Introduction to Revolutions, Historical Causality, and Social Movements

Vocabulary flashcards covering theories of revolution, historical causality, key scholars, and interpersonal active listening concepts.

Crane Brinton

Author of Anatomy of Revolution who proposed a universal fever chart theory claiming all revolutions pass through identical escalating phases and convalescence.

Anatomy of Revolution

Book written by Crane Brinton (published in 1938, revised in 1952 and 1965) presenting the theory that revolutions follow a predictable, fever-like pattern.

Monocausal Causation

A framework where a single event or a single chain of events leads directly to a particular outcome.

Multi-causal Causation

The perspective held by most historians that causation functions like a complex web of multiple interconnected strands rather than a single direct cause.

George Santayana's View of History

The perspective that history is instructive and predictive, summarized by the phrase: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Mark Twain's View of History

The concept attributed to Mark Twain stating: History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

Jill Lepore's Definition of History

Defined by Harvard historian Jill Lepore as the art of making an argument about the past by telling a story accountable to evidence.

Enlightenment Concept of Revolution

A 17th and 18th-century definition by the philosophes relating revolution to astronomy, defined as movement according to a pre-established point.

Plato's Five Stages of State Cycling

Plato's cyclical view of history claiming the state cycles through five stages: aristocracy, democracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny.

Hannah Arendt's Features of Revolution

Two key features identified in On Revolution (1963): an aim of freedom (engaging in public/political dialogue) and the experience of a new beginning.

Social Movement (James DeFronzo)

A persistent organized effort by a relatively large number of people either to bring about social change or to resist it.

Critical Mass for Revolution

The proportion of the population required to bring about a revolution, historically assumed to be 10% but theorized to be as small as 3%.

Theda Skocpol

Political scientist and author of States and Social Revolutions (1979) who analyzed the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions as social revolutions.

Social Revolution

A movement seeking the radical transformation of society and class structures, distinguished from a rebellion by creating a permanent structural change.

Goldberg's Five Causes of Revolution

A model consisting of four domestic causes (regime frustration, emergence of dissident leadership, unifying ideology, paralyzing political crisis) and one international cause (permissive international environment).

Permissive International Environment

The single international cause in Goldberg's model, referring to how other states serve to inspire or dissuade revolutionary movements.

Active Listening

Paying attention to a person's pauses, emotions, body language, eye contact, and tone of voice rather than relying solely on their spoken words.

Carl Rogers

Psychologist and author of A Way of Being who utilized focus groups with external moderators to facilitate interpersonal expression.