How have revolutions been traditionally studied

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How have revolutions been traditionally studied?

• Bernardo Aguilar-Gonzalez

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Social Movement Theory (De Fronzo)

• Social Movement
• Persistent and organized effort
• Large number of people
• Bring about or resist social change (form
  existing social policies or traditions)
• Examples
• Progressive antislavery movement, anti Vietnam
  war movement, civil rights movement,
• Conservative pro-life and anti-pornography
  movement etc.

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• Classification based on the extent of the change
• Reform movement Changes limited aspects of a
  society
• Revolutionary movement Alter drastically or
  replace totally existing social, economic or
  political institutions

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The issue of means

• Violence
• Terrorism the use of force to intimidate for
  political purposes
• Revolution
• Peoples war All the people support and fight
  the established order
• Guerrilla warfare Mobile warfare involving small
  units of combatants operating behind enemy lines
• Counter insurgence

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What is the social context that we are looking at?
The use of violence in revolution is usually
related to Marxist ideas of historical
materialism and class struggle
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Coalbrookdale
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London A PilgrimageGustave Doré and Jerrold
Blanchard
London is all too charged with misery. The mighty
capital comprehends whole townships of the almost
hopeless poor. You step out of the Strand into
Drury Lane or Bedfordbury out of Regent Street
by the East, into the slums of the shirtless out
of the Royal Exchange into Petticoat Lane nay,
out of the glittering halls of Parliament into
the Alsatia that--diminished, but not
destroyed--lies, a shame and scandal, behind
Westminster Abbey. The Devil's Acre skirts the
Broad Sanctuary. But, a great hospital faces St.
Stephen's and sits, a comely presence by the
river side, within the shadow of the Lollard's
Tower. The silver fringes are deepening from day
to day round the cloud whereon we have traced the
acuteness of London misery.
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Marx 101

• Historical Dialectical Materialism
• Social relations and History are defined by the
  forces of production and power is defined by
  their ownership.
• Class structure
• Surplus or Value added is appropriated by
  capitalists.
• Social control and oppression-Class struggle
• Revolution is the only means of change to
  establish social property and evolve toward a
  communist situation

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means

• Peaceful means
• e.g.The social democratic idea revolution is
  possible through social reform (in the SPD Karl
  Kautsky, Rosa Luxembourg Reform or Revolution, vs
  Edward Bernstein Evolutionary Socialism).

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Iconic Representation Eisenstein

• Battleship Potemkin
• October

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Left wing and right wing revolution

• Originates in the French Revolution-national
  assembly of 1789.
• The Jacobins were sitting on the left.

• LW Main goal to change social and political
  institutions in order to alter the dominant
  relationships in a society
• RW Restoration of traditional institutions.

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Theories of Revolution

• Marxist
• Revolution is the result of class struggle (based
  on technological and economic change that create
  the conditions)
• Systems
• Revolution will happen when pre-revolutionary
  social structure fail to perform, no matter what
  the cause of the failure
• Modernization
• Revolution is likely to occur when those holding
  state power are unable or unwilling to meet the
  demands of those groups mobilized by
  modernization (no assumption of historical stages
  of development)
• Structural
• Revolution is triggered by objective conditions
  in the social structure
• Purpose Establishment of a new governmental
  system in a less developed society that would be
  able to utilize available resources to counter
  external threats from more advanced nations
• Suggests that his definition resolves the lacking
  characteristics of the others

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De Fronzos critical factors that lead to a
revolution

• Mass frustration resulting in popular uprisings
  among urban and rural populations
• Dissident elite political movements
• With a wide range of ideologies
• Unifying motivations
• Nationalism
• Ant imperialism
• others
• Severe political crisis paralyzing the
  administrative and coercive capacity of the
  state
• Permissive or tolerant world context

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The ones that failed did not have the ingredients
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The case studies of El Salvador and Peru
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Soaccording to De Fronzo

• Do you agree with his assessment of El Salvador?
• How would you evaluate the Shining Path process
  in Peru?

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Schools of thought according to Goldstone (George
Mason U.)

• Natural Histories (1920s-30s)
• General Theories of Political Violence
  (1960s-70s)
• Structural Theories (1970s-80s)
• Functional Theories (1990s)

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Natural Histories

• Based on the English Revolution of 1640, American
  Revolution of 1776, French Revolution of 1789 and
  Russian Revolution of 1917
• Law Like Empirical Generalizations. When and how
  will it happen?

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When and How?
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When and How?
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But

• What are the causes of revolutions?

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General Theories of Political Violence

• Psychological Approach (Davies and Gurr-U. of
  Maryland) Misery breeds revolt
• Social Institutions (Smelser (Stanford U.) and
  Johnson-)- institutional subsystems may change
  and create an imbalance
• Huntingtons (Harvard) Synthesis Modernization
  leads to institutional imbalance because
  education and economic development increases the
  desire for change faster than political
  institutions can promote change
• Resource Mobilization (Tilly-New School for
  Social Research)

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But

• 1- What were the conditions behind the internal
  breakdown of the states? What structural
  conditions determine them?
• 2- Different kinds of societies experience
  different types of social change, sohow can we
  classify these different types of state and
  agrarian relationships and their consequences?

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Structural Theories (Theda Skocpol-Harvard)

• State Weakness
• Conflicts between states and elites
• Popular uprisings
• Peasant revolts
• Peasant solidarity peasant capacity landlord
  vulnerability
• Urban uprisings
• Cost of food and availability of employment tend
  to be triggering factors. Rapid urban growth can
  also be destabilizing.

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SoDe Fronzo is a structuralist, but

• What about the process? Is there no agency beyond
  macro-social structural factors?

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Fourth Generation Structural-Functional Theory
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The Issues of Nationalism and Conjuncture

• The common ideology is that the change proposal
  will be a superior guide to fulfilling the
  material and spiritual needs of the nation.
  Even with Marxism, ideologies were molded to
  national contexts
• Why are certain times better than others?
• Goldstone suggests long waves of population
  growth and prices-imbalance between political
  demands and capacity of government

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So

• What happens when power shifts away from the
  State? Thenrevolution is not possible?

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Jeff Goodwin (NYU)

• Strengths and Limitations of State-Centered
  Approaches to study social revolutions
• Revolutions are unusually state-centered
  phenomena, thus state-centered approaches are
  useful-Do you agree?
• Yet, they have reasonable limitations worth
  studying
• Four Types of Analysis How are they Useful?
• State Autonomy
• Material and organizational capacity to implement
  political agenda
• Political Opportunities
• State Constructionism-State shapes identities,
  emotions, ideas, etc.

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Usefulness?

• No State, no revolution
• The secular struggle between classes is
  ultimately resolved at the political, not at the
  economic or cultural level of society.
• The State is an institutional integration of
  power relationships-it constructs or reconstructs
  localized power relationships.
• Formation of Movements (State Characteristics
  that Help Them)
• Sponsorship/protection of unpopular economic and
  social arrangements
• Exclusion of mobilized groups from power or
  resources
• Indiscriminate, but not overwhelming, state
  violence
• Weak policing capacity and infrastructural power
• Corrupt and arbitrary personalistic rule with
  effect on elites

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Criticisms that Goodwin finds useful or dismisses

• Dismisses
• Societies affect states as much or more than
  states affects societies
• State officials are not autonomous actors
• SC neglects the purposive and cultural dimensions
  of social action
• The distinction between states and societies
  is untenable

• Accepts as useful
• SC does not theorize non-state or nonpolitical
  sources of collective action
• Associational networks
• Material Resources
• Collective beliefs and discourses

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This is why we need to study the new ways that
revolutions are understood by incorporating those
factors