ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to improve our understanding of how the strategic use of civil disobedience has developed in the Norwegian environmental movement. The focus is on the main changes in the use of civil disobedience from 1970 to 2000, and the driving forces that made it possible that the use of civil disobedience changed from a small experiment to an advanced political strategy. Four key cases of environmental struggles are analysed. They represent different phases in the development and show how leading activists tested a series of new strategies of resistance, where civil disobedience was a key element. All cases relate to opposition to large scale systems for electricity production. Our main argument is that thanks to a creative and sustained combination of serious philosophical research work and the application of strategies and tactical principles in campaigns over a time period of 50 years, it has been possible to shift the political culture in Norway. Today, civil disobedience is recognised as a potent and potentially democratic tool for ordinary citizens when the environment is under threat. Civil disobedience is now so established that there exists specialised knowledge among educators, organisers and authors, and different versions of the tactics: small-scale, mass-scale, constructive, and deterrent civil disobedience.
