Synopses & Reviews
In this collection of essays, Theda Skocpol, author of the award-winning States and Social Revolutions (CUP, 1979), updates her arguments about social revolutions. How are we to understand recent revolutionary upheavals in countries across the globe? Why have social revolutions happened in some countries, but not in others that seem similar? Skocpol shows how she and other scholars have used ideas about states and societies to identify the particular types of regimes that are susceptible to the growth of revolutionary movements and vulnerable to transfers of state power to revolutionary challengers.
Review
This work is very useful for the student reader because of its presentation of fundamental views in the field and as an introduction to conflicting major theories in the study of social revolution. It is of interest to the most sophisticated reader in its assertion of Skocpol's views. It is a worthwhile addition to a university library as well as the private one of any person interested in social revolution." Perspectives on Political Science"...provides an extremely useful companion to [Skocpol's] thinking. The experience of reading it is an unusual one, for Skocpol writes with equal intelligence, grace and lucidity." International Affairs"...one of America's leading comparative sociologists refines and expands the arguments she made in her 1979 book, States and Social Revolutions, to account for the numerous Third World revolutions since then....consistently sophisticated and informative." Foreign Affairs"A sophisticated research design using Boolean qualitative comparative analysis is used to examine more than two dozen instances of attempted armed insurrection in Latin America since 1956 to account for successes in Cuba and Nicaragua and failures everywhere else. Skocpol uses these works to assess what has been learned about social revolutions to date....This is a well-chosen set of Skocpol's writings on revolution over three decades, and it can be read profitably in whole or in part by all who would follow in her footsteps." John Foran, American Political Science Review
Synopsis
Regimes that are susceptible to the growth of revolutionary movements and vulnerable to transfers of state power to revolutionary challengers are identified in this updated sequel to the author's award-winning 1979 book States and Social Revolutions.
Table of Contents
Introduction; Part I. Doing Macroscopic Social Science: 1. A critical review of Barrington Moore's social origins of dictatorship and democracy; 2. Wallerstein's world capitalist system: a theoretical and historical critique; 3. The uses of comparative history in macrohistorical research; Part II. Making Sense of the Great Revolutions: 4. Explaining social revolutions: in quest of a social-structural approach; 5. Revolutions and the world-historical development of capitalism; 6. France, Russia, and China: a structural analysis of social revolutions; Part III. A Dialogue about Culture and Ideology in Revolutions: 7. Ideologies and revolutions: reflections on the French case, byWilliam H. Sewell, Jr; 8. Cultural idioms and political ideologies in the revolutionary reconstruction of state power; Part IV. From Classical to Contemporary social revolutions: 9. What makes peasants revolutionary?; 10. Rentier state and Shi'a Islam in the Iranian revolution; 11. Explaining revolutions in the contemporary Third World; 12. Social revolutions and mass military mobilisation; Conclusion: reflections on recent scholarship about social revolutions and how to study them.