This is part of a series on nonviolent protest methods, which explains approaches and provides inspirational examples from history. For additional resources, please explore the Museum of Protest’s activist guides and view items in the collection.

When we think about nonviolent resistance, we often picture individuals marching in the streets or sitting at lunch counters. But one of the most powerful forms of resistance comes not from ordinary citizens but from governments themselves—local sheriffs refusing to enforce certain laws, state legislatures declining to implement federal programs, or municipal councils passing resolutions of non-compliance.

This method, which Gene Sharp classified as Method #150 in his influential catalog of 198 methods of nonviolent action, has shaped history far more than most people realize.

This form of resistance works because all political power ultimately depends on cooperation. As Sharp observed, rulers by themselves “cannot collect taxes, enforce repressive laws and regulations, keep trains running on time, prepare national budgets, direct traffic, manage ports, print money, repair roads, train the police and army, issue postage stamps or even milk a cow.” When the governmental units responsible for implementing policies withdraw their cooperation, the entire machinery of governance can grind to a halt.

Why governments matter more than individuals in resistance

Individual acts of civil disobedience require enormous courage and often carry serious personal consequences. When a single person refuses to obey an unjust law, they face arrest, prosecution, and punishment. But when a city council, a county sheriff, or a state legislature refuses to cooperate, the dynamics shift dramatically. These governmental bodies possess what individuals lack: legitimate authority, institutional resources, and administrative capacity.

A county sheriff controls deputies, jail facilities, and patrol resources. A state government oversees thousands of employees, manages billions in budget allocations, and holds constitutional authority within its borders. When these entities refuse cooperation, they don’t just resist—they create institutional obstacles that are far more difficult to overcome than individual acts of defiance.

Sharp placed this method within the broader category of “Political Noncooperation” because it targets the operational infrastructure through which any ruling authority exercises power. Unlike individual civil disobedience, governmental noncooperation severs access to multiple sources of power simultaneously: it challenges the legitimacy of directives, disrupts administrative capacity, and forces the question of authority into the open.

The crucial difference between noncooperation and secession

This distinction matters enormously, both strategically and legally. Noncooperation by constituent governmental units involves refusing to implement specific policies while remaining within the political system. The resisters maintain their formal status, continue participating in governance, and focus their opposition on particular actions or laws. Secession, by contrast, means complete withdrawal from the political union—a permanent severing of the constitutional relationship.

The Irish case during the independence struggle illustrates this distinction perfectly. From 1919 to 1921, local governments across Ireland “flipped their loyalty” from British authority to the Irish Dáil. They refused to collect British taxes, switched contracts to Irish-owned firms, and replaced British courts with Dáil Courts. But this wasn’t yet secession—Ireland remained technically part of the United Kingdom even as its local institutions stopped cooperating. Only after this noncooperation demonstrated that Britain could no longer effectively govern did negotiations lead to the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the creation of the Irish Free State.

This approach offers strategic advantages that outright secession cannot match. Officials who refuse to cooperate can reverse course if circumstances change. They retain access to federal resources and protections. And perhaps most importantly, courts have repeatedly recognized the constitutional legitimacy of refusing to assist higher authorities—while they have never recognized a right to secede.

How Danish officials saved almost every Jew in their country

In October 1943, the German occupation authorities prepared to round up Denmark’s Jewish population for deportation. What happened next remains one of the most remarkable examples of governmental noncooperation in history.

Danish police authorities refused to cooperate with German roundups, denying German police the right to enter Jewish homes by force. Local officials protected Jewish property, so that after the war most returning Jews found their homes and businesses intact. The Danish government had earlier refused to require Jews to wear the yellow Star of David, making identification more difficult. When arsonists twice attempted to burn the Copenhagen synagogue in 1941 and 1942, Danish police stopped them and arrested the perpetrators.

This institutional noncooperation created space for the remarkable rescue operation that followed. Within a few weeks, ordinary Danes ferried approximately 7,200 Jews and 700 non-Jewish family members to safety in Sweden. The result: 99% of Danish Jews survived the Holocaust—the highest survival rate in any Nazi-occupied country.

The lesson here is profound. When governmental institutions—police, local administrators, civil servants—refuse to participate in injustice, they create possibilities that individual resistance alone could never achieve. Without police cooperation, the German occupiers lacked the administrative capacity to identify, locate, and round up their targets efficiently.

Norwegian teachers who refused to teach Nazi ideology

The same year, across the North Sea, Norwegian teachers demonstrated another dimension of this method. In February 1942, the Nazi puppet government under Vidkun Quisling ordered all teachers to join a new fascist teachers’ union that would introduce Nazi doctrine into schools.

Between 8,000 and 12,000 of Norway’s 14,000 teachers signed letters of refusal. Each stated simply: “I will be faithful to my calling as a teacher and to my conscience.” They refused to join the union, refused to teach the new curriculum, and sabotaged the textbook reforms.

The consequences were severe. In March, authorities arrested between 1,100 and 1,300 male teachers. Several hundred were shipped to a concentration camp near the Arctic, where they performed forced labor in brutal conditions. One teacher died; several others were seriously injured. But the teachers did not break.

Their resistance galvanized the nation. Over 200,000 parents wrote protest letters supporting the teachers. By November 1942, the Quisling government abandoned its plans entirely. Nazi ideology was never taught in Norwegian schools. Quisling reportedly lamented: “You teachers have destroyed everything for me!”

When American states refused to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act

This method of resistance has deep roots in American history. After Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850—which required the return of escaped enslaved people to their captors—fourteen Northern states passed “Personal Liberty Laws” designed to prevent enforcement.

These laws varied in their provisions but shared a common goal: making federal enforcement practically impossible. Some states forbade state officials from participating in capturing fugitives. Michigan prohibited using state jails to detain captured people. Vermont and New York guaranteed jury trials for anyone accused of being a fugitive. Massachusetts authorized the removal and disbarment of any official who aided in returning people to slavery.

Wisconsin went furthest of all. When Sherman Booth was arrested for helping rescue an escaped slave named Joshua Glover in 1854, the Wisconsin Supreme Court declared the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional and ordered Booth released—twice. Even after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed this decision in 1859, Wisconsin authorities continued to resist enforcement.

These state-level actions proved remarkably effective. By 1860, only about 330 enslaved people had been returned under the 1850 Act nationwide—out of the thousands who had escaped to freedom. South Carolina’s Declaration of Secession explicitly complained that “fourteen of the States have deliberately refused” to enforce the law.

Finland’s bureaucrats who paralyzed Russian rule

In 1899, the Russian Empire issued the February Manifesto, asserting direct control over Finland and beginning a campaign of “Russification.” Finnish officials responded with what became known as the Great Strike—not of workers, but of bureaucrats.

A petition opposing the Manifesto gathered 523,000 signatures from a population of just 2.7 million. Finnish civil servants refused to transfer their positions to Russian replacements, leaving the administration in chaos. During the 1902 conscription call, only about half of eligible young men reported for military duty. Finnish judges, provincial governors, and mayors practiced systematic non-cooperation.

The Russian authorities struggled to respond. They purged the civil service, fired resistant judges, and granted the Governor-General dictatorial powers. But replacing an entire administrative apparatus proved nearly impossible. Underground newspapers spread resistance messages while Finnish police looked the other way.

The campaign succeeded beyond expectations. The Russification program was suspended in 1905. Finland achieved revolutionary parliamentary reform in 1906, becoming the first country in Europe to grant women full voting rights. The Finns had demonstrated that you cannot govern a country against the determined resistance of its governing institutions.

Hungary’s seventeen-year resistance to Austrian rule

After the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1848-49, Austrian authorities imposed direct rule over Hungary. But under the leadership of Ferenc Deák, Hungarians organized one of history’s longest sustained campaigns of governmental noncooperation—lasting nearly two decades.

Hungarian bureaucrats refused to hand over their positions to Austrian replacements. Citizens refused to pay taxes. The landed gentry and intelligentsia refused to take any government positions or engage in official political life. When Austrian tax collectors arrived, Hungarians told them they were “acting illegally.” The entire Hungarian civil service practiced what might be called bureaucratic passive resistance.

The Austrian response was initially harsh. They imposed martial law and imprisoned boycott organizers. Soldiers were billeted in Hungarian households—a counterproductive measure that mainly served to demoralize the soldiers. But the Austrians could not find enough qualified administrators willing and able to run Hungary.

By 1867, facing military defeats elsewhere and unable to effectively govern Hungary, Austria negotiated the Compromise that created the Dual Monarchy. Hungary regained its parliament, its prime minister, and control over its internal affairs. Franz Joseph was crowned King of Hungary as a constitutional monarch with strictly limited powers. Eighteen years of stubborn noncooperation had achieved what revolution could not.

The Irish courts that replaced British justice

The Irish independence movement of 1919-1921 provides perhaps the clearest modern example of constituent governmental units withdrawing cooperation from central authority. After Sinn Féin won local elections across Ireland in early 1920, local governments systematically transferred their allegiance from British authority to the Irish Dáil.

What made this campaign distinctive was the creation of alternative institutions. Dáil Courts, operating in barns, farmhouses, and creameries, began hearing cases that would normally go to British courts. By 1920, these courts were operating in 19 counties and were considered, in the words of one contemporary observer, “more important than the established law of the land.” Irish Republican Police replaced the Royal Irish Constabulary in many areas.

The British attempted to suppress this parallel governance. They suspended payments to Sinn Féin-controlled local governments. Courts were driven underground. Republican officials faced arrest, imprisonment, and sometimes death. But the campaign succeeded because enough of the population and local institutional capacity had shifted to make British governance impossible.

By 1921, the British writ no longer ran in most of Ireland. The Anglo-Irish Treaty that year was not a British victory but an acknowledgment that they could no longer govern. Local governmental noncooperation had achieved what military force alone could not.

Southern Massive Resistance and its ultimate failure

The method of governmental noncooperation can serve any cause—including unjust ones. The American South’s campaign of “Massive Resistance” against school desegregation after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision demonstrates both the power and the limits of this approach.

Beginning in 1956, eight Southern states passed interposition resolutions claiming the right to nullify the Supreme Court’s decision. Virginia’s Senator Harry Byrd organized the campaign, and the “Southern Manifesto” signed by 101 members of Congress pledged to use “all lawful means” to reverse desegregation.

The resistance was fierce. Virginia authorized the governor to close any school that attempted to integrate, and in 1958, schools in Warren County, Charlottesville, and Norfolk were shut down entirely—leaving about 10,000 students without education. Governor George Wallace physically blocked the entrance to the University of Alabama. Governor Ross Barnett personally turned away James Meredith from the University of Mississippi three times.

Prince Edward County, Virginia took the most extreme approach of all: rather than integrate, the county closed all public schools for five years, from 1959 to 1964. White students attended private “segregation academies” while approximately 1,700 Black children went without formal education.

Yet this massive campaign of governmental noncooperation ultimately failed—and understanding why illuminates the limits of this method. The Southern states confronted clear federal constitutional authority and an ultimately overwhelming capacity for federal enforcement. Federal courts struck down the interposition doctrine decisively. When governors physically blocked federal court orders, presidents federalized state National Guard units and, in Little Rock, deployed the 101st Airborne Division.

The lesson is important: governmental noncooperation works best when it operates within legitimate constitutional boundaries, when it has genuine popular support, and when the costs of federal enforcement are high enough to force accommodation.

The sanctuary movement and anti-commandeering doctrine

The modern sanctuary movement demonstrates how governmental noncooperation operates within constitutional limits. When California passed SB 54 in 2017, prohibiting state and local law enforcement from detaining people solely for immigration purposes, it was exercising a constitutionally protected right—not defying federal authority.

This right rests on the “anti-commandeering doctrine” established through a series of Supreme Court decisions. In Printz v. United States (1997), the Court ruled that “the Federal Government may neither issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems, nor command the States’ officers… to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program.”

The practical result: states and cities cannot be forced to help enforce federal immigration laws. They may choose to cooperate, but they cannot be compelled. Sanctuary policies do not obstruct federal enforcement—they simply decline to assist it. Federal agents remain free to enforce federal law with federal resources; state and local governments are simply not required to help.

When the Trump administration sued California over SB 54, federal courts upheld the law. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously in California’s favor. The anti-commandeering doctrine, originally developed by conservative jurists, now protects progressive sanctuary policies from federal coercion.

Second Amendment sanctuaries mirror the strategy

The same method appears across the political spectrum. Beginning in 2019, as Virginia’s newly elected Democratic legislature prepared to pass gun control measures, counties across the state declared themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries.” Within two months, over 120 localities had passed such resolutions.

The movement spread nationally. According to various estimates, approximately 60% of U.S. counties—around 2,000—have now passed some form of Second Amendment sanctuary resolution. Seventeen states have enacted statewide protection legislation.

These resolutions typically pledge not to use county resources to enforce laws deemed unconstitutional. In Washington State, 23 county sheriffs refused to enforce Initiative 1639, which raised the minimum age for purchasing semi-automatic rifles. In New Mexico, 25 of 33 counties passed sanctuary resolutions, and 30 of 33 sheriffs signed letters indicating they would not enforce certain provisions.

Virginia’s Attorney General declared these resolutions have “no legal effect”—and he was largely correct. The resolutions cannot nullify state law. But they can affect enforcement priorities and resource allocation, and they certainly communicate political opposition.

The legal framework officials should understand

For officials considering this form of resistance, understanding the legal landscape is crucial. The anti-commandeering doctrine provides significant protection, but it has limits.

What officials can legally do: decline to gather information for federal agencies; refuse federal detainer requests (which are requests, not legal orders); limit local resources used for federal enforcement; file lawsuits challenging federal actions; advocate for policy changes through proper channels.

What officials cannot legally do: physically obstruct federal agents; provide false information to federal authorities; actively hide individuals from lawful federal enforcement; claim authority to declare federal laws “null and void.”

The federal government has limited tools to respond to noncooperating jurisdictions. It can threaten to withhold funding, but courts have ruled that such conditions must be related to the purpose of the grant and cannot be coercive. It can enforce its own laws directly using federal personnel—but it cannot compel states to help.

Criminal prosecution of officials for passive noncooperation appears extremely unlikely. No state or local official has ever been successfully prosecuted for following sanctuary policies. The anti-commandeering doctrine creates a strong constitutional defense for officials exercising their right to decline participation.

What makes this method succeed or fail

Historical patterns reveal several factors that determine whether governmental noncooperation succeeds:

Popular support matters immensely. The Danish rescue succeeded because ordinary Danes supported their officials’ resistance. The Finnish passive resistance worked because the population participated in tax boycotts and draft resistance. When Prince Edward County closed its schools, the strategy ultimately failed because national opinion turned against such extreme measures.

Legal positioning is crucial. Northern states’ Personal Liberty Laws succeeded partly because they operated within constitutional gray areas. Modern sanctuary policies carefully stay within the bounds established by anti-commandeering doctrine. Southern Massive Resistance failed partly because it directly defied federal court orders—crossing from legitimate noncooperation into illegal defiance.

Alternatives must exist. Irish noncooperation succeeded because the Dáil Courts provided functioning alternatives to British justice. States legalizing cannabis created complete regulatory frameworks. Simply refusing without providing alternatives leaves populations without essential services.

The costs to higher authority matter. When the cost of enforcement becomes prohibitive—deploying troops, replacing entire civil services, funding parallel administrative systems—negotiation becomes more attractive than confrontation. Finland’s bureaucratic resistance succeeded because Russia simply could not find enough qualified administrators to run the country.

The risks officials face when they resist

Officials who engage in governmental noncooperation face real risks that deserve honest acknowledgment. In the Catalan independence crisis of 2017, when the regional government held an independence referendum despite Spanish court orders, the consequences were severe. President Carles Puigdemont fled into exile. Nine cabinet ministers were imprisoned and convicted of sedition, with sentences up to 13 years.

In less extreme cases, officials may face loss of federal funding for their jurisdictions, political attacks, and career consequences. During the Civil Rights era, federal officials who refused to enforce segregation often found themselves transferred or isolated. Today, sheriffs who refuse to enforce state gun laws face potential removal from office.

These risks must be weighed against the significance of the issue at stake. Officials must decide whether passive noncooperation—declining to assist without actively obstructing—keeps them within legally defensible bounds. And they should understand that the strongest protection comes from acting collectively with other officials and with clear public support.

How states have kept the Paris Agreement alive

Perhaps the most remarkable recent example of governmental noncooperation came in response to the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement in 2017. Within hours of President Trump’s announcement, the governors of California, New York, and Washington founded the U.S. Climate Alliance, pledging to uphold the agreement’s commitments.

By evening of that day, eight additional states had joined. Eventually, 24 states and territories representing over half the U.S. economy committed to meeting climate goals without federal leadership. Hundreds of mayors signed pledges to continue climate action. Seventeen cities uploaded deleted federal climate data to their own websites to preserve it.

California continued its cap-and-trade program. States maintained renewable energy mandates. Cities invested in electric vehicle infrastructure. In practical terms, American climate policy continued—not because the federal government supported it, but because state and local governments refused to abandon it.

This represented something new in the history of governmental noncooperation: not just refusing to implement federal policy, but maintaining and expanding state-level action in direct contradiction to federal retreat. It demonstrated that in a federal system, states can do more than resist—they can lead.

Practical wisdom for those who would resist

For officials considering this form of resistance, history offers several lessons. First, understand exactly what you are legally permitted to do. The difference between declining to assist (constitutional) and actively obstructing (potentially criminal) matters enormously. Consult with attorneys who understand federalism and the anti-commandeering doctrine.

Second, act collectively whenever possible. Individual officials who resist stand exposed. When dozens of sheriffs, or hundreds of municipalities, or a coalition of states act together, they create political facts that are difficult to ignore or punish individually.

Third, build public support before acting. Governmental noncooperation without popular backing tends to fail. The Danish rescue worked because officials knew their communities supported them. The Personal Liberty Laws succeeded because they reflected Northern public opinion.

Fourth, create functioning alternatives when possible. If you refuse to implement a policy, consider what you will do instead. The effectiveness of resistance increases when it offers solutions rather than simply creating vacuums.

Fifth, document everything. The historical examples that inspire future resistance are those with clear records of what happened and why. Whatever form your resistance takes, ensure it becomes part of the historical record for future generations to learn from.

The method of noncooperation by constituent governmental units remains one of the most powerful tools in the repertoire of nonviolent resistance—precisely because it transforms the machinery of governance from an instrument of control into an obstacle against injustice. When sheriffs refuse to enforce unjust laws, when states decline to implement harmful policies, when local governments protect their residents against overreach, they demonstrate that power ultimately flows upward from cooperation, not downward from command.