Nonviolent movements do not necessarily require charismatic leaders like Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr.

While charismatic leadership can be important, it is the ability of a movement or its leaders to use clear strategic thinking and to make wise decisions in the course of a conflict that is far more important in determining the movement’s success or failure.  For example, the Chinese students who led the protest in Tiananmen Square had sensational personalities, but their movement collapsed when it had not strategy about what to do when the Chinese government refused to meet their demands.

In some situations, having charismatic or identifiable leadership can even be detrimental to a movement’s success—because the leader may be arrested, corrupted, intimidated, or make poor decisions.  Movements that have had to hide or decentralize their leadership have still fared well.  For example, the leaders of the Danish underground resistance to the Germans in World War II were entirely anonymous. The Serbian movement to oust Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 was largely decentralized and lacked a single identifiable leader.

Gandhi’s success with the Indian people did not rely on his charisma but rather his persistent campaigns that enlisted Indians at all levels of society to take control of their own lives and then gradually reduce the value to the British of having colonized India.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was an inspiring speaker, but that talent would have made little difference if he and others had not identified shrewd ways for African Americans and their allies to put pressure on the system of segregation and undercut its economic and political support.

< Prev