Dilemma action
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A dilemma action is a type of non-violent civil disobedience designed to create a "response dilemma" or "lose-lose" situation for public authorities "by forcing them to either concede some public space to protesters or make themselves look absurd or heavy-handed by acting against the protest."[1][2] The Serbian-based NGO Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies has extensively used the technique in its trainings to nonviolent civil resistors. Dilemma actions have been shown to increase non-violent campaign success rate by 11-16%[3]
Examples of dilemma actions include Ai Weiwei's gathering to eat pig's trotters, the Standing protests of the 2013 protests in Turkey,[1] the Gaza Freedom Flotilla[4] and Uganda's 2011 Walk to Work protests.[5]
McClennen et al (2023) identified four main factors that contribute to the success of a Dilemma Action:[3]
- Facilitating group formation,
- Delegitimising opponents,
- Reducing fear,
- Generating sympathetic media coverage.