Successful nonviolent civil-resistance movements can comprise as little as 3.5% of the population, according to Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University. Chenoweth found that successful nonviolent civil resistance campaigns share the following five qualities:
1. They have large, diverse, and sustained participation.
2. They have a long-term plan or strategy.
3. They are good at eliciting loyalty shifts, among security forces in particular, but also from other elites (i.e., economic and business leaders, state media, and other pillars that support the status quo and can be disrupted or coerced into noncooperation).
4. They do not use only protests but a variety of actions.
5. They do not descend into chaos or opt for violence, even when they were repressed.