Revolutions

What three elements do most scholars agree on for revolution per Goldstone? (Goldstone 2014)

"A forcible change in government, mass participation, and a change in institutions.”

Goldstone on revolutionary leadership? (Goldstone 2014) —> Identifies a heroic vision (Paine, Marx, Lenin, Mao) and a chaos vision (Burke, Dickens)

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."

Goldstone on elite involvement? (Goldstone 2014)

"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."

What are structural causes? (Goldstone 2014)

Structural causes are "long-term and large-scale trends that undermine existing social institutions and relationships.”

Skocpol’s definition of a social revolution? (Skocpol 1979)

—→ 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.

“Rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structures…accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts from below.”

Skocpol’s contestation to “purposive” theories of revolution - reacting to vanguardist/Big men theories? (Skocpol 1979)

Existing theories share an "assumption that revolutions are MADE by deliberate, ideologically guided movements."

Skocpol on revolutionary causation? (Skocpol 1979)

"Revolutions are not made; they come” and “Revolutionary situations have developed due to the emergence of politico-military crises of state and class domination.”

Skocpol’s Janus-faced state? (Skocpol 1979)

—→ The state is pressured from both class structure below and geopolitical competition above

The state is "fundamentally Janus-faced, with an intrinsically dual anchorage in class-divided socioeconomic structures and an international system of states.”

Skocpol on revolutionary onset? (Skocpol 1979)

Revolutions begin when old-regime states are caught between "intensified international military pressure and constraints imposed by their existing class structures on monarchical response.”

Foran’s five factor model of revolution in Third World countries? (Foran 2005)

"Success = ABCDE”: Dependent development; repressive/exclusionary personalist state; widely-embraced political cultures of opposition; economic downturn; world-systemic opening

Foran’s epistemological stance? (Foran 2005)

—> Sits between Skocpol’s structuralism and pure agency-based accounts

Large-scale structures "shape, yet do not determine, events made by humans, who everywhere have brought creativity, imagination, and courage to the historical table.

What is Foran's headline claim about anti-colonial revolution outcomes? (Foran 2005) —> Uses Mexico, China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Algeria and Vietnam

Anti-colonial outcomes are sometimes limited "precisely because what was being overturned was foreign rule", an indigenous elite often simply takes their place "using revolutionary rhetoric to justify their rule."

Fanon on colonial revolution? (Fanon 1961)

“The colonial world is a world cut in two”

What is Fanon's view of violence as cleansing? (Fanon 1961)

"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."

Fanon’s substitution thesis? (Fanon 1961)

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."

Fanon’s economic dependence of post-colonial states?

Mono-culture, “flight of capital” and economic channels

What is Haiti's wider international legacy per Blackburn? (Blackburn 2006)

"The very existence of Haiti emboldened African Americans to reach for freedom"

Skocpol’s bureaucratization of social revolution? (Skocpol 1979)

—> Engages Weber: revolutions tend to further state centralization and domination.

All three (France, Russia, China) produced "stronger, more centralised, more bureaucratic states than the old regimes they replaced."

Three modes of Revolutionary failure?

Initial overthrow without state reconstruction, nitial overthrow with state reconstruction but with state power captured by new bureaucratic-authoritarian elites, initial overthrow but with autonomy lost to foreign patrons (Skocpol's Cuba case)

Davis’s argument about the limits of post-revolutionary elite formation (Fanon’s “pitfalls of national consciousness”)? (Davis 2016)

“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.”

What is Durkheim's "anomie" as a precursor to revolutionary theory? (Durkheim 1893)

Anomie = "normlessness"; disequilibrium in social systems. When the ideology of the time doesn't provide the state with enough legitimation, social bonds break down

How can the structural-agency dichotomy be dissolved?

The dichotomy may be false: structural factors are themselves "reified products of human activity."

Structural vs agentic?

The real causal contrast isn't structure vs human, but (i) currently-active human intentions vs (ii) cumulative consequences of past human action now functioning as constraint.