How And Why Do Revolutions Either Succeed Or Fail?

For many of the most powerful nations of today, revolutions act as milestones in their national history, marking a break at which they could achieve their current form, or a significant development towards it, its leaders continuing to be venerated. As a result they have been a massive area of interest for historians and political scientists alike. Revolutionary regimes have been impressively stable, with some of the longest lasting regimes of the past century, and most established political systems (both democratic and authoritarian) coming about as a result of revolution. This is surprising one of the key arguments against revolution, put forward by philosophers such as Edmund Burke, is that they lead to instability and chaos. Furthermore, some of the best-known revolutions have not been all that long-lasting the French revolution took less than 15 years to be hijacked by military dictatorship. Countless theories as to why revolutions succeed or fail have been put forward, but no conclusive model has been located, owing to the massive variance in how they occur. A key divide is between those who view revolutions as achieving success due to structural weaknesses or the rational choice of revolutionary actors. The latter argument is more convincing, though perhaps not due to the reasons put forward by its proponents, as well as displaying a degree of synthesis between the two schools of thought. Those who wish to transform society and the extant regime will face a series of ‘barriers to revolution’, structural in nature, but ultimately revolutions only occur after a psychological shift from within a significant segment of the population. Factors such as urbanisation and modernisation thus can play a role in aiding the dissemination of information. Revolutions fail when they cannot build up enough momentum for revolutionary factions to be able to dominate the rest of society.

Modernisation can speed up an attitude change amongst the population, but certainly isn’t decisive in governing the durability of revolutionary political systems. Steven Pincus puts forward an argument that state-led modernisation has been a principle factor in causing revolutions, fundamentally shaping their course. Pincus is specific in this being initiated by the regime in question it would also be possible to suggest that exogenous factors have the same effect. Modernisation is perhaps too broad a process to be singled out as a cause of revolution it involves both the liberalisation of markets and creation of pluralistic institutions, two distinct and potentially exclusive processes. Furthermore this argument is far too ‘statist’, and thus doesn’t sit well in historical scenarios where states were comparatively far smaller. While the ancien regime of pre-revolutionary France certainly dabbled in a degree of modernisation, a causal link between these massive popular uprisings which characterised and drove many parts of the revolution. Government has been very distant from much of the population for much of history in France’s case it was only after the revolution that a significant bureaucracy was created. Furthermore revolutions occur at different stages of modernisation it would be difficult to compare Tunisia in 2011 and Mexico a century ago in terms of governmental attempts at modernisation. It may further be that it is the attempts of new regimes to modernise which are more influential in governing the success new regimes. Overall while these influences accelerated the revolutionary process but changing mindsets and weakening institutions they have not been instrumental in success of revolutions.

A long held cause of revolutions, and a central tenet of Marxism, is the role which class boundaries and creation of new classes have in governing the political system which they inhabit, overthrowing the extant regime if it doesn’t represent their economic interests. This again carries some weight in accounting for why individuals feel disillusioned with the regime, but doesn’t provide a conclusive explanation. This idea has been altered somewhat since Marx formulated it, with some changing this to ‘social groups’ rather than class. This helps to explain revolution in area such as Sub-Saharan Africa, where revolutions are sometimes carried out by competing ethnic groups from similar economic backgrounds. Goldstone takes the economic and demographic explanation of revolutions to its extreme, arguing that Malthusian pressures lead to revolution. This suffers from temporal difficulties as the relationship between population and growth by Malthus no longer effects significant portions of the world. Furthermore, areas such as China may have never suffered them at all, thus seriously denting this argument’s validity as an explanation for revolution here. Economic pressures may help to shape collective action, and unionisation and corporatism definitely provide vehicles through which revolutionary action can be accelerated. In this area Pincus is correct in arguing that it is not the creation of new social classes which shape revolutions but rather their actions economic reliance on the bourgeoisie often produces autocratic regimes for instance. Overall it is clear that new economic and social groups can play some role in shaping the success of revolutions but are not often decisive factors in doing so.

A stronger argument in governing the potential success of regime change is found by studying the strength of its outgoing institutions, and those which replace them. If we take a Weberian view of state power, as holding a monopoly on violence, as well as being able to successfully suppress and eliminate antistate actors, those with the greatest coercive power are least likely to succumb to revolution and later on, counterrevolution. This was evident in the Mexican revolution, where many competing factions existed within Mexico’s borders prior to the revolution. The longevity of the USSR can also perhaps be put down the ability of the regime to put down those who opposed it. In the years after the revolution of 1917 the rebel ‘Whites’ were crushed entirely by the government. It’s fall could also be attributed to a breakup in the distribution of power in the soviet system. This argument has received some criticism Theda Skocpol points out that France, Russia and China all had strong coercive mechanisms prior to revolution. This survives only weak historical probing all three of these revolutions involved a degree of mutiny from the national military, or were preoccupied in foreign wars. Tilly’s analysis of revolutions, that the fundamental cause of revolution is a discrepancy of the performance of a regime and what is demanded of it if we take this argument institutional strength and efficiency represent the first half of this equation. It is important to note that while institutional strength can impact the potential success of a revolution it acts as a passive factor rather than a driver of revolution. Institutions shape the environment and potential barriers to revolution extant in a polity.

Crises, be they economic, geopolitical or environmental, can have a major and sudden bearing on institutional strength, as well as shaping perceptions of the polity in which they happen. Numerous revolutions have happened in the wake of potentially state-shattering events, often in the international sphere. World War One had a major bearing on the Russian revolution, weakening the state financially and reducing its support amongst the populace as a result of conscri ption. The second World War similarly ravaged Chinese state apparatus enough that the revolution of 1948 was comparatively easy. When states have recently suffered large setbacks, and rebuilding is necessary, a new regime perhaps has an advantage, and thus states which began from such a place can build more enduring structures. Revolutions themselves can spark further revolutions, as the events of 1989 and the Arab Spring have shown, and thus are international crises in themselves. China has hence seen mass protest after the fall of the USSR, and have since looked tentatively to events in the Middle East. Crises can thus feed into negative perceptions and lower the minimum criteria for revolutionary change by weakening institutions.

Revolutions require a degree of popular support this means that the populace must know the reasons for revolutionary change and be sufficiently emotive to do something about it. In order for this to happen an intellectual transformation, as well as methods of disseminating this information fairly rapid, must be present. This perhaps tie into the earlier idea of exogenous modernisation. Here the distinction between revolution and leadership change is crucial the former requires ideological transformation. This needn’t be through new ideas (indeed, a blueprint of liberal democracy have been known for centuries), but they must reach a proportion of the population who carry significant impetus to enact them. The classic examples are of course the impact of the ‘Enlightenment’ on the participants of the French and American Revolutions, and the theories of Marx and Engels on the Bolsheviks, Mao and Pol Pot. These ideas allowed for a new ideological based for an incoming regime. What is crucial however is how these ideas were spread, and for a significant enough group within the populace to carry them forward to the new regime. Russia was undergoing significant urbanisation at the time of their respective revolutions, partly as a result of industrialisation the former also seeing a large uptake of students in the late 19th century. In feudal societies ideas can less easily spread due to the limited movement of people between settlements in some areas of Europe passports were required to leave the town in which one lived. When peasant uprisings did occur, as in Britain in 1381 over a proposed poll tax, they could be more easily put down due to having a clear geographical base. With urbanisation and new ideas also came a greater press for spreading such ideas. Today, with the media more democratic than it has been at any point in history, this has proved pivotal in leadership and regime change. Eva Bellin goes as far as to suggest that the rise of social media, as well as satellite TV, as why the Arab spring was only possible in the last decade. The spread of ideas, and in many cases the novelty of them, are key in driving revolutions, and are necessary to understand a psychological interpretation of why revolutions succeed.

Rational choice theories of why revolutions occur also posit reasons beyond that of changing attitudes as explaining when individuals decide to undertake revolutionary and counterrevolutionary action. This decision-making process is crucial in understanding the outcome of revolutions. Almost all revolutions have required the action of an individual or group to organise or initiate events. In Tunisia this was Mohamed Bouazizi, a shopkeeper who self-immolated to highlight as a protest against government corruption. Groups such as the St. Petersburg Soviet have led wider revolutionary action Timur Kuran has come up with a matrix with different thresholds at which people will engage in revolutionary action this revolves around the idea that people will deliberately hide their contempt for a regime until a certain point where revolution appears viable, in a process known as ‘preference falsification’. This carries some weight but Kuran is perhaps simplistic or whiggish in some of his assumptions he sees internal guilt as a driver of revolution for instance. These bandwagon effects further effect the long-term success of revolutions those initially involved with the course of the revolution will later hold revolutionary legitimacy and help to solidify it’s ideals. Overall it is clear that this is a massive short-term driver of revolutionary success.

For revolutions to be successful they therefore require a profound psychological shift in a significant group within a state’s population, as well as sufficient momentum to overcome potential barriers to this. Modernisation and economic development can speed up this process, but they are not crucial to it. Likewise, crises can weaken institutions and alter perceptions but are not a necessary prerequisite. Institutional strength can prove the decisive factor in the success of a revolution, but for them to occur sufficient momentum must first be achieved. Revolutions require a fundamental transformation at all levels of society in order to be successful - this is only possible if enough of its participants buy into a new way of doing things.