Week 14: Revolutions

The bulk of this chapter is devoted to the dis- cussion of revolutions as a distinct empirical political phenomenon. It segues into this dis- cussion from a brief review of revolutions as a subject of political sociology, mostly relying in it on the entry in Wikipedia, which is likely to be read by most interested undergraduates. The entry (last accessed on 21 May 2016), clearly, is written by a competent political sociologist, perhaps a graduate student, who knows the field well, and it appears apposite to start this Handbook chapter with a descrip- tion of the state of the art from the premier rival source of knowledge.

What will a student learn about revolutions, if she or he looks where students in most sociology classes today are apt to look first? One will surely learn that they have preoccupied thinkers about political questions for a very long time, and formed a central subject in sociology from the very inception of the discipline around the begining of the twentieth century. ‘A revolution’, begins the article, ‘is a fundamental change in political power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time when the population rises up in revolt against the current authorities’ (emphasis added). The fact that this was, apparently, already the view of Aristotle may be somewhat surprising, suggesting as it does that our fundamental view of the phenomenon has not changed despite all the experience of the last 2,500 years and that the vast literature on the subject, in sociology among other disciplines, consists mostly of reiterations, at best adding to it some examples unknown in Ancient Greece. At the same time, this also implies that the interest in the subject is not likely to wane. Indeed, the article continues, ‘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’ (emphasis added). According to Aristotle, they all represent varieties of two types: ‘1. A complete change from one constitution to another [and] 2. Modification of the existing constitution’