Based upon an individual’s physical motions:
You can move yourself into a position that you are an obstacle.
You can physically move it, break it. combine it, or manipulate it. This includes giving items to others.
You can beat someone else, causing them to do something you want.
You can physically restrain them or guide their motions.
You can kill or incapacitate others.
Based on an individual’s ability to communicate:
You can talk to someone directly, using rhetoric to convince or persuade them.
You can use indirect actions, such as convincing others to use force. This can take the form of direct incitement, or indirect manipulation, such as via elections and palace intrigues.
You can document facts or lies, causing individuals seeking advice to respond according to your information.
You can take physical actions or demonstrate physical processes which communicate your capability to act or demonstrate the viability of a technique.
When we translate these actions to the language of achievement in the human historical context (since interactions with ostensibly non-sentient creatures do not involve influence), we think about:
“Nicely asking” via rational persuasion.
The use of not really violent, but “non-rational influencers”, such as bribery via discretionary funds, or general distraction. (as distinct from the previous because the previous generally follow a rational line of thought. Since this website follows along rational means for reasons later explained, this is required for completeness of theory.)
Use of protests, “demonstrations”, and low-intensity movements involving minimal violence/damage. (influencing via tangible signal of ability and willingness to use some latter form of violence to achieve the goal)
Invoking some sort of “law” and demanding redress. (hence attempting to signal others to use violence)
Acting via some sort of “election” or other political/succession mechanism to install compliant individuals. (hence not really persuasion, but effectively influencing the situation via a shared construct of decisionmaker (who, by definition, uses some degree of violent means of decision enforcement and command) change)
“Irregular coercion” backed by the threat of imminent violence. (since the general, non-specific version of law includes communal actions and other such relatively informal arrangements, this is required to complete the universe of threats. Arbitrary action is, after all, the favored technique of tyrants. Note that without the caveat of imminent violence, it’s not clear whether this overlaps with another category. In particular, without a threat of imminent violence, the coercion element likely would have no distinct effect from a non-rational influencer.)
“Targeted killing/punishment” which directly kills, maims, and restrains certain individuals.
“Military action” which directly kills, maims, and restrains large numbers of people. (Of course there is a continuum between these last two.)
None of these mechanisms work against all threats. Each one of them has worked and has failed against a broad spectrum of threats.
Nicely asking and protests fail most easily, as they heavily rely on influence on the target as the mechanism. However, the feasibility of attempting these approaches, assuming you have access to the target and have freedom of speech, is almost universal.
See below notes on non-rational influence, they’re pretty long and complicated.
The effectiveness and feasibility of the attempt of invoking the law heavily depend on the quality of people and government. Most peoples are lawless, accepting bribes and entertaining a wide variety of legal claims that have nothing to do with the written law or any consistent authority.
Elections allow influence against a different set of people other than the target to result in success. Whether that is easier or harder than other forms of influence depends on a wide variety of factors. Furthermore, success requires a problem-meaningful degree of lawful behavior and obedience to the ruler.
Irregular coercion works if the threat is credible and the target either is timid or rationally can arrive at a correct estimation of the future. The main issue usually is that security forces attempt to prevent the use of irregular coercion, hence you are pitting yourself against the police and military. Their strength and awareness/will therefore determines the likely feasibility of attempting this approach. Historically, awareness was poor and will was context-dependent. As the technological prison state develops, awareness rapidly is increasing to near-certainty levels and so the will becomes more important in the calculation.
Targeted killing/punishment always achieves the goal – the only question is whether anyone can stop you: the feasibility of the attempt boils down to the strength and will of the police and military to resist and punish.
Military action also always achieves the goal, subject to the veto of the resistance. The only real distinction with targeted killing is that in military action, the scope of violence exceeds that which is verified to be taken against the enemy. Therefore a variety of mass collateral damages are accepted (such as civilian deaths, infrastructure destruction, and the truth), and as a result the initial burdened cost is much higher than with a targeted killing approach. However, targeted killing will not economically or possibly even physically scale to millions of people, especially if your own military force is relatively weak.
Some individuals, such as Erica Chenoweth, have attempted to sort and catalogue the relative effectiveness of these tactics. However, there is no obvious pattern or enemy profile against which you can be assured of success. Furthermore, the success of differing tactics does not follow an obvious progression. One would think that because many people are revolted by violence, that it would be optimal to attempt communication techniques first. However, against determined adversaries who kill dissidents as they are identified, a communication strategy will get you killed without meaningful benefits. Movements, such as the resistance against the Chavistas and the Maduro government in the wake of the death of Hugo Chavez, often split based upon tactical lines. Depending on the response of the population, this could either motivate more individuals toward their cause, or alienate them, since all tactics are potentially in play. Consequently, it is difficult to predict what tactics will be successful, or even to say what strategy is clearly the best in situations where the oppressor is not ruthless.
On top of that, the recent developments in prison state technology have increased the power of the state to monitor all such strategies. The changing situations not seen before at this degree lower the predictive significance of the historical record of these approaches. Possibly this is fortunate, as it could represent a new era where results could be better; more likely, given the average character of those who have wielded and currently wield power, it means that the balance will have to shift toward violence as the feasibility spread of the approaches compresses/converges towards personal ruin for attempting any one of these options.
As such, in any situation where the determination and/or capability of the adversary and other actors are in doubt, because of our usually limited ability to motivate others towards any type of action, we should not focus our efforts on trying to persuade allies to use one well-executed technique over another. Rather, we should build strength and gain additional allies, so that regardless of how the situation plays out, we maximize our capability to favorably influence events.
—
Notes On Influence
In the influence category, there are several different classes of actions, which differ based on the length of effectiveness in situations where they are appropriate, resources required to execute, and externalities (both positive and negative) outside the immediate security problem.
The longest-effectiveness, lowest-cost, and most favorable externality solutions are those involving changing people’s core motivations. At the immediate work-doing level, this involves motivating them towards righteousness and peace through negotiations between forces, shared expressions of ideals, implementing just laws using their force, cooperative endeavors, and the general buildup of liberal democratic political culture. At the planning level, this involves putting good people in positions of greater power, thereby limiting the effects of wicked individuals to a narrower scope. Unfortunately, this solution class can take a long time to implement, is by itself quite vulnerable to human interdiction, and works best from a position of initial strength. As such, although it is ultimately an indispensable part of a sustainable society, it is not suited to emergency situations, and so other actions are needed in those cases.
A solution class that is relatively easy to plan and implement, is usually effective, and can theoretically be sustained indefinitely, but requires large amounts of resources and may have moderate externality impacts, is the counterbalancing of forces by building or positioning a rival force that is capable of either destroying the threatening force, or of dealing significant damage to it, or of denying it the ability to achieve its objectives. Resource burdens, and irrational behaviors and decisions by opposing forces are usually what stymie this solution class.
A solution class that is easy to plan and implement, has generally middling effectiveness and resource demands, but has limited applicability and potentially severe externalities, is the use of negotiated agreement whereby some of the harm is mitigated by agreeing to certain of the force’s demands. This could be a treaty, bribery, or an informal “gentleman’s” agreement. Pursuing this solution class requires that the opposing force has known and separable demands, that they can be satisfied with only part of their demands, the demands themselves are not unduly burdensome, and that if the demands are unacceptable in the long-term, that there is the capacity under the agreement to execute other strategies to improve the situation.
A solution class that is hard to plan and implement, can cause major external impacts, and is much narrower in scope, but depending on the situation, may be effective and low-cost, is the manipulation of the enemy force, without changing its core philosophy, to exert its force and attention away from the activities causing the interdiction gap. This solution class includes (for example) false flag operations, disinformation, diplomacy and the motivation of other rival actors, social activities through which competing ideas are planted in the minds of the opposing force, and the initiation of propaganda campaigns and other challenges of higher priority to the opposing force.