Revolutions of the Late Twentieth Century

Departing from the “Great Revolutions” tradition, Jack A. Goldstone, Ted Robert Gurr, and Farrokh Moshiri have drawn together a variety of area experts to examine contemporary revolutionary crises in light of recent social and political developments. The result is a wide-ranging compendium of cases placed in current theoretical perspective.The book opens with a survey of theories of revolutionary conflict, ranging from Marx and Engels to Skocpol and Tilly. Next, Goldstone lays out an analytical framework for understanding contemporary revolutions that traces a sequence from processes of state breakdown and the ensuing struggle for power to the process of state reconstruction. The framework is then used to examine ten very different revolutionary crises—in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Iran, Poland, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Cambodia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza. Factors implicit in state breakdown and reconstruction such as political and fiscal crisis, elite divisions, and mass mobilization are highlighted in the analyses of the individual crises.The concluding chapter, coauthored by Gurr and Goldstone, compares the origins, dynamics, and outcomes of the revolutions in the case studies and applies the findings to ongoing and prospective cases. Taken together, the contributors' and editors' work shows that the end of the cold war does not signal the end of revolution and that with proper attention to certain conditions and factors, revolutionary “surprises''—such as those in Eastern Europe—need not catch us off guard in the years ahead.THIS PARAGRAPH FOR TEXT PROMOTION ONLYAppropriate for upper division courses in revolutions and social movements, Revolutions of the Late Twentieth Century is fully documented, illustrated with maps, figures, and comparative tables, and bolstered by chronologies to accompany each country-specific chapter.