Revolution as applied to social change originally referred to the overturning of a government but not to changes that ushered in a new age. From the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries, Europeans spoke of "revolutions" when one form of government gave way to another, as when a monarchy was overthrown or restored or a city-state’s government shifted between republican and aristocratic rule.
The notion of political revolutions as overturning tradition, creating a new era, and thereby bringing about progress was first used toward the end of the eighteenth century to describe the overthrow of monarchies and the founding of national republics in the United States in 1776 and France in 1789. Inspired by the intellectual movement of the Enlightenment, which aimed to make reason the arbiter of governing and social institutions, opponents of traditional authority saw these events as breaking the shackles of tradition and ushering in a new era of freedom under rationally conceived political institutions. Thomas Paine, in The Rights of Man (1791), referred to both the "American Revolution" and "The French Revolution" in this manner.
Since the eighteenth century, the notion of revolution as marking a major break with the past, destroying old ways, and bringing progress has been applied to numerous historical and intellectual events. Archaeologists call the prehistoric onset of agriculture the Neolithic Revolution. In economics, the shift from agricultural to industrial economies is called the Industrial Revolution. In science, major shifts in leading theories are commonly labeled scientific revolutions, such as the Darwinian Revolution or the Copernican Revolution, while the term "Scientific Revolution" is used to denote the shift from traditional natural philosophy to experimental science that occurred from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. More recently, agronomists have used the term "Green Revolution" to describe the widespread adoption of high-yield grains and artificial fertilizers in East Asia. In military tactics, the introduction of stealth, satellite, and laser technologies has been labeled "the revolution in military affairs." Almost every area of human endeavor thus has come to use the term "revolution" to mark relatively sudden, progressive change.
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL REVOLUTIONS: HISTORICAL PATTERNS
The most common use of the term revolution in the social sciences is to designate major, sudden changes in political regimes, especially when carried forward through mass demonstrations or popular revolts and accompanied by attacks on government officials or elites, on public or private property, or on symbols of elite status or political authority. Such events are called "political revolutions" when they alter government institutions but leave much of the economic and social structure of society intact; they are called "social revolutions" (or "great revolutions") when they alter not only government structures but also the organization of the economy, the social hierarchy, the role of religion, and major symbols and beliefs regarding authority and national identity.
Revolutions are a form of internal political conflict, related to popular rebellions, civil wars, or coups d’etat. Revolutions usually include one or more of these events; but these events, by themselves or in combination, do not constitute a revolution (or attempted revolution). What defines revolution is not merely challenges to political authority or contests for power but efforts to change a society’s major political or economic or religious institutions.
Although the term is relatively new, revolutions can be identified in history as far back as ancient Egypt, where the Old Dynasty was overthrown amid popular revolts and the pharaoh was replaced by committees of notables. In classical Greece and Rome, and in medieval European city-states, political conflicts often led to a monarchy being overturned and replaced by a republic, or a republic being overthrown and replaced by a monarch or tyrant. Another form of revolutionary movement that arose in many parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa—from the early days of Christianity to the White Lotus rebellions in eighteenth-century China—were religiously inspired movements that sought to replace secular authorities with rule by a charismatic savior or a community of "saints."
The distinctively modern idea of revolution that developed in the eighteenth century was to see revolutions as permanent and progressive changes in the entire social order, changes that replaced outmoded and unjust political, economic, religious, and social institutions with a new social organization based on reason. This kind of revolution has since taken several forms.
Constitutional revolutions sought to replace traditional monarchies or empires with republics bound by newly written rules that would limit state power, end the privileges of hereditary elites, and confer rights and responsibilities on citizens. Major examples include the American Revolution (1776); the French Revolution (1789); the Revolutions of 1848 in France, Germany, and Austria; the Turkish Revolution of 1919; the Iranian Revolution of 1905; and the Chinese Republican Revolution (1911).
Anticolonial revolutions aimed to end rule by foreign countries, drawing on nationalist identities to inspire resistance and the foundation of new institutions of local self-rule. In many cases, nationalist traditions were in fact newly developed by elites, and in some cases self-rule became rule by local elites rather than citizen-based democracy. Major examples include the Latin American revolutions (1808-1828), the Vietnamese (1954) and Algerian (1962) revolutions, the Indian independence movement (1949), and the Mozambique and Angolan revolutions (1974).
Fascist revolutions also drew on nationalist traditions but used them to mobilize mass support for the replacement of weak monarchies or republics with authoritarian regimes. Major examples include Italy (1921) and Germany (1933).
Communist revolutions, inspired by the historical theories of Karl Marx, aimed to overturn existing regimes and replace them with one-party states that abolished private property. They created dictatorships that destroyed economic elites "in the name of the people." Major examples include Russia (1917), China (1949), and Cuba (1959).
Antidictatorial revolutions, provoked by the excessive corruption or depredations of modernizing dictatorships, aimed to create new regimes based on constitutions or one-party states. Major examples include Mexico (1911), Nicaragua (1979), and the Philippines (1976).
Some revolutions combined these features; for example, the Vietnamese revolution was anticolonial and Communist. Other revolutions were distinctive and fit none of these categories; examples include the South African anti-apartheid revolution (1994), which replaced a racially exclusive regime with a multiracial democracy, or the Iranian Islamic Revolution (1979), which replaced a modernizing dictatorship with an elected government that was overseen by nonelected religious leaders.
The last several decades have seen the emergence of yet another kind of revolution, the "people power" or "color" revolutions—so termed because popular demonstrations toppled dictators, not by mass violence, but instead by rallying huge crowds around symbols of national unity and popular opposition, which were mainly colored symbols such as yellow or orange ribbons, roses, or tulips. Examples include the Philippines (1976), Ukraine (2004), Georgia (2003), and Kyrgyzstan (2005). Other examples include the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia (1989) and the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon (2005).
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL REVOLUTIONS: CAUSES, PROCESSES, OUTCOMES
Despite their varied nature, social and political revolutions have been generally rooted in a similar set of causes. These are: (1) a crisis of state authority, often rooted in fiscal problems, military pressures, a succession crisis, or severe corruption, though it can also reflect the rise of religious or nationalist grievances against the ruling regime; (2) major divisions among and defections by the official, military, economic, and/or religious elites of the state, weakening the state and providing leadership to the opposition; (3) economic conditions that are perceived as unjustly imposing hardships on workers or peasants, and that the state is held responsible for causing or failing to ameliorate; and (4) a broad culture of opposition, which unites different social and political groups around a set of ideologies and symbols that produce antistate coalitions among diverse groups and that justifies and encourages efforts to oppose the regime. Such a culture of opposition generally draws on both historical memories of resistance and modern ideologies that depict the injustices of the current regime. In some cases, a fifth condition is important: international conditions, alliances, or conflicts that weaken the power of the ruling regime and offer opportunity or support to opposition movements seeking to challenge state power.
The presence of these conditions is rarely, if ever, created simply by the efforts of revolutionary movements. Rather, such movements create some conditions, exacerbate some conditions once they begin, and take advantage of others. In many cases, the ruling regime itself creates the conditions for revolution by blundering into military or fiscal crises, alienating elites, and forging a culture of opposition by engaging in repression of opponents that is widely seen as unjustified or excessive. Revolutions thus often arise unexpectedly, as neither states nor revolutionaries expect to create all these conditions; rather, a combination of actions by state leaders, elites, and revolutionary movements, plus shifting international or economic conditions, creates the necessary conjunction.
Once a revolution begins, the process of revolution can be long drawn out. Even where the central government collapses quickly, the conflicts that ensue among moderate and radical groups contesting for power, or between the new revolutionary state and recalcitrant regions or groups, can lead to civil war, as in France, Russia, and Mexico. It thus may be a decade or more before a stable revolutionary government is established.
Alternatively, revolutionary movements may gradually establish themselves in remote regions of the countryside, patiently winning allies and extending their zones of control, and waiting for weakness and defections from the ruling regime. In such cases, although the revolutionary regime may take years or even decades to come to power, once the central government has fallen the new regime is often battle-hardened and ready to suppress its remaining foes and quickly take control of the country. This was the pattern in the Chinese and Cuban Communist revolutions.
Where the process of revolution involves drawn-out struggles for power, such processes generally favor the rise of more extreme, radical groups. These groups are often more ruthless in attacking their enemies and better able to rouse popular support by claiming more truly to embody new national identities and to be more devoted to popular demands for rapid change. Revolutions thus typically begin with a mix of moderate and radical groups in opposition to the regime; yet in the course of struggles for control of the new revolutionary state, more extremist groups tend to win out and banish or destroy the moderate opposition. Eventually, however, the regime becomes more stable and conservative, seeking mainly to conserve its power and privileges.
In some cases, the conflict between moderates and radicals persists, leading to a "second phase" of radicalism. In this phase, radicals come to worry that the original revolutionary impetus has been lost and that current officials in the revolutionary regime have become conservative; they therefore launch a renewed set of radicalizing policy initiatives. This often takes place one or two decades or more after the onset of the revolution. Examples include the Jacksonian Revolution in the new United States, the Proletarian Revolution launched by Mao Zedong in China, the radical and nationalizing policies undertaken by Lazaro Cardenas in Mexico, and the radical foreign and nuclear policies backed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in modern Iran.
The process of revolutionary conflicts can thus stretch over many decades. In France one can argue that the conflicts among republicans and monarchists were not settled until the defeat of Napoleon III by Prussia in 1870, almost a century after the French Revolution had begun. In China, the conflicts among republicans, warlords, Maoist radicals, and economic moderates lasted from 1911 to at least 1989.
While the causes of political and social revolutions are basically similar, the outcomes of revolutions vary greatly. In some cases, revolutionaries start with, and maintain, relatively moderate and focused goals of political change. Examples include the American Revolution (1776), the Latin American Revolutions (1808-1826), and the Philippines Revolution (1996). In other cases, whether through internal or external struggles in defending their revolutionary program or through ideological inspiration, revolutionaries come to embrace a more radical program of economic and social transformation, as occurred in Russia, China, Cambodia, and Cuba.
The political nature of revolutionary regimes also varies. In some cases, revolutionary leaders have been genuinely committed to achieving democracy and guided their new regimes to that goal. Examples include the United States, South Africa, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and the Philippines. In other cases, revolutionary leaders placed a higher value on staying in power or maintaining the revolutionary regime in the face of powerful threats; in these cases revolutionary regimes swiftly moved toward one-party or personal dictatorships. Examples include France, the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Mexico, and Algeria. In some cases, the revolutionary outcomes remained mixed and unclear for some time, as with Russia’s anti-Communist revolution of 1981 (first moving toward, then away from democracy), or Nicaragua’s Sandinista Revolution of 1979 (first moving away, then toward, democracy).
In sum, once begun, revolutions have a wide variety of lengthy trajectories and varied outcomes. It is rarely possible to be certain in advance what those outcomes will be; instead, domestic and international struggles to defend the revolutionary regime almost inevitably reshape it, so that eventual outcomes are more a result of continuing processes and struggles than of a prior plan or the conditions of the former regime.
REVOLUTIONS OF IDEAS AND RELATIONSHIPS: GLOBALIZATION, MODERNIZATION, EXPECTATIONS
Although there were many national and anticolonial revolutions in the twentieth century, these events occurred against a backdrop of general, globalizing change. Some of these changes include substantial gains in life expectancies around the world, huge rises in living standards in developed countries, and vast increases in the flow of people, goods, capital, and information across and within national boundaries.
One result of these changes has been a "revolution of rising expectations." This refers to a major shift in how people in poor regions consider their own circumstances. In earlier times, most poor people considered how they lived in comparison to that of their parents, grandparents, and immediate neighbors. How wealthy landowners, nobles, or businessmen lived was of little concern. However, rapidly rising material wealth in developed countries, plus the flow of information and communications in the form of television, movies, CDs, and travel, have made poorer regions cognizant of the much higher living standards and the progress of democracy elsewhere in the world. This has led to a revolution of "rising expectations," such that even poor people in developing countries now expect their governments to bring material improvements to their locale and provide access for participation.
This revolution of rising expectations can, in some circumstances, feed into political movements of rebellion and revolution as well. Where governments are perceived as actively blocking improvement, as unjustly repressing political expression or social or economic opportunities, then oppositions may mobilize for rebellion. When such states are weakened, elite defections occur, and international conditions are favorable, revolutions in ideas can fuel revolutions in politics. Thus, the age of revolutions is likely far from over.
