Revolutions

What is Goldstone's definition of revolution? | Source: Goldstone (2014) Revolutions: A Very Short Introduction p.4 [Primary] | Use: Opening definition; combines structural and ideological elements

"The forcible overthrow of a government through mass mobilization (whether military or civilian or both) in the name of social justice, to create new political institutions." Combines mass mobilisation, institutional change, and driving ideology with a vision of social justice.

What three elements do most scholars agree on for revolution per Goldstone? | Source: Goldstone (2014) p.3 [Primary] | Use: Conceptual baseline

"A forcible change in government, mass participation, and a change in institutions." Disagreement is on whether revolutions must also be: sudden, violent, or class-based.

How does Goldstone distinguish revolutions from rebellions and coups? | Source: Goldstone (2014) pp.6-9 [Primary] | Use: Demarcation card

"Any attempt at revolution is by definition a rebellion." Failed attempts are rebellions; succeeded rebellions where institutions remain are not revolutions. Coups "can lead to revolutions if the coup leaders… present a vision for reshaping society on new principles of justice and social order." What distinguishes revolutions is the combination of overthrow, mass mobilisation, vision of social justice, and new institutions.

What is Goldstone's view of revolutionary leadership? | Source: Goldstone (2014) p.9 [Primary] | Use: Defines the agentic side

Revolutions are "the process by which visionary leaders draw on the power of the masses to seek to forcibly bring into existence a new political order." Both visionary AND organisational leadership are required; without visionary leadership the regime can isolate fragmented opponents; without organisational leadership new regimes fail through ineffective policy.

What is Goldstone's "two visions" of revolution? | Source: Goldstone (2014) pp.1-2 [Primary] | Use: Framing card for the normative-evaluative debate

(i) Heroic vision: "downtrodden masses are raised up by leaders who guide them in overthrowing unjust rulers"—Paine, Michelet, Marx, Lenin, Mao; (ii) Chaos vision: revolutions as "eruptions of popular anger that produce chaos"—Burke, Carlyle, Dickens. The historical reality typically combines elements of both.

What turns inequality into revolutionary motivation per Goldstone? | Source: Goldstone (2014) p.11 [Primary] | Use: Why grievance alone is insufficient

"It is the belief that these conditions are not inevitable but arise from the faults of the regime. Only when elites and popular groups blame the regime for unjust conditions… will people rise against it." Inequality alone produces resignation as readily as revolt.

What does Goldstone say about ideology and revolutionary timing? | Source: Goldstone (2014) p.12 [Primary] | Use: Avoiding the ideology-first error

"New ideologies produce revolutionary actions only when there has already been a shift in elite positions, which creates space and opportunities to mobilize people around new beliefs."

What is Goldstone's "unstable equilibrium" framework? | Source: Goldstone (2014) p.14-15 [Primary] | Use: Pre-revolutionary state conditions

Pre-revolutionary societies show: rulers weakened/erratic/predatory; elites divided into mutually distrusting factions; popular groups not receiving expected rewards; shortages, excessive rents, falling real wages, growing banditry. Under such conditions, "a moderate or even small disturbance—a war, an economic crisis, a local rebellion—can trigger spreading popular uprisings."

What are Goldstone's five conditions for an unstable regime? | Source: Goldstone (2014) pp.16-20 [Primary] | Use: Structural-causes framework

(i) National economic or fiscal strains; (ii) growing alienation/opposition among elites; (iii) widespread popular anger at injustice; (iv) an ideology presenting a "persuasive shared narrative of resistance"; (v) favourable international relations (foreign support for opposition or withdrawal of support for ruler).

What distinguishes structural from transient causes per Goldstone? | Source: Goldstone (2014) p.21 [Primary] | Use: Causal-typology card

Structural causes are "long-term and large-scale trends that undermine existing social institutions and relationships." Transient causes are "contingent events, or actions by particular individuals or groups, that reveal the impact of longer-term trends." Both required—same transient events occur in dozens of states each year without producing revolutions.

What is the "dictator's dilemma" per Goldstone? | Source: Goldstone (2014) p.24 [Primary] | Use: KEY structural-cause concept

Modernising dictators must invest in military/economic capacity to keep up with advanced states, but this creates educated professionals, students, and businessmen who "resent the power and favoritism of a venal dictator, the privileges of entrenched elites, and the benefits going to foreign interests." Modernising dictatorships and monarchies "thus lay the basis for a vigorous opposition to their rule."

What is the revolutionary process per Goldstone? | Source: Goldstone (2014) pp.28-29 [Primary] | Use: Process card

May begin with urban protests, workers' strikes, peasant uprisings, elite challenges, or guerrilla attacks (increasingly with social media). "If a country is already in unstable equilibrium… such events start to spread and reinforce each other." Police can't cope; military called in; military proves unreliable. External support shifts the balance decisively.

What is Skocpol's definition of social revolution? | Source: Skocpol (1979) States and Social Revolutions p.4-5 [Primary] | Use: KEY definitional card—success is built in

"Rapid, basic transformations of a society's state and class structures… accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts from below." Successful sociopolitical transformation is BUILT INTO the definition—a "failed" social revolution is, on her view, not really a social revolution at all, just a political revolution or rebellion.

What is Skocpol's critique of "purposive" theories of revolution? | Source: Skocpol (1979) pp.14-18 [Primary] | Use: KEY structural-side statement of the field

Marxist, aggregate-psychological (Gurr), value-consensus (Johnson), and political-conflict (Tilly) theories share an "assumption that revolutions are MADE by deliberate, ideologically guided movements." Skocpol rejects this: historically, no successful social revolution has ever been "made" by a mass-mobilising avowedly revolutionary movement.

What is Skocpol's single most quotable line on revolutionary causation? | Source: Wendell Phillips, quoted in Skocpol (1979) p.17 [Primary citing secondary] | Use: Single-line structural-determinist position

"Revolutions are not made; they come." Skocpol uses this as the epigrammatic close to her critique of agency-centred accounts.

What is Skocpol's constructive version of the "they come" claim? | Source: Skocpol (1979) p.17 [Primary] | Use: Academically citable version of "revolutions come"

"Revolutionary situations have developed due to the emergence of politico-military crises of state and class domination."

What three principles does Skocpol's framework rest on? | Source: Skocpol (1979) pp.14-32 [Primary] | Use: Structure card for Skocpol's theory

(i) The structural perspective—reject agency-centred theories; revolutions are not made; (ii) International and world-historical context—world capitalist economy AND international states system as transnational structures; (iii) Potential autonomy of the state—the state as administrative/military organisation with its own distinct interests, not a class instrument.

What is Skocpol's "Janus-faced" state metaphor? | Source: Skocpol (1979) p.32 [Primary] | Use: Signature analytical move; KEY card

The state is "fundamentally Janus-faced, with an intrinsically dual anchorage in class-divided socioeconomic structures and an international system of states." This dual anchorage is what makes the state the primary site of revolutionary causation—it's pressured from both class structure below and geopolitical competition above.

What is Skocpol's primary causal claim about revolutionary onset? | Source: Skocpol (1979) Conclusion p.285 [Primary] | Use: The state-centred causal mechanism

Revolutions begin when old-regime states are caught between "intensified international military pressure and constraints imposed by their existing class structures on monarchical response." The state is the primary site of breakdown, not class struggle or ideology.

What is Skocpol's claim about the international system? | Source: Skocpol (1979) pp.19-23 [Primary] | Use: Geopolitical-causation card

Skocpol argues against Wallerstein's economic reductionism that the states system has "an analytically autonomous level of transnational reality—interdependent in its structure and dynamics with world capitalism, but not reducible to it." International military competition is independently causally important.

What is Foran's five-factor model of revolution? | Source: Foran (2005) Taking Power Ch.2 p.87 [Primary] | Use: KEY framework card; cite for any third-world revolution

Dependent development; repressive/exclusionary personalist state; widely-embraced political cultures of opposition; economic downturn; world-systemic opening. All five must be present in conjuncture: "Success = ABCDE."

What is Foran's epistemological stance? | Source: Foran (2005) Ch.2 p.34 [Primary] | Use: Methodological positioning—between structuralism and voluntarism

"Conjunctural and humanistic": large-scale structures "shape, yet do not determine, events made by humans, who everywhere have brought creativity, imagination, and courage to the historical table." Sits between Skocpol's structuralism and pure agency-based accounts.

How does Foran apply the model to Iran? | Source: Foran (2005) Ch.2 pp.74-86 [Primary] | Use: KEY case—Iran as "prototype" against Skocpol

(i) Dependent development—oil at 98% of exports by 1978, GDP growth 10.8%/yr 1963-78 but failed land reform; (ii) Personalist exclusionary state—Shah, SAVAK, 1953 CIA coup foundation; (iii) Five distinct political cultures (Khomeini, Shari'ati, Bazargan, guerrillas, secular nationalists); (iv) 1977 downturn; (v) Carter human rights policy disrupting US-Iran alliance. "Prototypical of the causes of Third World revolutions."

What is Foran's analytical move on Iranian opposition pluralism? | Source: Foran (2005) Ch.2 pp.79-82 [Primary] | Use: Key argument against Skocpol's single-Shi'a-tradition reading

Foran identifies FIVE distinct political cultures of opposition: Khomeini's militant Islam, Shari'ati's radical liberation theology, Bazargan's liberal-democratic Islam, the guerrilla groups' socialism (Islamic and secular), and secular nationalism. This plurality, rather than a single tradition, is what Foran argues Skocpol missed.

What is Foran's "first principle" of revolutionary outcomes? | Source: Foran (2005) Ch.2 p.46 [Primary] | Use: Outcomes-side claim

"The broad coalitions that overthrew the old regime tend to fragment once this is accomplished." Generalises beyond Mexico—a structural feature of post-revolutionary coalitions.

What is Foran's argument for endogenous economic downturns? | Source: Foran (2005) Ch.2 p.64 (Cuba) [Primary] | Use: Defence of Foran against structural-determinism charge

"Rebels may start an uprising in the absence of an economic downturn, but popular support and success follow only with its eventual presence." Some factors can be partly PRODUCED by revolutionary action (Cuba: insurrection-induced economic disruption). Refines the conjuncture argument.

How does Foran adapt the five factors for anti-colonial cases? | Source: Foran (2005) Ch.3 pp.88-91 [Primary] | Use: Modification card for post-colonial revolutions

(i) Dependent development = "development for the colonizers, dependency for the colonized"; (ii) the repressive state is now collective/bureaucratic rather than personalist but functionally similar; (iii) downturns are partly endogenous (rebel-produced); (iv) world-systemic opening does more work than economic downturn; (v) outcomes are limited "precisely because what was being overturned was foreign rule"—indigenous elites often take settler colonialist place.

What is Foran's headline claim about anti-colonial revolution outcomes? | Source: Foran (2005) Ch.3 p.91 [Primary] | Use: Anti-colonial failure-mode card

Anti-colonial outcomes are sometimes limited "precisely because what was being overturned was foreign rule"—when colonialists leave, an indigenous elite often simply takes their place "using revolutionary rhetoric to justify their rule." Closest Foran gets to a theory of revolutionary failure-by-disappointment.

What is the Vietnam case in Foran? | Source: Foran (2005) Ch.3 pp.131-145 [Primary] | Use: Most extended anti-colonial case study

Treated as three revolutions: August 1945 liberation of the north; 1954 expulsion of French (Dien Bien Phu); 1959-75 southern revolution. Vo Nguyen Giap: "In war there are two factors—human beings and weapons. Ultimately… human beings are the decisive factor." Foran counterfactual (p.143): "Without the aggressive US intervention, it is quite possible that the NLF would have come to power in the south by the mid-1960s"—world-systemic factor can both prevent AND enable revolution.

What was the 1945 Vietnam famine per Foran? | Source: Truong Chinh, cited via Foran (2005) p.132 [Primary citing secondary] | Use: Compressed demonstration of the five-factor model

"Hundreds of thousands of people starved beside granaries full of rice kept by the Japanese and the French." Killed two million. A "coming together of virtually all the factors in our model"—dependent development, repressive state, downturn, world-systemic opening, political culture all converging in one event.

What is Foran's analytic on Algeria? | Source: Foran (2005) Ch.3 pp.92-103 [Primary] | Use: Settler-colonial case

"The first great anticolonial social revolution of the century." Initiated and led by urban lower-middle-class network; fought mainly by "young, unemployed men from the rural proletariat"—a multi-class coalition rather than peasant war. Sétif massacre (1945, 6-15,000 Muslims killed) "decided the revolution of 1954." Casualties 141,000 (French) to 1.5m (FLN).

What is the Angola/Mozambique distinctive feature in Foran? | Source: Foran (2005) Ch.3 pp.103-123 [Primary] | Use: Most theoretically interesting anti-colonial case

The two anti-Portugal cases represent "the striking circumstance of a Third World revolution touching off a First World one in the metropole"—the 1974 Carnation Revolution in Portugal was partly produced by the wars in Angola and Mozambique. Cunhal: "If Portugal wishes to be free, the Portuguese colonies must be free."

What is the contrast between Angola and Mozambique per Foran? | Source: Foran (2005) Ch.3 p.123 [Primary] | Use: Coalition-unity outcomes claim

"Unlike the MPLA, Frelimo faced no internal opposition at the time of coming to power, revealing the distinct advantages of relative unity." But Mozambique still faced RENAMO and a "sixteen-year conflict… costing over a million lives and producing five million refugees." Coalition unity aids seizure of power but doesn't guarantee post-revolutionary stability.

What is Fanon's central claim about colonial revolution? | Source: Fanon (1961) The Wretched of the Earth Ch.1 [Primary] | Use: Why colonial revolutions are necessarily violent

Decolonisation is necessarily a violent process because the colonial relation itself is constituted by violence. "The colonial world is a world cut in two. The dividing line, the frontiers are shown by barracks and police stations." Where capitalist societies use education and moral reflexes to maintain order, colonial countries use "the policeman and the soldier, by their immediate presence and their frequent and direct action."

What is Fanon's "stretched Marxism" claim? | Source: Fanon (1961) p.40 [Primary] | Use: Why colonial revolutions don't fit orthodox Marxist theory

"In the colonies the economic substructure is also a superstructure. The cause is the consequence; you are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich. This is why Marxist analysis should always be slightly stretched every time we have to do with the colonial problem."

What is Fanon's view of violence as cleansing? | Source: Fanon (1961) p.93 [Primary] | Use: Psychological-existential argument for revolutionary violence

"At the level of individuals, violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect."

What is Fanon's "two species" claim about colonial society? | Source: Fanon (1961) p.40 [Primary] | Use: Structural-existential dualism of colonial society

"This world divided into compartments, this world cut in two is inhabited by two different species. The originality of the colonial context is that economic reality, inequality, and the immense difference of ways of life never come to mask the human realities."

What is Fanon's "pitfalls of national consciousness" thesis? | Source: Fanon (1961) Ch.3 [Primary] | Use: KEY card—predictive account of post-colonial revolutionary failure

The national bourgeoisie of newly independent states betrays the revolution by replacing the colonial elite "without any period of transition… a total, complete, and absolute substitution." Nationalisation "quite simply means the transfer into native hands of those unfair advantages which are a legacy of the colonial period." National consciousness becomes "an empty shell, a crude and fragile travesty of what it might have been."

What is Fanon's claim about decolonisation's economic constraints? | Source: Fanon (1961) p.100 [Primary] | Use: Why economic transformation often fails post-independence

"The young independent nation sees itself obliged to use the economic channels created by the colonial regime. It can, obviously, export to other countries and other currency areas, but the basis of its exports is not fundamentally modified. Perhaps it is necessary to begin everything all over again."

What is Fanon's "flight of capital" claim? | Source: Fanon (1961) p.103 [Primary] | Use: Mechanism of post-colonial economic failure

"As soon as the capitalists know—and of course they are the first to know—that their government is getting ready to decolonize, they hasten to withdraw all their capital from the colony in question. The spectacular flight of capital is one of the most constant phenomena of decolonization."

What is Fanon's tribalism-as-failure-mode claim? | Source: Fanon (1961) p.55 [Primary] | Use: Cultural mechanism of post-colonial breakdown

When the national project is hollow, "tribal feuds only serve to perpetuate old grudges buried deep in the memory. By throwing himself with all his force into the vendetta, the native tries to persuade himself that colonialism does not exist, that everything is going on as before, that history continues." Plunging into "a fraternal bloodbath" allows them to "put off till later the choice… which opens up the question of armed resistance to colonialism."

What is the Haitian Revolution's significance per Blackburn? | Source: Blackburn (2006) "Haiti, slavery, and the age of democratic revolution" WMQ p.643 [Primary] | Use: Why Haiti matters historically

"The first major breach in the hugely important systems of slavery in the Americas was opened not by English or American abolitionists but by Jacobin revolutionaries and the black peasantry of Saint Domingue." The only successful large-scale and generalised slave revolt known in history.

What is the 1801 Haitian constitution's central article per Blackburn? | Source: Blackburn (2006) p.647 [Primary] | Use: Toussaint-Louverture's universalising move

"In this territory slaves cannot exist; servitude is permanently abolished. All men within it are born, live, and die free and French."

What is Blackburn's argument about Haiti's success? | Source: Blackburn (2006) pp.663-664 [Primary] | Use: Why Haiti succeeded against the odds

Conjunctural: radicalised slave structure, revolutionary ideology, high proportion of African-born slaves bringing memories of African ideas and military tactics, geopolitical opening of Anglo-French-Spanish conflict. "The black Jacobins found something in the ideology of the French Revolution that helped them to elevate and generalize their struggle. Yet at the same time they brought experiences in a slave society and memories from Africa that radicalized the ideas they appropriated."

What is the symbiosis of French and Haitian revolutions per Blackburn? | Source: Blackburn (2006) p.667 [Primary] | Use: Reciprocal-influence argument

"Revolutionary France would not have embarked on the emancipation policy without the pressure of the slave revolt… Equally, however, the emancipationist regime in Saint Domingue would probably not have survived without the French Republic's backing during the years from 1794 to 1799." Structural conditions (geopolitical opening, metropolitan revolutionary politics) and human factors (slave agency, leadership choices) interact rather than competing.

What were the Haitian revolution's post-emancipation difficulties per Blackburn? | Source: Blackburn (2006) p.666 [Primary] | Use: Outcome-failure card—infrastructure and labour

Saint Domingue had been the richest New World colony because of "elaborate irrigation works and roadworks built by French engineers with slave labor. This infrastructure had fallen into ruin." Toussaint-Louverture's "draconian attempt to restore plantation labor" met widespread resistance. Without labour, only subsistence cultivation possible—severe constraints on revolutionary Saint Domingue.

What is Haiti's wider international legacy per Blackburn? | Source: Blackburn (2006) p.672 [Primary] | Use: Why revolution's "success" can extend beyond the case

"The very existence of Haiti emboldened African Americans to reach for freedom"—Vesey, Brown, Douglass testified. Southern slaveholders eventually "opted for the huge gamble of secession" partly out of fear. The president of Haiti in 1816 "helped Simón Bolívar to radicalize the Spanish-American revolutionary struggle"—ensuring no new Spanish-American republic was slave-based.

What are Goldstone's four points about revolutionary outcomes? | Source: Goldstone (2014) pp.36-38 [Primary] | Use: Outcomes-typology card

(i) "Outcomes do not emerge quickly"—average 10-12 years from regime fall to clear new-regime features. (ii) Revolutions fall into types with characteristic outcomes (social, urban-nonviolent, etc.). (iii) Revolutions made in the name of correcting injustice often produce "narrow and harsh" concepts of justice—scapegoated minorities, sometimes genocide (Nazi, Khmer). (iv) Women's rights consistently disappoint—women fight in revolutions but are rarely beneficiaries.

What is Goldstone's trend-claim on contemporary revolutions? | Source: Goldstone (2014) pp.135-136 [Primary] | Use: Card on present-day revolutionary landscape

Ideological/social revolutions have become rare; most contemporary revolutions are "nonviolent urban revolutions, seeking to create greater accountability in semi-democratic and autocratic regimes." Governments have become better at resisting: 1990s nonviolent success rate ~2-in-3; 2010-19 dropped to 1-in-3. Violent: 1-in-4 down to less than 1-in-10.

What is Skocpol's account of common outcomes of social revolution? | Source: Skocpol (1979) Conclusion pp.284-293 [Primary] | Use: KEY outcomes card—the bureaucratisation thesis

All three (France, Russia, China) produced "stronger, more centralised, more bureaucratic states than the old regimes they replaced." Skocpol explicitly engages Weber: revolutions tend to FURTHER bureaucratic domination. The revolutionary content can be the consolidation of bureaucratic power rather than the emancipatory transformation revolutionaries claimed.

What is Skocpol's claim about post-colonial revolutionary dependence? | Source: Skocpol (1979) Conclusion pp.288-289 [Primary] | Use: KEY failure-mode card—autonomy loss to foreign patrons

The Cuban illustration: "The Revolution overcame extreme dependence upon the United States and allowed Cuba to pursue more autonomous and equalitarian policies of state-directed economic development. Yet at the same time Cuba became very reliant upon Soviet economic aid and had her foreign policies tied closely to those of the USSR." Post-colonial revolutions are particularly vulnerable to autonomy-loss failure.

What is Skocpol's claim about modern military capacity? | Source: Skocpol (1979) Conclusion pp.289-290 [Primary] | Use: Why social revolutions are now structurally less likely

The spread of modern bureaucratic-professional militaries to every Third World state since 1945 has made successful social revolutions structurally much less likely. "No revolution will be won against a modern army when that army is putting out its full strength against the insurrection" (Chorley 1943, quoted at p.289). Coups become the dominant mode—but coups "perpetuate existing state forms and controls."

What three failure modes of revolution should be distinguished? | Source: Synthesis on Skocpol/Foran/Fanon [Synthesis] | Use: KEY structure card for outcomes section

(i) Initial overthrow without state reconstruction (revolution-as-event but no durable new institutions); (ii) Initial overthrow with state reconstruction but with state power captured by new bureaucratic-authoritarian elites (Skocpol's Weberian worry; post-Stalin Russia); (iii) Initial overthrow but with autonomy lost to foreign patrons (Skocpol's Cuba case). These are not always distinguishable; revolutions can fail in more than one mode.

What is Angela Davis's "systemic change" thesis? | Source: Davis (2016) Freedom is a Constant Struggle Ch.3 p.1 [Primary] | Use: Contemporary view of revolution as systemic transformation

"We have to talk about systemic change. We can't be content with individual actions." Means reconceptualising police roles, community control of police, addressing racism in the larger sense, examining institutionalized violence. Revolution as ongoing rather than episodic.

What is Davis's argument about the limits of post-revolutionary elite formation? | Source: Davis (2016) Ch.3 p.4 [Primary] | Use: Class-divided outcome critique

South Africa post-apartheid: "the rise of a very powerful and very affluent Black sector of the population… was never really taken into account… it was assumed that once Black people achieved political and economic power, there would be economic freedom for everyone, and we see that that's not necessarily the case." A Davis equivalent of Fanon's "pitfalls of national consciousness."

What is Davis on intersectional revolution? | Source: Davis (2016) Ch.3 p.6 [Primary] | Use: Connecting revolution to multiple axes of oppression

"I don't think we can imagine Black movements in the same way today as we once did. The assumption that Black freedom was freedom for the Black man created a certain kind of border around the Black struggle which can no longer exist." Revolution must address gender, class, nationality, ethnicity, anti-Muslim racism—not just one axis.

What is Davis on neoliberalism and collectivity? | Source: Davis (2016) Ch.3 p.7 [Primary] | Use: Why revolution requires collective imagination

"This is an era where we have to encourage that sense of community particularly at a time when neoliberalism attempts to force people to think of themselves only in individual terms and not in collective terms. It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism."

What is Durkheim's "anomie" as a precursor to revolutionary theory? | Source: Tutorial notes; canonical source: Durkheim The Division of Labor in Society (1893) and Suicide (1897) [Tutorial-extension; verify against Durkheim originals] | Use: Classical-sociological framing of pre-revolutionary social conditions

Anomie = "normlessness"; disequilibrium in social systems. When the ideology of the time doesn't provide the state with enough legitimation, social bonds break down. A precursor to modern theories of pre-revolutionary unstable equilibrium—the breakdown of social norms creates the conditions in which the regime's legitimacy collapses.

What is Barrington Moore's contribution to revolution theory? | Source: Tutorial notes; canonical source: Barrington Moore (1966) Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy [Tutorial-extension; verify against Moore (1966)] | Use: Classical-comparative framing

Different "roots to democracy"—social origins shape political outcomes. Three routes to modernity: bourgeois revolution (English, French, American) → democracy; revolution from above (German, Japanese) → fascism; peasant revolution (Russian, Chinese) → communism. Influence on Skocpol's structuralism (states-and-classes framework).

What is George Lawson's contribution to revolution theory? | Source: Tutorial notes; canonical source: George Lawson Anatomies of Revolution (2019, Cambridge UP) [Tutorial-extension; verify against Lawson (2019)] | Use: Contemporary synthesis of the field

A processual, international, multi-causal account of revolution. Critical of Skocpol's structuralism: when explaining actual cases, "ideology, political culture, values and beliefs slipped in through the back door of structural approaches." Connects revolutionary onset to inter-societal pressures, regime types, and revolutionary actors.

What is Trotsky's "uneven and combined development"? | Source: Tutorial notes; canonical source: Trotsky The History of the Russian Revolution (1932), Results and Prospects (1906) [Tutorial-extension; verify against Trotsky originals] | Use: Marxist explanation for Russian revolution's "premature" character

Russia was feudal but had an advanced proletariat in St Petersburg combined with a backward countryside. "Uneven and combined development" explains why the proletariat could revolt despite Russia's underdevelopment—the bourgeoisie hadn't fully developed, and the proletariat in concentrated industrial centres could lead. Explains why revolution can occur in "wrong" places by orthodox Marxist theory.

What is Bedjaoui's "New International Economic Order"? | Source: Tutorial notes; canonical source: Mohammed Bedjaoui Towards a New International Economic Order (1979) [Tutorial-extension; verify against Bedjaoui (1979)] | Use: Post-colonial international-relations framing

Algerian jurist's articulation of the post-colonial legal claim to a New International Economic Order—structural reform of international trade, sovereignty over natural resources, technology transfer. The post-colonial revolution's international project: not just decolonisation domestically but transformation of the international economic system.

What is the Leopard's revolutionary insight? | Source: Tutorial notes; canonical source: Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa Il Gattopardo (1958) [Tutorial-extension; verify against Lampedusa novel] | Use: Conservative-paradoxical view of revolution

Tancredi to Don Fabrizio: "If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change." The aristocracy adapts to revolutionary upheaval (1860 Italian Risorgimento) to preserve its position. Captures the "gattopardismo" paradox: revolutionary change that produces no real change. A literary anchor for Skocpol's bureaucratic-domination worry.

What is the etymology of "revolution" and why does it matter? | Source: Tutorial notes; canonical source: Polybius Histories Book VI; see also Bell on Edelstein review noted by Holcroft [Tutorial-extension; verify originals] | Use: Conceptual-history card

"Revolution" originally meant cyclical change (Polybius's anacyclosis: monarchy → tyranny → aristocracy → oligarchy → democracy → ochlocracy → back to monarchy). The American and French revolutions transformed the concept into forward-looking historical change. We owe it to the 18th-century revolutions that we conceive of revolution as a vehicle for social progress rather than as recurrent regime-cycling.

What is Mao's "cultural revolution" theoretical claim? | Source: Tutorial notes; canonical source: Mao on continuous revolution; Cultural Revolution (1966-76) historiography [Tutorial-extension; verify against Mao originals or scholarly account] | Use: Anti-bureaucratisation argument

Mao argues against the ossification of revolutionary states into new bureaucracies. The Cultural Revolution was framed as an attack on the Party-state bureaucracy itself—an attempt to prevent the Weberian outcome Skocpol describes (revolution → stronger bureaucratic state). Whether the Cultural Revolution achieved this or worsened the ossification it diagnosed is contested.

What is the "revolutionary states become socialised" point? | Source: Tutorial notes [Tutorial-extension; synthesis] | Use: International-systemic outcomes mechanism

Revolutionary states tend to be drawn back into the international system over time. Trotsky's initial revolutionary reticence about US loans gave way; Brezhnev sought recognition as an equal superpower. Revolutionary anti-systemic positioning is hard to maintain; the international system socialises revolutionary regimes back toward conventional state-behaviour over decades.

What is the "goal of revolutions" as international change? | Source: Tutorial notes [Tutorial-extension; synthesis] | Use: International-aspirations card

Many revolutionary regimes initially target change in the international system—Lenin's Berlin HQ for communism; the outward-looking goals of the French, American, and Haitian revolutions. These have "changed [the] whole political vocabulary" in which subsequent politics is conducted. But "the difficulty of domestic revolution in a hostile international environment" tends to force compromises (Stalin's "socialism in one country").

What is the structural-vs-human debate in revolutionary theory? | Source: Synthesis on Skocpol/Foran/Goldstone [Synthesis] | Use: Field-mapping card

Skocpol's purest structural position (revolutions "come" from politico-military crises of state and class domination; agency epiphenomenal). Goldstone emphasises visionary and organisational leadership. Foran sits in the middle: large-scale structures "shape, yet do not determine, events made by humans." The debate is over the WEIGHT of agency, not its presence or absence.

How can the structural-agency dichotomy be dissolved? | Source: Synthesis [Synthesis] | Use: Sophisticated framing card

The dichotomy may be false: structural factors are themselves "reified products of human activity." Class structure, state apparatus, world-system position are all sedimented results of past human action. The real question is whether revolutionary causation in any particular case runs through (i) current human intentional action; (ii) cumulative consequences of past human action that now have causal force as "structure"; or (iii) both. The "structure vs agency" binary obscures the temporal layering.

What is the proper relationship between dependent development and other Foran factors? | Source: Synthesis on Foran [Synthesis] | Use: Sharpening Foran's framework

Dependent development is the slow structural condition; the other four factors (state, political culture, downturn, world-systemic opening) are the conditions that bring the structural crisis to revolutionary head. Question to raise: is dependent development DOING any causal work, or is it a background condition that selects which countries are candidates for revolution?

What is the synthesis answer to "what counts as success?" | Source: Synthesis on Skocpol/Goldstone/Holcroft [Synthesis] | Use: Sharpest framing for the success question

At least three distinguishable senses: (i) initial overthrow (Goldstone's minimum); (ii) durable institutional transformation including class structure (Skocpol's strict definitional sense); (iii) achievement of the revolution's stated emancipatory goals (immanent critique). Most revolutions succeed on (i), fewer on (ii), almost none on (iii). The question is which sense is being invoked.

What is the international-effects test for revolutionary success? | Source: Synthesis on Blackburn (Haiti's wider legacy) and Holcroft's USSR point [Synthesis] | Use: Beyond-the-case-itself measure

A revolution may "fail" in its own case (collapse, betrayal by national bourgeoisie, autonomy loss to a patron) but "succeed" internationally—by reshaping political vocabulary (French, American, Haitian), by disciplining capitalism through threat (USSR), or by inspiring subsequent revolutions (Haiti's effect on US abolitionism and Bolivar). This shifts the measurement frame from the revolution itself to its global wake.

What is the open-horizons account of revolutionary success? | Source: Synthesis on Holcroft's Comment 15 [Synthesis] | Use: KEY alternative to "stated-goals" measurement

A successful revolution "opens up new, previously unthinkable horizons" rather than achieving its stated goals. Haitians revolutionised the meaning of equality—taking up the conceptual space opened by American and French revolutions and pushing it further. The measure of revolutionary success is not whether goals were met but whether the political imagination was permanently expanded.