Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World

by Anne Applebaum

From Dictatorship to Democracy was originally published in Bangkok, in 1994, as a primer for Burmese democracy activists. But Sharp’s suggestions were applicable almost anywhere, and eventually they were reprinted almost everywhere, in many languages, legally and illegally. The most frequently copied part of the pamphlet was its appendix, which contains a list of 198 nonviolent, anti-authoritarian tactics. These include speeches, letters, declarations, and mass petitions; protest songs and plays; skywriting and “methods of economic noncooperation”; and peasant and prisoners’ strikes, slowdown strikes, quick “lightning” strikes, “sick-ins,” and more than a dozen other kinds of strikes. Sharp also listed “physical interventions,” including sit-ins, stand-ins, ride-ins, wade-ins, pray-ins, and “nonviolent occupation” of public spaces “as well as ‘action by holders of financial resources,’ including the withdrawal of bank deposits, refusal to pay fees, refusal to pay debts or interest, and severance of funds and credit.” And so on.

Author Gene Sharp.