Theories of revolution and revolution without theory

Goldfrank, Walter L.

doi:10.1007/bf00158680

Cited by 80 publications

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“…27 Foran builds his model in some measure from a synthesis of these works: John Walton (the roles of uneven development, the state, cultural nationalism, and economic downturn), Jeff Goodwin (the nature and type of state), Farideh Farhi (the roles of state, social structure, and Gramscian conceptualization of ideology), Misagh Parsa (the degree of state intervention in the economy, the ideology of state challengers, and the political vulnerabilities of repressive regimes), Eric Selbin (the role of revolutionaries in making ideological appeals to the population), Tim Wickham-Crawley (the social structure and orientations of revolutionaries), Walter Goldfrank (the roles of permissive world context, severe political crisis that incapacitates the state, widespread rural rebellion, and dissident elite political movements), and James DeFronzo (the roles of mass frustration, dissident elites, unifying motivations, a crisis of the state, and world context). See (Walton 1984;Goodwin 2001;Farhi 1990;Parsa 2000); Selbin, Modern Latin American Revolutions; Wickham-Crawley, Guerillas and Revolution in Latin America; (Goldfrank 1979;and DeFronzo 1991). culture, state and social structure, internal and external influences. Essentially, for Foran, five factors must be present for revolutions to come about and succeed: first, dependent development; second, a repressive, exclusionary and personalistic state; third, political cultures of opposition; fourth, economic downturn; and fifth, world systemic opening or release of external controls (See Foran 1993Foran , 1997Foran , 2005.…”

Section: Fourth Generation Theory and The Laotian Revolutionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Small state, big revolution: geography and the revolution in Laos

Kittikhoun

2008

Theor Soc

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Extant theoretical insights-mostly derived from studies of prominent revolutions in large countries-are less useful when applied to the unfolding of revolutions in small states. To understand why revolutions happened in the latter, a framework is needed that takes into account geography. For small states, geography is more than dotted lines on maps. It is the source of intervention and vulnerability. Deeply mired in history and memory, states' geographies shape their distinctive identities and have great impacts on national political trajectories, including revolutions. Thus, to provide understanding of revolutions in these countries, no analysis could be complete without taking into account their places, understood in physical, ideational, and historical terms, within their regions and the world. The case of Laos is used to suggest a geographical analysis of revolutions that provides overlooked insights into the origins, processes, and outcomes of revolutions in small, vulnerable states.To some extent, revolutionary theorizing is now dead. This is not a statement about the lack of new theorizing about revolutions. New attempts, however, fall largely within the confines of extant theoretical models and insights. While both structuralist and culturalist theories have certainly improved their frameworks, and thus make valuable contributions, they still very much base their theories, however sophisticated, on established social science concepts and categories. There is currently a paucity of attempt or interest to cross disciplinary lines. Partly, this is because the last decade or so has been a period in which major social revolutions 1 rarely happen.

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Section: Fourth Generation Theory and The Laotian Revolutionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Small state, big revolution: geography and the revolution in Laos

Kittikhoun

2008

Theor Soc

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“…In response to the relative neglect of international factors by 'first' and 'second' generation scholarship, beginning in the 1970s, 'third generation' revolutionary theorists (e.g. Goldfrank 1975Goldfrank , 1979Skocpol 1979;Tilly 1990;Goldstone 1991;Katz 1997) included a range of international factors in their accounts. 4 Goldfrank (1979: 143, 148--51) argued that the roots of revolutions lay in the 'world capitalist system' and its 'intensive international flows of commodities, investments, and laborers', 'great power configurations' (such as a shift in the balance of power), a 'favorable world situation' (such as changing client--patron relations), and a 'general world context' (such as a world war, which served to preoccupy great powers).…”

Section: Revolutions and The Internationalmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…My thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pointing me to these examples. facing challenges to 'modernize' from more 'advanced' states (Goldfrank 1975(Goldfrank , 1979Skocpol 1979). As noted in the previous section, the drive to carry out 'modernizing missions' can foster unstable amalgams of 'modern' and 'archaic' (Trotksy 1997;Chibber 2013).…”

Section: Revolutionary Situationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Goldfrank 1975Goldfrank , 1979Skocpol 1979, Foran 2005Kurzman 2008;Goldstone 2001Goldstone , 2009Goldstone , 2014Selbin 2010;Beck 2014), this scholarship tends to graft the international features of revolutions onto existing theoretical scaffolding, thereby reproducing the analytical bifurcation between international and domestic, and giving primary causal weight to endogenous processes. At the same time, although some of the descriptive components of an intersocietal approach can be found in transnational histories of revolution (e.g.…”

Section: The Promise Of An Intersocietal Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Revolutions and the international

Lawson

2015

Theor Soc

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Although contemporary theorists of revolution usually claim to be incorporating international dynamics in their analysis, 'the international' remains a residual feature of revolutionary theory. For the most part, international processes are seen either as the facilitating context for revolutions or as the dependent outcome of revolutions. The result is an analytical bifurcation between international and domestic in which the former serves as the backdrop to the latter's causal agency. This paper demonstrates the benefits of a fuller engagement between revolutionary theory and 'the international'. It does so in three steps: first, the paper examines the ways in which contemporary revolutionary theory apprehends 'the international'; second, it lays out the descriptive and analytical advantages of an 'intersocietal' approach; and third, it traces the ways in which international dynamics help to constitute revolutionary situations, trajectories, and outcomes. In this way, revolutions are understood as 'intersocietal' all the way down.

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“…Research highlights three main factors that lead to the emergence of revolutionary situations: changes in international relations, such as degrees of dependent development, shifting client-patron networks, and the emergence of novel transnational discursive fields (Goldfrank 1979;Skocpol 1979;Hobsbawm 1986;Halliday 1999;Lawson 2004Lawson , 2015Adamson 2005;Foran 2005;Beck 2011;Tarrow 2012;Goldstone 2014a;Ritter 2015); the vulnerability of certain types of regime, particularly neo-patrimonial orders that combine personalized rule with a degree of legal-rational functioning (Eisenstadt 1973;Mann 1984;Chehabi and Linz eds. 1998;Goodwin 2001;Goldstone 2009;Bunce and Wolchik 2011); and a systemic crisis rooted in a conjuncture of political-coercive, (relative) economic, and symbolic crisis (Halliday 1999;Goldstone 2003;Lawson 2004;Foran 2005;Goldstone 2014a).…”

Section: Revolution and Non-violent Protestmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revolution, Nonviolence, and the Arab Uprisings*

Lawson¹

2015

Mobilization: An International Quarterly

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This article combines insights from the literature on revolutions with that on nonviolent protest in order to assess the causes and outcomes of the Arab Uprisings. The article makes three main arguments: first, international dynamics were the precipitant cause of the Arab Uprisings; second, because the region's 'neo-patrimonial' regimes were particularly vulnerable to shifts in state-military relations, the hold of elites over state coercive apparatuses played a decisive role in determining the outcomes of the revolutions; and third, the organizational character of the protest movements, including their use of information and communication technologies, helped to raise levels of participation, but limited their capacity to engender major transformations. Of particular interest to scholarship on non-violent movements, the article demonstrates the ways in which, as the revolutionary wave spread around North Africa and the Middle East, protestors in states outside the original onset of the crisis overstated the possibilities of revolutionary success. At the same time, regimes learned quickly how to demobilize their opponents. The lesson is clear: the timing of when movements emerged was just as important as their organizational coherence and levels of participation. There are two main ways of approaching the study of revolution in the contemporary world -and they are both wrong. On the one hand, revolutions appear to be everywhere: on the streets of Cairo and Damascus; in the slogans of anti-austerity protestors; and in the potential of new technologies to reshape people's lives. But can revolution really be popular protest, campaign against inequality, and technological breakthrough at the same time? This issue is further complicated by a second equally common, but apparently contradictory, meme -that revolutions are irrelevant to a world in which the big issues of governance and economic development have been settled. As Arno Mayer (2001: 3) puts it, in the contemporary world, revolutions appear to offer 'little promise and pose little threat'. With the passing of state socialism in the Soviet Union, it is supposed, revolutions appear more as relics of a bygone age than as important points of reference. Both of these positions are untenable. While the former makes revolution so all-encompassing that it becomes an empty term without substantive content, the latter is overly complacent, failing to see the enduring appeal of attempts to overturn existing conditions and generate alternative social orders. The Arab Uprisings of 2011 are the latest reminder of the consistent appeal of revolutionary struggles. Contact detailsTo point to the enduring appeal of revolutionary struggles does not mean homogenizing the experience of revolutions. Revolutions are not static objects of analysis, but processes that change in modality across time and place (Motyl 1999: 23; McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001: 13; Tilly 2006: 9). Revolutions have been conducted by nationalists in Algeria, communists in Afghanistan, Russia, and...

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Theories of revolution and revolution without theory

Cited by 80 publications

References 0 publications

Small state, big revolution: geography and the revolution in Laos

Small state, big revolution: geography and the revolution in Laos

Revolutions and the international

Revolution, Nonviolence, and the Arab Uprisings*

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