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Report

Mar 28, 2023

Fostering a Fourth Democratic Wave: A playbook for countering the authoritarian threat

By Hardy Merriman, Patrick Quirk, Ash Jain

This report seeks to catalyze support for nonviolent pro-democracy movements fighting against authoritarian rule by proposing new approaches and tools to support civil resistance movements, advancing a new international norm — the “Right to Assist” pro-democracy movements — and developing strategic and tactical options to constrain authoritarian regimes.

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In the News

Mar 25, 2022

Merriman in The Hill on how the Russian people can end Putin’s war

On March 24, Scowcroft Center Nonresident Senior Fellow Hardy Merriman published an op-ed in The Hill outlining pathways and tactics for Russian citizens to engage in sustained civil resistance to create political transition in Russia.

Civil Society Democratic Transitions

Hardy Merriman is a nonresident senior fellow with the Scowcroft Strategy Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. He was a principal investigator for the Atlantic Council’s joint Fostering a Fourth Democratic Wave project with the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. He is also currently senior technical advisor to US Agency for International Development’s Powered by the People program.

Merriman’s research focuses on international support to nonviolent civil resistance movements fighting for rights, freedom, and justice. He also focuses on how communities can organize to counter political violence.

Merriman has worked in the field of civil resistance for over twenty years, presenting at workshops for activists and organizers around the world; developing programs and grantmaking for practitioners and scholars; publishing commentary; and speaking widely about civil resistance movements with academics, journalists, and members of international organizations. His writings have been translated into numerous languages.

He is also president of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), at which he leads the Civil Resistance Funders Initiative, focusing on the role of philanthropy and international advocacy organizations in supporting movements.

Previously he served as ICNC’s president and CEO from January 2015 until June 2021, as well as vice president and director of content development from 2012 to 2014, as senior advisor from 2007 to 2012, and as director of programs and research from 2005 to 2007.

Mr. Merriman is the primary author of the publication Fostering a Fourth Democratic Wave: A Playbook for Countering the Authoritarian Threat (2023). His other recent publications include the essay “We Need People Power to Address a World in Peril” (2023); Glossary of Civil Resistance: A Resource for Study and Translation of Key Terms (2021), which he co-wrote; and the report Preventing Mass Atrocities: From a Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) to a Right to Assist (RtoA) Campaigns of Civil Resistance (2019).

He is an editor at the blog Minds of the Movement.