Semester: 2020 Fall
Students: Brooke Davies and Daniel Oyolu
This project was developed by two students who have already taken the Dispute Systems Design Clinic and are engaging in an advanced clinical project.
The students will explore the relationship between power and negotiation, particularly through the lens of how people with limited individual power organize and build a movement for political change. They will engage questions such as how do individuals and movements gain comparative power, how do they internally negotiate and determine what political change should look like, and how do they effectively use their strength externally when negotiating for political change with extremely powerful actors?
The project will examine democratic revolutions and mass civilian uprisings around the world to assess themes, successful strategies, common pitfalls, and challenges to achieving the goals of protests. The project will study the circumstances leading up to popular movements, how the movements did or did not pressure political actors to come to the negotiation table, and whether or not the political objectives of these movements were achieved.
This project seeks to draw general conclusions and recommendations on how movement-building and negotiation can be used to facilitate major political change.