No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945–1991

Product Description
No Other Way Out provides a powerful explanation for the emergence of popular revolutionary movements, and the occurrence of actual revolutions, during the Cold War era. This sweeping study ranges from Southeast Asia in the 1940s and 1950s to Central America in the 1970s and 1980s and Eastern Europe in 1989. Goodwin demonstrates how the actions of specific types of authoritarian regimes unwittingly channeled popular resistance into radical and often violent directions. By comparing the historical trajectories of more than a dozen countries, Goodwin also shows how revolutionaries were able to create opportunities for seizing state power.
Review
"This delightful and engaging book, crammed chock-full of thought-provoking and challenging ideas, is one of the finest books on revolutions written to date and merits the wide consideration and regard it will receive." American Political Science Review

"Jeff Goodwin has written the theoretically richest account of challenges to regimes around the world in the Cold War era. Covering cases from Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe in deft style, with an invaluable annotated bibliography, this is a major addition to the comparative study of revolutions." Jack A. Goldstone, University of California, Davis

"No Other Way Out is one of the most brilliant, important, and accessible books ever written on the subject of revolutions and revolutionary movements. I will assign this book to my students so they can discover what an outstanding sociology of revolutions should look like." Timothy Wickham-Crowley, Georgetown University

"A very ambitious work...Goodwin does a good job of laying out the nature of state-centric theory as well as alternative arguments that might explain revolutionary movements or cirumstances--those of modernization and class-based theories. He is extraordinarly careful in his exposition...Goodwin clearly has mastered a great deal of literature, not only on the subject of revolutions and revolutionary situations, but on a whole range of historical materials dealing with the countries under his microscope. He provides an excellent annotated bibliography at the end of the book, one that many graduate students and scholars will find enormously useful." Mobilization
Book Description
States and Revolutionary Movements provides a powerful explanation for the emergence of popular revolutionary movements, and the occurrence of actual revolutions, during the Cold War era. This sweeping study ranges from Southeast Asia in the 1940s and 1950s to Central America in the 1970s and 1980s and Eastern Europe in 1989. Goodwin demonstrates how the actions of specific types of authoritarian regimes unwittingly channeled popular resistance into radical and often violent directions. By comparing the historical trajectories of more than a dozen countries, Goodwin also shows how revolutionaries were able to create opportunities for seizing state power.
About the Author
Jeff Goodwin, Professor of Sociology at New York University, is the editor and author of many books and articles on social movements, revolutions, and terrorism, including "No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945 1991"(Cambridge University Press, 2001) and the forthcoming "Why Terror?"