Power and persuasion: Nonviolent strategies to influence state security forces in Serbia (2000) and Ukraine (2004)

During the Serbian Otpor movement to oust Milosevic (2000) and the Ukrainian “Orange Revolution” (2004), the organizers developed explicit strategies to increase the costs of repression and to undermine the willingness of state security forces to engage in violent acts against them. By employing varying combinations of persuasion and deterrence tailored to the particular institutions they were addressing, the movements were able to successfully avoid a major crackdown.