Video
On Tuesday, December 5th, 2023, experts from the Crowd Counting Consortium, a network of researchers tracking political demonstrations across the U.S., shared their most recent data on the multitude of pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian protests held nationwide since October 7.
This discussion was co-hosted by the Nonviolent Action Lab at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and Journalist’s Resource at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.
Article
In a recent piece for the Journal of Democracy, Matthew Cebul, Lead Research Fellow for the Nonviolent Action Lab, explores the global pattern of anticorruption movements, assessing mechanisms for navigating the “accountability-defections dilemma”—how to encourage authoritarian regime defections while maintaining democratic accountability.
Policy Brief
A new report summarizes key insights from the Nonviolent Action Lab’s December 2025 convening on how artificial intelligence can empower pro-democracy movements.
Additional Resource
Even with Nicolás Maduro gone, the fight for Venezuela’s future is far from over. Freddy Guevara warns that Maduro’s successors are more interested in regime survival than democratic reform.
Policy Brief
In this essay, originally published in the Journal of Democracy, Erica Chenoweth and Matthew Cebul analyze the global surge of Gen Z-led protest movements, showing how economic insecurity, exclusion from power, and corruption are driving youth mobilization worldwide.
Occasional Paper
In this report, Matthew Cebul, Lead Research Fellow for the Nonviolent Action Lab, examines the effectiveness of nonviolent action movements in supporting democratic resilience globally. Identifying challenges faced by nonviolent pro-democracy movements, Cebul offers key takeaways for combating accelerating democratic erosion in the US and abroad.
Article
In this op-ed, Liz McKenna examines the second ‘No Kings’ protest on October 18 and offers strategies for translating successful protest movements into influential policy change. She emphasizes the importance of sustained organizational efforts alongside protest activity to engage actors across partisan lines, building a broad coalition and a durable base for the movement.
