-makers that lots of people are fed up. Authoritarian takeover is not inevitable. There is safety for decision makers to stand up.

• Mass nonviolent protests build a sense of unity, connection, and visible size.

• It's cathartic and joyful in the face of daily pain and bad news. You have good company.

• Create social proof so more people want to join.

• Shift social norms about what’s acceptable and what isn’t.

• Disrupt the administration’s “violent terrorists” narrative. It's hard to paint Americans as terrorists when they're exercising free speech rights with songs and inflatable costumes.

• Invite lots of people to join us. Show that resistance is everywhere and it’s growing.

• Courage is contagious. Show that a better world is possible, it’s not scary, and you can be part of it.

• Build large-scale mobilization for the 3.5% “rule.”

• Create the social permission to speak up with family, at work, in our communities; the permission for groups to stop complying with the regime.

• Combine protests with strategic non-cooperation like the Montgomery bus boycott.

• Elicit loyalty shifts within key pillars of support.

• Reach neighbors who aren’t yet engaged. Help them take the first step and connect with others who are ready to act.

• Inspire people to vote. The 2018 blue wave is tied to the number of people who turned out at 2017 women’s marches -- more voter turnout in locations with more protest turnout. The Nov. 2025 election benefited from No Kings protests.

• Within a broad strategy against authoritarian takeover, protests refute the idea that the authoritarian has a mandate. That introduces defiance into the minds of stakeholders who’re deciding whether to stand up or capitulate.

• Large protests bust through the air of invincibility, of inevitable takeover. A tyrant doesn't look powerful when facing the largest non-violent protests in U.S. history.

• Build capacity for action.

• Activate the public by pointing out the attacks on our democratic freedoms.

• It's harder to take away rights that people regularly exercise like our first amendment rights.

• Momentum wins the day.

Audiences for protests

• The ones we're protesting.

• People in positions of power to block elements of authoritarian takeover (if they have the courage).

• People on the sidelines we can attract into the pro-democracy movement.

• People worldwide watching our nation become a rogue state, threatening allies, abandoning the vulnerable, and unleashing damage on them.

Intro Videos

Intro: What’s Next in the Fight?: Concise intro to winning pro-democracy campaigns, pillars of support, and strategic non-cooperation; 10 min segment at 31:05 by Maria Stephan in the No Kings #1 debrief

How do we get to mass defiance?: The next tool in our toolbox is to build a culture of defiance, share the real ways people are hurting from the regime’s actions, and hold accountable those who capitulate and support the regime, Jiggy Geronimo (10 min segment at 38:43), in What’s Next After No Kings?

How to Stop Dictators, Chris Hayes interviewing Zack Beauchamp, or read How to stop a dictator [Vox]

Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know: Erica Chenoweth (11 min)

History and Practice of Nonviolent Resistance: What makes a successful movement, Erica Chenoweth (18 min)

Pillars of Support Explained (4 min) | A practical framework for action

The success of nonviolent civil resistance: TEDx, Erica Chenoweth (13 min)

Why Civil Resistance Works: Erica Chenoweth (8 min)

Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict: Maria Stephan (7 min)

Podcasts

“What’s the Plan?” with Indivisible’s Co-founders (YouTube playlist, podcast)

Protests, political violence and its alternatives with Erica Chenoweth: Interview about the study that found that 3.5% of the population taking to the streets (plus strategic non-cooperation, “strategic stubborness”) is enough to block authoritarian takeover; WITHpod & transcript, May 6, 2025 (57 min)

Jimmy Kimmel and the Power of Public Pressure: a wide ranging discussion about the resistance movement; The New Yorker’s Political Scene Podcast, Sept. 26, 2025 (49 min)

How Bad Is It?: Three Political Scientists Say America Is No Longer a Democracy: political scientists Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt, and Lucan A. Way discuss how Trump tipped the United States from democracy into competitive authoritarianism, where elections persist but the ruling party rigs the system in its favor; New Yorker’s Political Scene Podcast, Dec. 11, 2025 (46 min). More detail in their Foreign Affairs article, The Price of American Authoritarianism.

Long-Form Videos

A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict - A documentary series of case studies in six 1/2 hour segments. Episode 1: India, USA, South Africa. Episode 2: Denmark, Poland, Chile.

Bringing Down a Dictator - documentary on Otpor! defeating Milosevic in Yugoslavia (55 min)

The Power and Promise of Nonviolent Action - Maria Stephan (90 min)

In-Depth

Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know (book) | Why Civil Resistance Works (book), shorter PDF

Horizons Project

Nonviolent Action Lab: Understanding how nonviolent action can achieve democratic aims.

podcast: The latest research, insights, and ideas on how nonviolent action can — or sometimes fails — to transform injustice.

In the HKS Ash Center for research and teaching on advancing democracy through civil resistance.

Pro-democracy Organizing against Autocracy in the United States: A Strategic Assessment & Recommendations: Chenoweth & Marks, PDF

Q&A and Cautionary Updates Regarding the 3.5% Rule: Chenoweth, PDF

Waging Nonviolence

Tracking Authoritarian Takeover

Categories, charts, and trackers to see and track the undermining of democracy towards authoritarian breakthrough.

Trump is dismantling democracy at unprecedented speed (NPR)

Authoritarian Playbook 2025: How an authoritarian president will dismantle our democracy and what we can do to protect it. Plus 10 recommendations for building the democracy of tomorrow. – January 2024

10 Steps Campaign

10 Steps to Autocracy and Authoritarianism | Stacey Abrams video (3 min)

10 Steps to Freedom and Power

Resources

V-Dem: Varieties of Democracy Institute

2026 annual report: U.S. democracy deteriorated from 20th to 51st rank out of 179 countries.

Graphing Tools.