right, 14 July 1789 during the French Revolution
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}}For other uses, see (disambiguation) and s (disambiguation).
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A revolution
(from the Latin revolutio
, "a turn around") is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.
Aristotle described two types of political revolution:
# Complete change from one constitution to another
# Modification of an existing constitution. [1]
Revolutions have occurred through human history and vary widely in terms of methods, duration, and motivating ideology. Their results include major changes in culture, economy, and socio-political institutions.
Scholarly debates about what does and does not constitute a revolution center around several issues. Early studies of revolutions primarily analyzed events in European history from a psychological perspective, but more modern examinations include global events and incorporate perspectives from several social sciences, including sociology and political science. Several generations of scholarly thought on revolutions have generated many competing theories and contributed much to the current understanding of this complex phenomenon.
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REVOLUTION TICKETS
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Political and socioeconomic revolutions
thumb, leader of the
American Revolution
thumb, leader of the
Bolshevik Revolution of 1917
Perhaps most often, the word 'revolution' is employed to denote a change in
socio-
political institutions.
[2] [3] [4] Jeff Goodwin gives two definitions of a revolution. A broad one, where revolution is "any and all instances in which a state or a political
regime is overthrown and thereby transformed by a popular
movement in an irregular, extraconstitutional and/or violent fashion"; and a narrow one, in which "revolutions entail not only
mass mobilization and
regime change, but also more or less rapid and fundamental social, economic and/or cultural change, during or soon after the struggle for
state power."
[5] Jack Goldstone defines them as
an effort to transform the political institutions and the justifications for political authority in society, accompanied by formal or informal mass mobilization and noninstitutionalized actions that undermine authorities. [6]
Political and socioeconomic revolutions have been studied in many
social sciences, particularly
sociology,
political sciences and
history. Among the leading scholars in that area have been or are
Crane Brinton,
Charles Brockett,
Farideh Farhi,
John Foran,
John Mason Hart,
Samuel Huntington,
Jack Goldstone,
Jeff Goodwin,
Ted Roberts Gurr,
Fred Halliday,
Chalmers Johnson,
Tim McDaniel,
Barrington Moore,
Jeffery Paige,
Vilfredo Pareto,
Terence Ranger,
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy,
Theda Skocpol,
James Scott,
Eric Selbin,
Charles Tilly,
Ellen Kay Trimbringer,
Carlos Vistas,
John Walton,
Timothy Wickham-Crowley and
Eric Wolf.
[7]
Jack Goldstone differentiates four 'generations' of scholarly research dealing with revolutions.
The scholars of the first generation such as
Gustave Le Bon,
Charles A. Ellwood or
Pitirim Sorokin, were mainly descriptive in their approach, and their explanations of the phenomena of revolutions was usually related to
social psychology, such as Le Bon's
crowd psychology theory.
Second generation theorists sought to develop detailed
theories of why and when revolutions arise, grounded in more complex
social behavior theories. They can be divided into three major approaches: psychological, sociological and political.
The works of
Ted R. Gurr,
Ivo K. Feierbrand,
Rosalind L. Feierbrand,
James A. Geschwender,
David C. Schwartz and
Denton E. Morrison fall into the first category. They followed theories of
cognitive psychology and
frustration-aggression theory and saw the cause of revolution in the state of mind of the masses, and while they varied in their approach as to what exactly caused the people to revolt (e.g.
modernization,
recession or
discrimination), they agreed that the primary cause for revolution was the widespread frustration with socio-political situation.
The second group, composed of academics such as
Chalmers Johnson,
Neil Smelser,
Bob Jessop,
Mark Hart,
Edward A. Tiryakian,
Mark Hagopian, followed in the footsteps of
Talcott Parsons and the
structural-functionalist theory in sociology; they saw society as a system in equilibrium between various resources, demands and subsystems (political, cultural, etc.). As in the psychological school, they differed in their definitions of what causes disequilibrium, but agreed that it is a state of a severe disequilibrium that is responsible for revolutions.
Finally, the third group, which included writers such as
Charles Tilly,
Samuel P. Huntington,
Peter Ammann and
Arthur L. Stinchcombe followed the path of
political sciences and looked at
pluralist theory and
interest group conflict theory. Those theories see events as outcomes of a
power struggle between competing
interest groups. In such a model, revolution happen when two or more groups cannot come to terms within a normal
decision making process traditional for a given
political system, and simultaneously have enough resources to employ
force in pursuing their goals.
The second generation theorists saw the development of the revolutions as a two-step process; first, some
change results in the present situation being different from the past; second, the new situation creates an opportunity for a revolution to occur. In that situation, an event that in the past would not be sufficient to cause a revolution (ex. a
war, a
riot, a bad
harvest), now is sufficient – however if authorities are aware of the danger, they can still prevent a revolution (through
reform or
repression).
Many such early studies of revolutions tended to concentrate on four classic cases--famous and uncontroversial examples that fit virtually all definitions of revolutions, like the
Glorious Revolution (1688), the
French Revolution (1789–1799), the
Russian Revolution of 1917 and the
Chinese Revolution (1927-1949).
In his famous "
The Anatomy of Revolution", however, the eminent Harvard historian,
Crane Brinton, focused on the
English Civil War, the
American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Russian Revolution.
[8] In time, scholars began to analyze hundreds of other events as revolutions (see
list of revolutions and rebellions), and differences in definitions and approaches gave rise to new definitions and explanations. The theories of the second generation have been criticized for their limited geographical scope, difficulty in
empirical verification, as well as that while they may explain some particular revolutions, they did not explain why revolutions did not occur in other societies in very similar situations.
The criticism of the second generation led to the rise of a third generation of theories, with writers such as
Theda Skocpol,
Barrington Moore,
Jeffrey Paige and others expanding on the old
Marxist class conflict approach, turning their attention to rural agrarian-state conflicts, state conflicts with autonomous
elites and the impact of interstate
economic and
military competition on domestic
political change. Particularly Skocpol's
States and Social Revolutions
became one of the most widely recognized works of the third generation; Skocpol defined revolution as "rapid, basic transformations of society's state and class structures...accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts from below", attributing revolutions to a conjunction of multiple conflicts involving state, elites and the lower classes.
From the late 1980s a new body of scholarly work began questioning the dominance of the third generation's theories. The old theories were also dealt a significant blow by new revolutionary events that could not be easily explain by them. The
Iranian and
Nicaraguan Revolutions of 1979, the
1986 People Power Revolution in the
Philippines and the 1989
Autumn of Nations in Europe saw multi-class coalitions topple seemingly powerful regimes amidst popular demonstrations and
mass strikes in
nonviolent revolutions. Defining revolutions as mostly European violent state versus people and
class struggles conflicts was no longer sufficient. The study of revolutions thus evolved in three directions, firstly, some researchers were applying previous or updated
structuralist theories of revolutions to events beyond the previously analyzed, mostly European conflicts. Secondly, scholars called for greater attention to conscious
agency in the form of
ideology and
culture in shaping revolutionary
mobilization and objectives. Third, analysts of both revolutions and
social movements realized that those phenomena have much in common, and a new 'fourth generation' literature on
contentious politics has developed that attempts to combine insights from the study of social movements and revolutions in hopes of understanding both phenomena.
While revolutions encompass events ranging from
the relatively peaceful revolutions that overthrew communist regimes to the
violent Islamic revolution in Afghanistan, they exclude
coups d'états,
civil wars,
revolts and rebellions that make no effort to transform institutions or the justification for authority (such as
Józef Pilsudski's
May Coup of 1926 or the
American Civil War), as well as peaceful transitions to
democracy through institutional arrangements such as
plebiscites and
free elections, as in
Spain after the death of
Francisco Franco.
Types
There are many different typologies of revolutions in social science and literature. For example, classical scholar
Alexis de Tocqueville differentiated
[9] between 1)
political revolutions 2) sudden and violent revolutions that seek not only to establish a new political system but to transform an entire society and 3) slow but sweeping transformations of the entire society that take several generations to bring about (ex.
religion). One of several different
Marxist typologies divides revolutions into pre-capitalist, early bourgeois, bourgeois, bourgeois-democratic, early proletarian, and socialist revolutions.
[10] Charles Tilly, a modern scholar of revolutions, differentiated
[11] between a
coup, a top-down seizure of power, a
civil war, a
revolt and a "great revolution" (revolutions that transform economic and social structures as well as political institutions, such as the
French Revolution of 1789,
Russian Revolution of 1917, or
Islamic Revolution of Iran).
[12] Other types of revolution, created for other typologies, include the
social revolutions;
proletarian or
communist revolutions inspired by the ideas of Marxism that aims to replace
capitalism with
communism); failed or abortive revolutions (revolutions that fail to secure power after temporary victories or large-scale mobilization) or violent vs.
nonviolent revolutions.
The term "revolution" has also been used to denote great changes outside the political sphere. Such revolutions are usually recognized as having transformed in
society,
culture,
philosophy and
technology much more than
political systems; they are often known as
social revolutions.
[13] Some can be global, while others are limited to single countries. One of the classic examples of the usage of the word revolution in such context is the
industrial revolution (note that such revolutions also fit the "slow revolution" definition of Tocqueville).
[14]
List of revolutions
For a list of revolutions see:
- List of revolutions and rebellions
- List of fictional revolutions and coups
See also
References
- Aristotle, ''The Politics'' V, tr. T.A. Sinclair (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1964, 1972), p. 190.
- Jack Goldstone, "Theories of Revolutions: The Third Generation'', ''World Politics'' 32, 1980:425-53
- John Foran, "Theories of Revolution Revisited: Toward a Fourth Generation", ''Sociological Theory'' 11, 1993:1-20
- Clifton B. Kroeber, ''Theory and History of Revolution'', Journal of World History 7.1, 1996: 21-40
- Goodwin, p.9.
- Jack Goldstone, "Towards a Fourth Generation of Revolutionary Theory", ''Annual Review of Political Science'' 4, 2001:139-87
- Jeff Goodwin, ''No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945-1991.'' Cambridge University Press, 2001, p.5
- Crane Brinton, ''The Anatomy of Revolution'', revised ed. (New York, Vintage Books, 1965). First edition, 1938.
- Roger Boesche, ''Tocqueville's Road Map: Methodology, Liberalism, Revolution, and Despotism'', Lexington Books, 2006, ISBN 0739116657, Google Print, p.86
- {{pl icon}} J. Topolski, "Rewolucje w dziejach nowozytnych i najnowszych (xvii-xx wiek)," Kwartalnik Historyczny, LXXXIII, 1976, 251-67
- Charles Tilly, ''''European Revolutions, 1492-1992'', Blackwell Publishing, 1995, ISBN 0631199039, Google Print, p.16
- Bernard Lewis, "Iran in History", Moshe Dayan Center, Tel Aviv University
- Irving E. Fang, ''A History of Mass Communication: Six Information Revolutions'', Focal Press, 1997, ISBN 0240802543, Google Print, p. xv
- Warwick E. Murray, Routledge, 2006, ISBN 0415318009, Google Print, p.226