Since the English Civil War in the 17th century, the word “revolution” has raised the hopes of many for a better world, all the while earning the hostility of the haves and scaring the powerful. Is this still true today, after the Cold War, with the coming of globalization and the rising perils of life on the planet? Though none of us can find the answer, as we move toward an uncertain future it seems wise to reflect on what we do know about revolutions.

Defining Revolutions

As a scholar of revolutions, the best definition I have come across is that of Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol, whose States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge University Press, 1979) really inaugurated the serious study of the subject in the United States. Skocpol argued that “[s]ocial revolutions are rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structures; and they are accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts from below” (page 4, emphasis added). This definition, while not perfect or unambiguous, underlines the constellation of three factors – political change, economic and social transformation, and mass participation – as the hallmarks of revolution. It doesn’t prejudge the means of a revolution-though the French, Russian, Chinese, and most of the other great revolutions of the twentieth century in Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua involved either armed insurrections or guerrilla wars, there were still revolutionary movements that initiated revolutionary transformations without resorting to violence. The election that brought Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity coalition to power in 1970, or the 1979 toppling of the Shah of Iran through massive unarmed street demonstrations and a determined general strike in the oil sector are both examples of peaceful revolution.

Our preferred definition also allows us to see how rare such thorough revolutions have been in world history, as the following nine cases from seventeenth-century England to the simultaneous 1979 events in Iran and Nicaragua constitute virtually the entire set of successful social revolutions (“success” here defined as taking power and holding onto it long enough to start the deep transformation of polity, economy, society, and sometimes deeply held cultural orientations). One might add Guatemala from 1944 to 1954, Bolivia between 1952 and 1964, Jamaica under Michael Manley between 1972 and 1980, Grenada 1979-83, and the more radical anti-colonial triumphs in Algeria, Vietnam, Mozambique, Angola, or Zimbabwe to the list. However, it would still come to less than 20 social revolutions in the last 300 years. One revolution every fifteen years or so across the entire world is not much of a trend. There have been, of course, many more attempted revolutions, and another handful of what we might call mere political revolutions, as in 1911 China, 1986 Philippines and Haiti, 1994 South Africa, or Zaire in 1996. However most of these cases were of the toppling of a monarch or dictator without deep social change. The dismantling of apartheid in South Africa has the greatest claim to a social revolution, but the majority of the population still waits for the arrival of deep social and economic improvements. Finally, there have been a few influential experiments with revolution from above, such as the nineteenth-century Meiji Restoration in Japan, Atatürk in 1930s Turkey, Nasser in 1950s Egypt, or the progressive generals who ruled Peru between 1968 and 1975, which have led to profound social change but lacked the popular participation that makes a social revolution so noteworthy. Additionally, since the overthrow of revolutionary communist states in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (which along with Iran broke the mold of left-wing liberation movements in some fascinating new ways), we have witnessed the purely political revolutions of Georgia (the Rose Revolution) in 2003, Ukraine (the Orange Revolution) in 2004, and Kyrgyzstan (the Tulip Revolution) in 2005. These “colored” revolutions were forms of popular mobilization, often supported by outside interests, which promised radical liberal reforms, open elections, and redress of internal corruption including alleged electoral fraud of incumbent political elites.

Therefore, these definitional issues matter, if we are to seek meaningful patterns among cases, and try to find some general threads of one kind or another, in the historical record and the contemporary world. Such questions as whether revolutions must be “progressive” to qualify as such, do they have to be brought about by masses and not elites, and whether ideological change is a necessary component of revolutions, hinges on one’s definition. Personally, I shall argue that revolutions must be “progressive” movements of the masses, often, if not always, resulting in ideological change.