Boycott Of Elections
Summary
Boycott Of Elections is method 124 in Gene Sharp’s 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action, listed under Citizens’ Noncooperation with Government — the political-leverage sub-cluster of Political Noncooperation [source: commons-198-methods].
Body
Sharp listed boycott of elections as method 124, the second item of his Citizens’ Noncooperation with Government sub-cluster (methods 123-132, between Boycott of legislative bodies and Boycott of government employment) [source: commons-198-methods]. The method names the practice of withdrawing participation from an electoral process to deny it legitimacy, signal opposition to undemocratic conditions, or push for reform; most useful when the constituency is large enough that the missing votes meaningfully shift the result, and when the campaign has a parallel strategy for what the boycott is meant to win.
An election boycott is a high-cost, high-stakes lever whose power lies in the legitimacy the election would otherwise confer. When a large constituency refuses to vote, the resulting government loses its “consent of the governed” claim — opposition movements can then say that the regime was imposed without popular mandate, and external actors lose a reason to treat the result as legitimate. The classic twentieth-century cases were anti-colonial and pro-democracy boycotts: the South African United Democratic Front’s mid-1980s mass-nonparticipation, the Nicaraguan opposition’s 1990 decision to participate after a decade of boycotting, and various Eastern European opposition decisions either to boycott or to participate in electoral transitions.
Boycotts fail in three predictable ways. First, the boycott constituency is too small to deny the regime its majority, so the election’s legitimacy is not actually damaged. Second, the campaign has no parallel strategy: a boycott that does not feed into a mass strike, mass demonstration, or international pressure campaign is just non-participation, which the regime can ignore. Third, the boycott is permanent instead of time-bounded: a movement that boycotts every election for a decade loses its internal political organisers and finds, on the day it chooses to participate, that it has no infrastructure.
The 2006 Belarus opposition boycott, the Dominican Republic’s 1961 strike-winning-electoral-reform, and the long-running Northern Irish civil-rights movement’s selective use of electoral pressure each illustrate one of the patterns: delegitimise without strategy (Belarus, with limited impact), combine boycott and strike (Dominican Republic, with lasting effect), and integrate electoral work into a longer-term movement strategy (Northern Ireland, with mixed but durable outcomes).
See methods-of-nonviolent-action for the broader method library.
Use it for
Withdrawing participation from an electoral process to deny it legitimacy, signal opposition to undemocratic conditions, or push for reform. Most useful when the constituency is large enough that the missing votes meaningfully shift the result, and when the campaign has a parallel strategy for what the boycott is meant to win.
Worked examples
- belarusian-citizens-protest-presidential-election-2006 — opposition boycott of the manipulated 2006 Belarus presidential election signalled rejection of the result.
- east-germans-protest-for-democracy-the-peaceful-revolution — the 1990 East German election delivered the first free vote after mass citizen mobilisation; the path to legitimacy ran through, not around, the vote.
- dominican-citizens-general-strike-for-free-democratic-elections-1961 — Dominican Republic 1961; mass strike won free elections after Trujillo.
Learn more
- On Wikipedia: Election boycott — CC BY-SA 4.0
FAQ
What is Boycott Of Elections?
Boycott Of Elections is method 124 in Gene Sharp’s 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action, the second item of his Citizens’ Noncooperation with Government sub-cluster (methods 123-132) within the larger category of Political Noncooperation [source: commons-198-methods]. The method names the practice of withdrawing participation from an electoral process.
When is an election boycott most useful?
An election boycott is most useful when the constituency is large enough that the missing votes meaningfully shift the result, and when the campaign has a parallel strategy for what the boycott is meant to win. The power lies in the legitimacy the election would otherwise confer; without that, the regime’s “consent of the governed” claim collapses.
What are the classic twentieth-century uses of the tactic?
The classic twentieth-century cases were anti-colonial and pro-democracy boycotts. These included the South African United Democratic Front’s mid-1980s mass-nonparticipation, the Nicaraguan opposition’s 1990 decision to participate after a decade of boycotting, and various Eastern European opposition decisions either to boycott or to participate in electoral transitions.
How do boycotts fail in three predictable ways?
Boycotts fail predictably when the boycott constituency is too small to deny the regime its majority; when the campaign has no parallel strategy, so the boycott is just non-participation the regime can ignore; and when the boycott is permanent rather than time-bounded, leaving the movement without organisers or infrastructure when it finally chooses to participate.
What pattern does each of three cases illustrate?
Three cases illustrate the failure-and-success patterns. The 2006 Belarus opposition boycott shows delegitimising without strategy, with limited impact. The Dominican Republic’s 1961 strike-winning-electoral-reform shows combining boycott and strike to lasting effect. Northern Ireland’s selective use of electoral pressure shows integrating electoral work into a longer-term movement strategy with mixed but durable outcomes.
Related
Open Questions
- Page relies only on the Commons 198-methods pointer. A grounded write-up drawing on Sharp’s The Politics of Nonviolent Action, vol. 2, and country-specific election-boycott case-study literature would strengthen the rationale above.