Theories of Revolution Revisited: Toward a Fourth Generation? Author(s): John Foran Reviewed work(s): Source: Sociological Theory, Vol.

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Theories of Revolution Revisited: Toward a Fourth Generation?

JOHN FORAN

University of California
Recent developments in sociological theorizing about revolution are surveyed, critiqued, and evaluated in termsof an emergingnew paradigm. Thefirst section assesses the strengths and weaknesses of 1970s theorizing by Tilly, Paige, and Skocpol. A second section takes up themes of state and crisis from 1980s work deepening this tradition. A third section identifiesand discusses recent work in new areas critical of the structuralists,on agency, social structure,and culture. Finally, the shape of a new paradigm based on conjuncturalmodeling of economic, political, and culturalprocesses is suggested with a discussion of Walton and of very recent work by Farhi, Foran, and Goldstone. Since the publication of Theda Skocpol's landmark States and Social Revolutions in the revolutionarily auspicious year 1979, both the literature on the subject and the empirical range of the phenomenon itself have expanded enormously. To cite only the most dramatic events, the last dozen years have witnessed social revolutions in Iran and Nicaragua, watershed political transformations throughout eastern Europe, a valiant attempt at a movement for democratic change in China, and, in spring 1991, the armed overthrow of the Marxist government of Ethiopia. Under the impact of these events-particularly in Iran and Central America-scholars have begun to refine older arguments and to generate new insights and approaches to the understanding of revolution. The purpose of the present essay is to map the coordinates of this recent thinking on the subject, and to argue that the first signs of a new school may be appearing on the intellectual horizon. THE THIRD GENERATION: BREAKTHROUGHS AND LIMITS In two influential review essays from the early 1980s, Jack Goldstone (1980, 1982) attempted to survey the state of the art in the sociology of revolution. He identified three "generations" of theorists: 1) a "natural history of revolutions" school led by comparative historians Lyford P. Edwards ([1927] 1972), George Sawyer Pettee (1938), and Crane Brinton (1938); 2) a second generation of "general theories" of revolution in the 1950s and 1960s, embodied in the work of modernization and structural functionalist theorists such as James C. Davies (1962), Neil Smelser (1963), Chalmers Johnson (1966), Samuel P. Huntington (1968) and Ted Robert Gurr (1970); and 3) in the 1970s, a new generation of structural models of revolution by Jeffery Paige (1975), Charles Tilly (1978), and Theda Skocpol (1979), which built on the work of Barrington Moore Jr. (1966) and Eric Wolf (1969).1 The strengths and weaknesses of the first two generations have been assessed
I am aware that this classificationof theories by generationis problematic,and that the best alternativeis to group the theories by theme or approach.Thus, for example, Goldstone places Tilly in the second generation, although he belongs among the structuralists by both period and perspective. There is no place in the schema for the pioneeringworks of de Tocqueville and Marx, among others. In fact, de Tocqueville anticipatedinsights of all threegenerations-for example, by showing thatthe FrenchRevolutionwas a "natural" outcome of aspects of the Old Regime ([1856] 1955, p. 203), by anticipatingDavies and Gurron rising expectations as a cause, and by anticipatingSkocpol on the outcome of a more strongly centralizedstate. For our purposes, however, Sociological Theory 11:1 March 1993
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aptly by Goldstone (1980, 1982), Aya (1979), and Zimmermann(1983). The natural history school developed elaboratedescriptionsof the stages of some of the major social revolutionsup to their day (often surprisin, y accuratefor later events as well) without a clear theory of why revolutions occurred or what accounted for their outcomes. The generaltheories of the 1960s used social psychological and functionalistmodels to address the "why" question, but were subject to the criticism that their causal variables (relative deprivation, subsystems disequilibria, and the like) were vague, difficult to observe, or hard to measure, or were inferredtautologicallyfrom a retrospectivevantage point. The "thirdgeneration,"in Goldstone's view, representeda significantadvance (this is so, but not unequivocally, as we shall see). Moore and Wolf were crucial precursorsin some important respects. Both moved to the macrosociologicallevel of comparingnational cases in which the key variables included class relations, the state, the international economy, and the spread of capitalism into the countryside. Each avoided a pure structuralism by acknowledging the contingent factors in their respective cases (see Moore 1966, p. 161; Wolf 1969, p. 98), and paid some, if not paramount,attentionto culture as a contributingcause of rebellion. Also, despite the respectivetitles of their books, each analyzedthe roles played by urbanas well as peasantsocial forces. Moore's investigation centered on the relationshipsamong monarchicstates, landed nobilities, and commercial impulsesin agriculture.Peasantrebellionsoccurredin ChinaandRussia, where agriculture was not commercializedand peasants retainedtheir social organization.Fascism was the result in Japanand Germany,where landedclasses commercializedthemselves by keeping peasants on the land. Moore adduced complex combinations of factors to explain the outcome of democracy from revolutionarycivil wars in England, France, and the United States. Moore's classic is ultimately less a study of the causes of revolution than of the origins of the political systems of democracy, fascism, and communism. Eric Wolf focused explicitly on the majorsocial revolutionsof the twentiethcenturyup to the 1960s, framing his six narrativeaccounts somewhat loosely with a collection of rich theoretical leads. He noted foreign pressures, including wars, as a source of crisis for the state in Russia and China. The key factor across cases, however, was the impact of the commercializationof agriculture,as capitalism, coupled with population growth, dislocated customary social, political, and economic arrangements.States and elites suffered crises of legitimation in these circumstances;"tacticallymobile" middle peasants reactedto the combinationof pressureandopportunity by rebelling,often enteringreluctant alliances with disaffected urban radicals. Outcomes varied according to the balance of armed forces and political organizationsin each case (Wolf 1969, pp. 278-301). Both Moore and Wolf were sensitive to the historical variationamong their cases and (interfunctionalism)balked estingly, in a decade dominatedby the grand systems of structural at generalizing their findings into more formal models. Paige, Tilly, and Skocpol went further in this direction; in the process they grafted many of Wolf's and Moore's specific insights onto their models of revolution. Jeffery model of the possibilities of peasant Paige (1975) elaborateda formal economic structural unrest (ratherthan of social revolutions per se). The economic organizationof the rural export sector is the independentvariable:nationalistrevolutions are most likely to occur on migratory-labor estate systems where landlordsown land individuallyand farmwithout extensive capital investment,and where the ruralwork force consists of seasonal migratory economies wage laborers.Socialist revolutionsare probablein decentralizedsharecropping
and the ways in which theoristsmore the characterization of the third generationas a structuralist breakthrough, to search out common themes in recently have both extended and critiquedthis approach,make it appropriate generationalcohorts. These circumstancesalso permit us to highlight the diversity and originalityof particular cases.

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where the same kind of farm is worked by share tenants. In contrastto other economic (the small holding, the commercializedplantation),these are zero-sum land arrangements tenure systems with built-in potential for violent conflicts and organizationof the work force; in contrastwith the commercial hacienda, revolt in these situationsis more likely to lead to permanentchange. Nationalist anticolonial struggles in Algeria, Kenya, and Angola fit the first pattern;socialist upheavalsin China and Vietnam the second. Paige's logical schemas are elegant but neither historicallydynamic nor sociologically holistic, as various critics have pointed out. The state, urbanactors, and the nonexportorientedrural sector are bracketedout of the account, which reduces Third World social structureto a two-class ruralmodel (Disch 1979); agricultural organizationis not a given, but ratherthe product of the world-system, internalpolitics, and other factors (Somers and Goldfrank 1979). The result is a map of the conditions under which certaintypes of social movement may occur, rather than a causal account of the origins of particular revolutions. CharlesTilly, in various works on collective violence generally(1973, 1975, 1978) has "[T]he factors which hold arguedfor a political as opposed to an economic structuralism: of power, alternative under close on the ones. The structure whole, political up scrutinyare, of the of the conduct of the formationof coercion, war, conceptions justice, organization coalitions, the legitimacy of the state-these traditionalconcerns of political thought provide the main guides to the explanation of revolution" (1973, p. 447). His 1978 "contentionmodel" of revolution emphasized the capacity of challengers to state power to mobilize resources (territory,arms, popular allegiance) into a revolutionarycoalition strong enough to bring about a revolutionarysituation (in which two sides claim control of a polity) and ultimately a revolutionaryoutcome (in which the challengerssuccessfully reimpose governmentalcontrol) (1978, pp. 216-17). The model does not investigate in much detail the root causes of revolutionaryoutbreaks, either internal or external to society; ratherit tries to capturethe dynamicsof the process of revolution,once unleashed. The search for causal patternsof social revolutions was pursued in Theda Skocpol's work, States and Social Revolutions, the 1979 capstone of third-generation path-breaking structuraltheories. Skocpol's model is resolutely structuralin at least two senses: 1) it argues for the centrality of analyzing relationships (classes with each other, state and classes, states with each other) and 2) it maintains that revolutions are the product of "objectively conditioned"crises that are not made or controlled by any single group or class (thus her polemical agreement with the bold propositionthat "revolutionsare not made; they come"; (1979, p. 17)). Skocpol also provides the most widely cited recent definition of a social revolution:"Social revolutionsare rapid, basic transformations of a and they are accompaniedand in part carriedthrough society's state and class structures; by class-based revolts from below" (1979, p. 4). Along the way the book covers a tremendousamount of ground:Skocpol argues that the state must be taken seriously as an "autonomousstructure"with interests of its own in societal resources and order that may lead it to act at cross-purposeswith dominantclasses; that John StuartMill's methods of agreement and difference can be applied profitablyto comparative-historical macroanalyses of causal regularities;that the findings of her study of the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions may not be applied mechanicallyto more recent Third World cases (the types of state involved are different)but thatthe generalprinciples,includinganalysis of structural relations among states and classes, are centrallyrelevant. The basic patternemerging from Skocpol's inductive analysis of France, Russia, and China is one of political crisis arising when old-regime states could not meet external challenges (economic or military competition) because of internal obstacles in agrarian and elite relations (inefficiencies in agricultural productionand/ortax mechanisms).Fiscal

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crisis was magnified by elite protests and opened the way for peasant rebellions from below. The rebellions themselves were enabled by the persistenceof communaltraditions of solidarity in France and Russia, and by Communistorganizingefforts in China, all of which resultedin breakdownsof the state. Successful social revolutionshad characteristic outcomes: landed classes lost groundto lower classes and to new state officials; there was (for a time) more popular participationin the state; the states ultimately were more centralizedand strongerin relation to society and other states. These arguments-especially those on the causes of revolutions-have elicited an enormous amount of commentaryand debate. Skocpol has been criticized for comparing states in very different historical and power situationsand also, paradoxically,for failing to generalize beyond her three cases; for elevating the state to the highest level of explanation (Knight 1986, p. 559, note 386 calls this "statolatry");for emphasizing structureat the expense of agency or culture(see, among others, Taylor 1989); for failing to weight properly the contributionof urban forces, or of coalitions generally; for misapplicationsof Millian methodology (see Burawoy 1989; Nichols 1986); for inaccuracy regardingaspects of this or that case (on France, see Goldstone 1984, pp. 709-10). Many of these criticisms are possible because Skocpol often chooses to make her points by exaggeratingthem; thus she is aware of the roles played by ideologies, by urbangroups, and obviously by forces other than the state, but she casts her argumentsin strong terms to highlight their distinctiveness. Thus she opens the way for the various criticisms, most of which are therefore justified to some degree. For our purposes here, Skocpol is of centralimportanceprecisely because States and Social Revolutionsinitiatedthe next round of theorizing; much of this work seeks to deepen the work of the third generation, and anotherpartattemptsto corrector revise it in some fashion. This theorizing-all from the past dozen years-is the subject of the rest of this essay. DEEPENINGTHE THIRD GENERATION: RECENTWORK ON THE STATEAND REVOLUTIONARYCRISES Much research in the 1980s explored precisely what type of state was vulnerable to revolutions. Robert Dix (1984) made a key distinction in noting that "relatively open" regimes, or "regimesruled by the militaryacting in its institutional capacityand in alliance with other key elites," have avoided revolutions, whereas "an isolative, corrupt, antinational, and repressiveregime, especially a personalisticone" tends to be vulnerable(pp. 437, 442). This view has been seconded ably and refined furtherby Jeff Goodwin and Theda Skocpol (1989) and by Timothy Wickham-Crowley(1989a, 1989b). The latter authorsuggests that Che Guevaramay be credited with the thesis that "guerrillasshould never try to unseat elected governments,"advice thathe ignoredfatally in Bolivia in 1967. Goodwin and Skocpol point out that closed authoritarian regimes, whether dictatorships or directly ruled colonies, provide a common enemy for variousclasses because the lower classes are repressedand the middle classes and elites may be excluded from the halls of power. Some controversyhas revolved aroundthe termfor such regimes:Goldstone(1982, to denote the patronage 1986), following Eisenstadt (1978), proposes "neopatrimonial" Mexico, CubaunderBatista, system behindthe modem facade of such regimes as Porfirian the shah's Iran, and Somocista Nicaragua. Matthew Shugart (1989) opts for another Weberianterm-"sultanistic"-to describe regimes that are narrowerthan the dominant class, with unprofessional armies. Farideh Farhi (1990) characterizesthe Iranian and Manus Midlarsky and Kenneth Nicaraguan old regimes as "personalistauthoritarian." Roberts (1985) propose "autonomouspersonalist"for the vulnerablestates of Batista and elite-based regimes in El Salvador Somoza; they contrastthis type with "instrumentalist"

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and Guatemala (likely to be challenged, but unsuccessfully) and with the even less vulnerable "autonomousinstitutional"states of Brazil and Mexico, which can coopt a wider range of class forces to ensure stability (also see Goldstone 1987, p. 5; Liu 1988). Another, smaller stream of research has examined the state's claims to legitimation. Said Amir Arjomand(1988, p. 191) argued that the shah fell from power less because his army collapsed than because the structureof authoritycrumbled. Goldstone's major new study of early modem rebellions in Europeand Asia pushes beyond Skocpol's insight to propose that the state should be consideredautonomous,as an economic, political, and cultural actor "whose strength (and pace of future development)is affected by the tensions-or lack thereof-between state-sponsoredorthodoxy and alternative ideological claims" (1991, p. 463). All of the work cited here on the state advances the agenda of Skocpol's original work on the autonomy of the state, in new empirical and conceptual directions. Vulnerableregimes now can be pinpointedmore accurately;the only caution should be against taking an excessively state-centeredapproach, whereby the state is ruler abstracted from the larger structuresin which it is embedded.2Many a particularistic is not overthrown(Chiang Kai-Shek on Taiwan; Kim Il-Sung in North Korea; Mobutu, among others, in Africa), while others leave the scene in ways that do not qualify as social revolutions (Stroessner in Paraguay; Pinochet in Chile). Therefore it must be recognized that this line of researchhas identified an often necessary, but not sufficient, cause of revolution(a strikingrecent study that identifiesand accountsfor such differences is Snyder 1992). A pertinentquestion bears furtherinvestigation:under what conditions are governmentsunable to use force effectively or to retain the allegiance of key groups in the population? Another fruitful area of work that builds on the third generation is research on the externaldimensionof revolutionarycrises and outcomes. Skocpol (1979, pp. 19-23) drew attentionto the context of internationalcompetitionbetween states and especially to the effects of warfare;these circumstancesforced early modem Europeanstates to centralize, create standingarmies, and tax the population. In analyzingthe causality of the outbreak of social revolutions Skocpol included disadvantagedeconomic positions and military France and in Russia during World War defeat in war (especially in eighteenth-century I). In a more recent article (1988) she discussed the continuingimportanceof international warfarein the postrevolutionary period:the new states used warfareto controland channel the revolutionaryenergies of the populace and to centralize their own power in relation to internalopponents. Skocpol's argumentson internationalpressureshave been challenged empirically and modified analyticallyby Goldstone (1991, pp. 20-21), who argues that war per se is not the key (consider the constant European conflicts of 1688-1714, without revolutions); more important, rising prices and the size of armies made warfare more expensive. Moreover,the cases of rebellion in Englandand the Netherlandscontravenethe thesis of with falling behind more advanced competitors. Goldstone seeks to amend structuralism a temporaldimension:"whereSkocpol sees as the sourceof trouble[in France]a backward economy undone by the cost of wars, I see a backwardtax system (too much a land-based tax system) undoneby the mountingpopulationand inflationary pressuresof the eighteenth century. . . . The structuralblockage pointed out by Skocpol thus had its effects in the context of dynamic forces buffeting the fiscal system" (1991, pp. 250-51; author's emphasis).
2 McDaniel (1991) provides a model for how to avoid this error. The book presents an excellent recent reassessment of the vulnerabilityof autocraticmodernizersin Russia and Iran; it also uncovers the multiple contradictions from above withouttappingthe participatory inherentin modernization potentialof the new classes createdby the process.

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WalterGoldfrank's(1979) study of the Mexican revolutionshifted the locus of external crisis for ThirdWorldcases from unduepressureto its opposite-"a tolerantor permissive world context." Several scenarios may aid revolutionaries:1) when the major outside power is preoccupied by war or internal problems; 2) when major powers engage in rivalry, thus negating each other's ability to influence events; or 3) when rebels receive greateroutside help than does the state. Since Goldfrankwrote this article, the cases of Iran and Nicaragua have suggested yet another type of permissive world context-the perceivedremoval of strong supportfor the repressivepracticesof a dictator,compounded by subsequentpolicy divisions in the core actor. The precise degree to which external factors influence revolutionarysituations is a matterof ongoing debate. Wickham-Crowley (1989b, p. 513) considersthem of secondary importance.In contrast, several of the syntheticperspectivesdiscussed in greaterdetail at the end of this essay-notably those of Walton (1984), Farhi (1988, 1990), and Foran (1990)-consider them central, but effective in slightly differingways. Ian Roxborough's study of exogenous factors in the genesis of Latin American revolutions provides some perceptive leads, one of which is "to decompose the concept of 'dependency' into a numberof dimensions, or differenttypes," suggestingpolitical, investment,mono-export, and financial dependency as operative in different combinations in the cases of the Mexican, Bolivian, Cuban, and Nicaraguanrevolutions. The result was the emergence of nationalist movements aimed at regenerating the country in the face of government acquiescencewith foreign control (Roxborough1989b, pp. 4, 5, 13; also see Roxborough Third World revo1989a). These studies highlight the ways in which twentieth-century lutions differ from the agrarian-imperial cases studiedby Skocpol (Chinabelongs to both groups).

NEW DIRECTIONS:TOWARD A FOURTHGENERATION? The 1980s and early 1990s also have witnessed a resurgenceof interestin themes that the theoristshad neglected. These include the somewhatinterrelated areas of third-generation agency, social structuralconsiderations, and the roles played by culture and ideology in revolutions. In the rest of this essay I examine new developmentsin these areas. I close with some attemptsto synthesize these factorswith third-generation theoriesthat I believe suggest the outlines of fourth-generation theorizingabout revolutions. The vexed issue of agency has entered and exited the theoreticalagenda as times and fashions change. Marx struck a balance in the often-cited Eighteenth Brumaire: "Men [sic] make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly from the past"(1977, p. 300). Subsequentgenerations encountered,given and transmitted of theorists,however, have tendedto come down on one side or the otherof this theoretical divide; voluntaristsstress agency, whereas structuralists emphasize objective conditions.3 In the naturalhistory school, while Brinton and Pettee made much of ideology, Edwards
3 Lenin and Trotsky retainedmore of Marx's ambiguoussophistication.Lenin emphasizedthe importanceof both objective and subjective factors in his 1905 essay "The Collapse of the Second International" (1966, pp. 358-59). Trotsky's history of the Russian revolution contains such rich passages as the following: "The most indubitablefeature of a revolution is the direct interferenceof the masses in historic events. . . . The dynamic of revolutionaryevents is directly determinedby swift, intense and passionate changes in the psychology of classes which have alreadyformed themselves before the revolution."On the other hand, "Entirelyexceptional circumstances,independentof the will of persons or parties, are necessary in order to tear off from discontent the fetters of conservatism, and bring the masses to insurrection" ([1930] 1959, pp. ix-x). The degree to which Trotsky anticipatesmany of Skocpol's key structuralfactors is likewise striking ([1930] 1959, p. xii; also see Burawoy 1989).

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foreshadowedSkocpol in arguingthat Russian communism"was not the result of theory; it was the result of crisis" (Edwards [1927] 1972, p. 203, quoted in Kimmel 1990, p. 48). The psychological reductionismof second-generationtheorists from Gurrto Davies and Johnson is typically criticized as too purposive; third-generation theorists such as reacted with often structuralisms of their own. resolute misunderstood) Skocpol (though the of work the lines Alongside deepening third-generation along alreadynoted, agency has begun to resurface in the concerns of some scholars of the past decade. As Teodor Shanin remindedus acerbicallyin 1986: Social scientistsoften miss a centre-piece of anyrevolutionary struggle-the fervourand that drives revolutionaries and makes them into what anger they are. Academictraining and bourgeoisconventiondeadenits appreciation. The "phenomenon" cannotbe easily into factors, tables and figures. ... At the very centreof revolution "operationalised" lies an emotionalupheavalof moralindignation,revulsionand fury with the powersthe cost. Withinits glow, that-be,such thatone cannotdemuror remainsilent, whatever for a while, men [sic] surpass themselves, breakingthe shackles of intuitive selfconvention,day-to-day convenience,androutine(1986, pp. 30-31). preservation, Scholars are beginning to approachagency anew from two key vantage points: that of actors and coalitions, and that of the role played in motivating these actors by ideas, culture, beliefs, values, and/or ideology. The first of these may be considered under the theme of social structurebecause it is here that the structuralists'concerns with largescale factors such as state and world system intersect paradoxicallywith their critics' emphasis on who makes the revolutions. Attention to social structurethereforefaces in two directions, straddlingthe line between structureand agency. One question has received considerableattention:who, precisely, makes revolutions? The answer has varied over the differentgenerationsof theory. Marx, despite his reputed emphasis on urban workers, noted complex alliances of social forces in his historical studies (see Kimmel 1990, p. 24), as did Lenin ([1902] 1975, p. 111) after him. In the second generation, Huntington(1968, pp. 277, 308) argued that revolutions require an alliance between urban intellectuals and peasants, often united around an ideology of nationalism.Wolf (1969, pp. 289, 296-97) and Moore (1966, p. 479) essentially agreed with this view, althoughall threeemphasizedthe peasantry.In surveyingthe historiography on the French revolution, Skocpol (1979, p. 110) concluded: "Peasantrevolts have in truth attractedless attention from historiansand social theorists than have urban lowerclass actions in revolutions-even for the predominantly agrariansocieties with which we are concerned here. . . . peasant revolts have been the crucial insurrectionary ingredient in virtually all actual (i.e., successful) social revolutions to date, and certainly in the French, Russian, and Chinese Revolutions"(1979, pp. 112-13).4 This statementemphasized the swing of the pendulumback in the opposite directionbecause third-generation theoristssuch as Paige (1975), Migdal (1974), Scott (1976), and Popkin (1979) each had stressed the causal centralityof peasantrevolts. One reason why urban groups systematically were overlooked in the 1970s' studies may have been the dismal record of Latin American urbanguerrillasas contrastedwith the peasants of Vietnam. Research in the 1980s began to documentand insist on the role
4 Skocpol admitsthat "thedifferenturbanindustrialand class structures profoundlyinfluencedthe revolutionary process and outcomes," but she treats these "as backgroundsagainst which the (for me) more analytically importantagrarianupheavals and political dynamics played themselves out" (1979, p. 235). Although she thus acknowledgesurbanforces, they definitelydo not receive the same causal statusas states and peasants;moreover, all of these "factors"are structural ratherthan agentic in Skocpol's work (that is, she downplaystheir subjective components).

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of urbanforces in France (Goldstone 1984); in Cuba, Iran, and Nicaragua(Gugler 1988); in 1640 Englandand in Berlin and Vienna in 1848 (Goldstone 1991, p. 135). Ratherthan alleging the revolutionarycapacity of a single class, however, either across revolutionsor in particular cases, recent scholarsare strivingto producea more balancedaccount. Robert Dix (1984), drawing on Tilly (1973), underlinedthe need for coalitions involving urban as well as ruralforces to overthrowdictatorialstates in ThirdWorld revolutions, notably in Cuba and Nicaragua. Goodwin (1987) noted the same phenomenonthroughoutCentral America, and Gould (1987, pp. 204, 364) for the English revolution. The populist nature of cross-class coalitions has been signaled by Moghadam(1989) and by Foran (1991) on Iran, in which complex alliances among a range of urbanclasses have been requiredto fuel revolutionary outbreaks. Such broad alliances seem to have the best chance for success, but in postrevolutionaryconflicts they tend to fragment into their constituent elements. Finally, Wickham-Crowley'sseveral studies (1987, 1989a, 1991, 1992) have wedded resourcemobilizationtheoryto quantitative techniquesto shed light on the patterns of success and failure among Latin American guerrillamovements of the last 35 years. Wickham-Crowleyviews these movements in terms of an alliance between intellectuals and peasants under certain conditions, including overall degree of social support, type of regime, and reactions by the United States. With respect to the class dimension of social structure, then, the questions are as follows: What classes participatein revolutions, and why? What classes are divided, and how? Ultimately, what patternsexist across cases, and how may these various coalitions be characterized?5 Alongside the long-standingconcern with social class, recent scholarshipis just beginning to theorize and study other central dimensions of social structuresuch as gender, revolutionsis ethnicity, and region. The list of works on the roles of women in particular growing, including those of Norma Stoltz Chinchilla(1990) on Nicaragua;JohnettaCole (1986) on Cuba; Linda Kelly (1987), among others on France;Maxine Molyneux (1985) on South Yemen; Guity Nashat (1982) and others on Iran;and Judith Stacey (1983) on China. Most of these studies focus on women after the revolution. Valentine Moghadam (1990) offers an ambitious comparativesynthesis of the role of women in a numberof social revolutions. She seeks to incorporategender into the sociology of revolution in terms of cultural and ideological struggles over the family and sex roles, noting how gender issues surface recurrentlyduring revolutions to provide revealing insights into revolutionaries'intentions. A usefully complementaryapproach,I believe, would be to locate women in the social structureand to follow the logic of their participationas one would follow any other group, noting its intersectionwith race and class. Similar work in recoveringthe roles of various ethnic groups, such as Afro-Cubans in the Cuban revolution and indigenous peoples in the Mexican revolution, remains to be done. This approachalso awaits comparative study, not to mention synthesis with other principles of social stratification. Regional variationswithin given revolutionshave received somewhatmore attention,with
5 Rational choice theorists have made a mark in this area, as one anonymous reviewer has pointed out. Rationalchoice theory, like the resource mobilizationschool, offers a middle-rangeperspectiveon revolutions, focused on motivations for action (though it is more all-encompassingthan resourcemobilizationin its objects of analysis). These theorists address such issues as the role of perceptions and calculations of success, the reasons why some individuals and groups may participateratherthan others, and the strength of insurgents versus that of the state. Because this theory is cast at a level of explanationboth more general (social action as a whole) and yet more specific (why actors rebel ratherthan what causes revolutions)than the work of the thirdand fourth-generation theoristswho are the subjectof this essay, I omit furtherdiscussion here. Interestedreaders might consult Calhoun(1991), Coleman (1990, pp. 500-502), Friedmanand Hechter(1988), and the collection edited by Taylor (1988).

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excellent cases studies by Alan Knight (1986) on Mexico and William Brustein(1986) on France. Future work must deliver on the promise of paying fuller attentionto ethnicity, gender, and region as well as class in conceptualizingsocial structureand social change. A second major new direction in the recent scholarshiphas been taken in culture and of ideology. Again, this is a response to the purely political and economic structuralisms the thirdgeneration,especially Skocpol's work. In some sense, this, too is a returnto the preoccupationsof theorists as early as de Tocqueville ([1856] 1955, p. 6) on the French or the structural functionalists Enlightenment,Brinton("thedesertionof the intellectuals"), of the second generation. (There seems to be almost nothing completely new in writings on revolution!) Empirically, social historians of particularcases, such as George Rude Hill (1965 and other works), had sought ([1964] 1973 and other works) and Christopher to specify the relative weight of ideas in the French and English revolutions. ThirdgenerationprecursorsWolf (1969) and Moore (1966) had invoked issues of culture and legitimation, but without raising them to causal significance. Already in the 1970s Eisenstadt(1978) had tried to carve out a theoretical-if abstract-place for the role of "cultural orientations" in the makingof revolutions(he had heterodoxreligiousmovementsin mind) and Mostafa Rejai (1973, pp. 33-34) had surveyed the uses of ideology. James Scott (1976) also offered a unique reply to the structuralists'search for the determinantsof peasant revolt. In Scott's view, peasants, who live close to the margins of subsistence, expect a minimumlivelihood from landlordsand a certainamountof justice; violation of these standardsprovokes resentment, resistance, and sometimes rebellion. Tilly likewise of revolution(1978, pp. 151-59, 224made suggestive referenceto "cultural repertoires" 25). When Goldstone surveyed the field in 1982 (p. 204), however, he placed the role of ideology on the "frontiersof research"as an underexploredarea for future scholars to probe. This promise now is reachingfulfillmentin a numberof ways. In 1985, in an important early discussion, William Sewell debated with Theda Skocpol about the precise role of ideas in the Frenchrevolution. States and Social Revolutionshardlyfails to recognize the role played by ideology (1979, pp. 78, 114-15, 170-71, 187, 329-30 note 23), but Skocpol insists that ideologies cannot predict or explain outcomes, rules out new values or goals as relevant to peasant revolts, and believes that ideologies are shaped and contradictedby structuralsituations and crises. Sewell charges Skocpol with failing to process"(1985, p. 58) recognize "the autonomouspower of ideology in the revolutionary contexts" in and with smuggling in ideas under the rubricof differing "world-historical France and Russia. Sewell, invoking the works of Althusser, Foucault, Geertz, and Raymond Williams, calls for a structural, anonymous, and transpersonalanalysis of interestingly, ideology. Such collective human products are capable of transformation; Sewell believes that state, class, and internationalstructuresshould be viewed similarly as human constructions in Anthony Giddens's dual sense of constrainingand enabling action. Sewell then applies this frameworkto the Frenchcase, examining the emergence of contradictoryconceptions about monarchyand sovereignty in the course of the eighteenthcentury.The crisis of 1789 was provokedby state bankruptcy, "[b]utonce the crisis had begun, ideological contradictionscontributedmightily to the deepening of the crisis into revolution"(1985, pp. 66-67). Sewell then proceedsto assess the weight of ideology and war in the making of the Terror,the dynamics of the struggles among competing ideological variantsin terms of a dialogue based on a common stock of concepts, and the need to broaden the definition of revolution to encompass the transformationof "the entiretyof people's social lives" (1985, pp. 71-84). Skocpol's (1985) reply to Sewell shows that her thinking had developed to include a more nuanced considerationof the role of ideas in revolution. Notably, she distinguishes

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nicely between long-standing, anonymous, socially diverse cultural idioms employed by popular groups and the self-consciously elaborated ideologies that politically articulate actorsfashion from the formerfor specific purposes. These conceptionsthen interactwith the structuralsituationsdescribed in her earlier work; the central significance still seems to lie in "struggles over the organizationand uses of state power" (1985, p. 96). This rethinkingby Skocpol flows from her reflections on the case of Iran, which led her to recast her definition of social revolutions as "rapid,basic transformations of a country's state and class structure,and of its dominantideology";here was one revolutionthat "was deliberatelyand coherently made" (1982, pp. 265 (emphasis added), 267). All of this discussion may contain an unansweredquestion: what are the origins of ideas, beliefs, and desires? As Michael Taylor (1989) argued, again specifically with Skocpol, social structuremay explain desires and beliefs, but past actions also explain is the "ultimate" social structures.Neither individualismnor structuralism (only) cause of social change:"Social changes areproducedby actions;social changesrequirenew actions. New actions require changed desires and/or beliefs" (1989, p. 121; author's emphasis). Taylor seems to be arguing that social structureitself must be studied as conditioned in part by culture, and by reference to intentional actions. Culture, in turn, is socially constructedand "made"by actors. Two social theorists who have made conceptualcontributions to understanding the role of culture in social change are Craig Calhoun (1983, 1988) and Carlos Forment (1990). Calhoun has subtly stressed the intersection between the everyday social practices of closely knit communities and the ways in which members constantly draw on living, traditionalcultures, update them to meet new challenges, and engage them to defend themselves against threatening changes. Such actors thus are viewed as "reactionary culturalvalues to wage defensive social struggles. Forment's radicals,"enlisting traditional work extends the "linguisticturn"in Europeansocial theoryinto the study of revolutionary politics in colonial Latin America;this work is organizedaroundthe concept of "political space," the interplay of discourse and power, and the role of cultural representationin political practices. In the process by bringing the concerns of Foucaultand Skocpol into mutualcontact it will perhapscreate a quite novel mode of analysis. Finally, the most recent work of James Scott (1990) provides leads for understanding the performativeaspects of domination and subordinationin the reproductionof power and the elaborationof resistance. His analysis of the infrapoliticsof resistance uncovers a spectrum of activities rooted in shared experiences of domination and issuing in acts ranging from everyday rituals and interactions (gossip, poaching, aspects of popular culture) to overt, large-scale rebellions and social explosions. He brilliantlydeploys the of culturallyand materiallyconstitutedresistance, to shed concept of a "hiddentranscript" light on this range of oppositional activities, although in the end he stops well short of explaining the causes of rebellion (or even the precise origins of the hidden transcripts themselves). Each of these theorists takes useful steps toward creating an independent causal space for culture and the related but distinct concept of ideology; each provides clues for integratingthese elements with a broadersociology of revolution. DISCERNINGTHE SHAPE OF THE FOURTHGENERATION We may close this survey of recent writing in the sociology of revolutions with a closer combines look at severalworks thatsuggest a new, more syntheticapproach.This approach and their supporterswith some of the the strengthsof the third-generation structuralists concerns we have just seen expressed by their critics. Although I can discuss only a

THEORIESOF REVOLUTIONREVISITED

11

handfulof works in any detail here, others alreadydiscussed also provide hints of a new synthesis or go some distance in that direction, includingTilly (1978), Goldfrank(1979), Gould (1987), Goodwin and Skocpol (1989), Wickman-Crowley(1989a and especially 1992, which appearedtoo late for propertreatment here), Roxborough(1989a), Moghadam (1989), and Kimmel (1990). Other useful recent contributionsare made by DeFronzo's (1991) analysis of six case studies and by Aya's (1990) conceptual ground clearing. As Jack Goldstone commented in 1989, the dominantmodel in the study of revolutionis no longer simple class analysis, but a constellation of factors and interactionamong those factors. The metaphorin this approachto history is no longer that of a locomotive, but of a kaleidoscope (Goldstone (1989). We now may examine more closely the various ideas about these factors and interactions. Much of this work was generated by attempts to come to grips with the changing realities underlyingtwentieth-century revolutionsin the ThirdWorld. In this regardJohn Walton's (1984) Reluctant Rebels broke provocative new ground, especially in taking "nationalrevolts" as his object of analysis-that is, "the entire field of insurrectionary processes that lie beyond the (inevitably qualitative)bounds of routine politics" (p. 13). The term thereforeencompasses not only the so-called "greatrevolutions"but also Walton's case studies-the failed Huk rebellion in the Philippines, the fratricidalcivil war known as La Violencia in Colombia, and the anticolonialMau Mau uprising in British Kenya, all dating from the late 1940s to the late 1950s. Walton classifies these together with other revolutions because he argues that first, their causes are similar, and second, the great revolutions resulted in less transformation than is usually thought. To build his own theory, Waltondrawson aspects of four approaches(all from the third generation):the peasant revolt thesis of Scott, Moore, and Wolf; Wallersteinianworldsystem theory; Tilly's conflict theory; and state-centeredapproaches.Walton, however, goes well beyond these approachesto create a new synthesis, based largely on his deep knowledge of the sociology of development. The elements include "(1) the context of uneven development;(2) the conditions of protest mobilization;(3) modernizationcrises and coalitions; and (4) the role of the state" (1984, p. 161). The analysis itself is richer than this list, for it includes consideration of culture and political consciousness: "[E]conomic grievances cannot be separatedfrom the culturalforms in which they are experienced and understood, nor from the political forms in which they are expressed. Economic grievances were necessary conditions, but their mobilizing potential was only realized in the sufficient condition of political organizationrooted in culturaltraditions" (pp. 29-30). In particular,"culturalnationalismwas a key contributorto each national revolt"(p. 155). Anotherintriguingpatternthat emerges from the case studies is the crisis caused by a combination of absolute economic deteriorationand a sharppolitical crackdown on movements that had been making legal gains. The results varied in each case: rebellion never advancedvery far in the Philippinesin the Huk period; it was intermediatein Colombia, with a revolutionarysituationin some regions but no coalescence of forces; it was most advancedin Kenya. In examining who made revolutions, Walton calls for careful analysis of coalitions. He finds support for Wolf's thesis on the middle peasantry and follows Hobsbawm in identifying an urban equivalent (not the most marginal population, but artisans, petty traders, lower civil servants, and labor leaders; 1984, pp. 16, 151). The outcomes followed the patternof outbreaknoted above, with minimal displacementof elites in the Philippines, transformationof the political system but not of the class structure in Colombia, and the hastening of independencein Kenya. Walton focuses more on the state than on society in characterizing outcomes: Kenya is a postcolonial state, Colombiaan associated-dependent state,

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THEORY SOCIOLOGICAL

the Philippines neocolonial. He closes with the astute prediction (for 1984) that in the Philippines, "[T]he political situation is precarious, and it invites a new mass revolt (beyond continuing guerrilla activities) or at least, a coup that could buy time for the initiationof real reforms"(p. 177). Walton's overall accomplishmentin this book is certain, althoughvarious criticisms of the particularscan be advanced. The thesis that revolts and revolutions are similar in causality and trajectory is provocative, but it collapses the successes and the failures without providing more than hints of how to distinguishthem. Waltoncan perhapsclaim plausibly that the Mexican revolution went no fartherthan the Mau Mau revolt, but the argumentworks less well in comparingthe limited consequences of revolts in the Philin Cuba, China, and transformations ippines and Colombia with thoroughgoingstructural even Nicaragua. Among the unexamined hints that might explain such variation is the observationthat in his cases, elite groups left the coalitions, thus weakening them before they could come to power. Also, althoughWaltondeserves credit for linking ThirdWorld revolutionsto the process of uneven development,this concept needs furtherspecification. The negative consequences-inflation, control by landlords, commercializationof agriculture, and urbanmigrationand crowding-are well documented,but less so the develrising gross nationalproductand trade, which opmentalgains in terms of industrialization, are captured better by Cardoso and Faletto's (1979) notion of dependent development. The challenge is to specify more precisely exactly what processes in the changing societies of the Third World touch off revolutions. Finally, the incorporationof culture into the model is a good beginning, but much more work is needed in this area, both theoretically and empirically:examining distinct political culturesamong and across groups, discerning the impact of culture at the various stages of the movement, using it to explain both successes and limits, and so on. These criticisms duly noted, ReluctantRebels achieves an admirabletheoreticalsynthesis and representsa pioneeringattemptto link ThirdWorld conditions to Third World cases of national revolt. Farideh Farhi's study of the Nicaraguan and Iranianrevolutions, States and UrbanBased Revolutions (1990; also see 1988), works along lines broadly similar to Walton's. Building on Skocpol's discussion of state autonomy,Farhilooks at "the changing balance of class forces occasioned by uneven development of capitalism on a world scale" and introduces a "broaderunderstandingof ideology" (1990, pp. 9-10). In both Iran and Nicaragua, internal crises coincided with a permissive world context that activated a multiclass "negative" coalition to overthrow and transformthe state. Farhi approaches outcomes nicely by focusing on "thepolitical strugglesto controland maintainstate power within the constraintsimposed, and the opportunitiesafforded, by the existing economic, political, and ideological structures,and internationalcontext, and the class relations of the revolution itself" (pp. 110-11). In additionto this empiricalfocus on the two most recentThirdWorldsocial revolutions, Farhigoes beyond Waltonin workingout an approachto ideology in revolutions.Drawing on Calhoun(1983), GoranTherbom(1980), and Gramsci(1971), she writes that "cultural practices, orientations,meaning systems, and social outlooks"(1988, p. 249) play a role. Ideology is not "a system of ideas";ratherit is a "socialprocess"involving "knowledgeable actors" which invokes larger cultural systems rather than "consciously held political beliefs":"successfulideological mobilizationalways managesto fuse andcondense several ideological discourses into a single major theme, usually expressed in a single slogan" (1990, p. 84). From feminist liberation theology (Welch 1985) Farhi appropriatesthe memoriesof conflictandexclusion-past suffering, actual intriguingnotion of "dangerous" or imagined instances of resistanceand change (Shi'i imageryin Iran, Sandino's rebellion in Nicaragua). She also analyzes perceptively the legitimationclaims of the old regimes

THEORIESOF REVOLUTIONREVISITED

13

and contradictionsinherent in these (the shah's godlike creator image also made him responsiblefor Iran's problems;Somoza's brandingof all opponentsas communistsgave the term communista positive valuation). Farhi is less strong than Walton in analyzing Third World social structure."Uneven development"is never defined or theorized;indeed, Farhidownplayseconomic and social effects of peripheraldevelopment because these are found in "almost all peripheralformations"in favor of a focus on the state, which she holds primarilyresponsible for the process of class formation (1988, p. 234; 1990, pp. 26, 68, 130-31). As a result we obtain no clear picture of urbanor ruralsocial structurein Nicaragua(1990, pp. 40-41). Iraniansocial structureis conceptualizedalmost entirelyas a process of urbanization rather than accordingto its own ongoing historicaldynamics (1990, p. 68); Farhifocuses on the middle classes, which she calls the "prominent" classes, at the expense of otherkey actors such as the Iranianworking class and the lower classes generally. Overrelianceon the state as the critical variable at the expense of social structureis dangerouseven on its own terms because, as we have seen, such states do not always fall. Even if they do so (eventually), explanationof the timing is a problem. A second areaopen to some criticismis Farhi'sgenerallyexcellent discussion of culture. The case studies focus on religion ratherthan on nationalismor populism. Particularly in Islam. She leaves out of the accountboth Iran, Farhiviews religion as an undifferentiated the secular ideologies and the organizationsthat helped overthrowthe shah and some of the radical socialist and liberal strands within the Islamic movement (perhaps reading backwardsfrom the fundamentalist clerical outcome). Her analysis of Nicaraguacontains a "fusion"of Sandinismo and liberationtheology, which similarly overlooks the heterogeneous use of differentideologies to mobilize differentsectors. As with Walton'sachievement, however, these criticisms should not obscure the conceptualadvances and the neat comparativeanalysis of Farhi's work. Some of these weaknesses are addressedin my own recent(1990) theoryof the outbreak of Third World social revolutions, a comparative analysis of Iran, Nicaragua, and El Salvador.Drawingon earlierwork on developmentand social change in Iran(Foran 1988; also see Foran 1993), the 1990 essay tries to elaboratea more general theory, testing it against revolutionarysuccesses in Iran and Nicaragua,and against stalemated"failure"in El Salvador.This model takes ThirdWorld social structureas a startingpoint, conceived as a complex productof internaland externaldynamics. When preexistingsocial structures are shaped over time by the economic, political, and military pressures exerted by the core powers of the world system, the result (in many but not all Third World countries) is an accumulationprocess that may be called one of dependentdevelopment (Cardoso and Faletto 1979); essentially this is a process of growth within limits. That is, the gains in gross national product, industrial capacity, and trade typically are accompanied by negative consequencesfor a broadrange of classes, includingthe unemployment,inflation, food imports, poor health, and inadequateeducationalfacilities noted by Walton (1984). Reproductionof such a system often requiresa repressive state to guaranteeorder in a changing social setting in which much of the populationis suffering;personalist, exclusionary military dictatorships, as identified by Dix and others, are especially vulnerable to revolutionarymovements from below. Takingthis synthesis of perspectiveswithin the sociology of developmentas a structural starting point found in some Third World nations, I hypothesize that three additional conditions are likely to lead to the outbreakof a revolution. The first of these is termed "politicalculturesof opposition":as far-reachingsocioeconomic change engulfs a society, various sectors of the population"live" this change and interpretit in light of the cultural and value orientationsthey find ready to hand, including ideas of nationalism,socialism,

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religion, and other cultural forms rooted in their society. From these orientationsthey forge a range of political cultures of opposition and resistanceto the repressive state and its foreign backers, which contributein importantways to the capacity to organize social movements. Finally, the timing of revolution is determinedby the emergence of a crisis with two basic features: an internal economic downswing (a discernible worsening of economic conditions beyond the "normal"problems encounteredin most of the Third World most of the time) and, simultaneously,a "world-systemicopening" (analogous to Goldfrank's"permissiveworld context"), a letup of externalcontrols in the core power(s) that creates a momentaryopening for insurgency. The model hypothesizes that if all of these conditionsare met, a revolutionaryoutbreak will occur, in which a multiclass coalition of aggrieved social forces will emerge to carry out a revolutionaryproject. Such a broadcoalition will prove to have the best chances for attaining state power. Once this power is achieved, however, the coalition is likely to fragmentas the constituentclasses begin to struggle among themselves over the shape of the new order. I then test this theory against the cases of Iran and Nicaragua, which broadly confirm it: in both countries, social structurewas affected and diversifiedby dependentdevelopment in the 1960s and 1970s under the repressive regimes of the shah and of Somoza. Those leaders sought to control the elite, weakening it in Iran and alienating it in Nicaragua. In each case, multiple political cultures of opposition arose: in Iran, several strands of Islam as well as secular nationalist, socialist, and guerrilla movements; in Nicaragua, the Sandinistas' synthesis of nationalism and social justice alongside the liberationtheology base communities. Finally, crises arose in 1977-1978: the oil boom came to an end in Iran, and the political economy of Nicaraguanever recoveredfrom the devastation and corruptionsurroundingthe 1972 earthquake.The human rights foreign policy of the Carteradministrationsent mixed signals to each regime, emboldened the opposition, and proved unwilling or unable to intervenemilitarilyonce revolutions were under way. This patterncontrastspoint by point with the situation in El Salvador, where a more powerful coffee elite was allied with institutional(not personalist)army rule in a more and classclassic exploitativepact;the political culturewas more Marxist,anti-imperialist, oriented(a situationnot likely to mobilize as broada coalition of social forces); economic conditions were deplorablebut painfully "normal"in the 1970s; and the uprisings of the MartfNational LiberationFront(FMLN) had to contend with 1980s led by the Farabundo The result was not a successful social massive interventionby the Reagan administration. revolution but a civil war locked in military stalemate (and resolved by a negotiated compromisein 1991-1992). This model is subject to a number of furtherquestions. In precisely what ways does dependentdevelopment lead to revolution, and why has it not done so in South Korea or Brazil? How does political culturebecome effective? What interveningvariables(such as organization or resources) are necessary to carry it? Is an economic downturnalways found before revolution? This last question raises the issue of generalizability:can the model be applied to other Third World social revolutions (Cuba, Mexico, China), to anticolonialstrugglesin Algeria, Zimbabwe,Angola, and Mozambique,or to otherfailures and reversals such as Chile under Allende or Grenada?Although these and other issues need empirical and conceptual work, this synthesis may representa fruitful direction for future study. A final, and quite different, new approachis found in Jack Goldstone's (1991) Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World. Goldstone's object of analysis is the "state breakdown"-a severe political crisis entailing a constellation of state, elite, and

THEORIESOF REVOLUTIONREVISITED

15

popularproblems that may result in reform, rebellion, revolution, coup, or civil war. He offers a conjuncturalmodel of revolutionemploying economic, political, and ideological factors: In thistheory,revolution is likelyto occuronly whena societysimultaneously experiences on by a growingimbalance threekindsof difficulties: crisis, brought (1) a statefinancial betweenthe revenuesa government can securelyraise and the obligationsand tasks it faces; (2) severe elite divisions, includingboth alienationfrom the state and intra-elite on by increasing andcompetition for elite positions;and (3) conflicts,brought insecurity a high potentialfor mobilizingpopulargroups, broughton by rising grievances(e.g., thatassist or predisposepopular regarding high rentsor low wages) and social patterns to action in the numbers of autonomous groups (e.g., large youth population, increasingly ruralvillages, growing concentrations of workersin weakly administered cities). The of these threeconditionsgenerallyproducesa fourthdifficulty:an increase conjunction in the salienceof heterodoxculturaland religiousideas;heterodox groupsthen provide both leadership and an organizational focus for oppositionto the state(1991, pp. xxiiixxiv, author'semphasis). What caused such a conjuncturein the early modem period? "[T]he broad-basedimpact that sustained population growth (or decline) had on economic, social, and political institutions of agrarian-bureaucratic states" (p. xxiv). The model thus is designated a form of demographic/structural analysis. Goldstone asks the following empirical questions: why was there widespread state breakdownin the mid-nineteenthand mid-nineteenthcenturies, with stability from 1660 to 1760, and why was this so both in western Europe and in Asia, but with different outcomes? He traces causes to "a single basic process. . . . The main trend was that populationgrowth, in the context of relatively inflexible economic and social structures, led to changes in prices, shifts in resources, and increasing social demands with which states could not successfully cope" (1991, p. 459; author'semphaagrarian-bureaucratic sis). Thus fiscal crisis, elite conflicts, rising popularunrest, and critical ideologies came togetherto produce state breakdowns.The differences in outcomes, are traced largely to the radicalpressuresof transformative ideologies in Franceand England, contrastedwith the lack of culturalinnovationin China and the Ottomanempire. Along the way this rich and provocative study advances numerousother ideas: observationson urbanactors and the state's culturalautonomy, which we have noted already,new quantifiablemeasuresof structuralproblems (called "the mass mobilization concept" and "the political stress indicator"),insights on social structureas "near-fractal" (a geological metaphorconnoting the layered structureof institutions), and the search for "robustprocesses in history," among many others. Goldstone recognizes some of the limits of the study: it explains why crisis was likely in given places and times ratherthan how particular groups were mobilized in each case; it is a model applicableto the agrarian societies of the early modem world, when population growth was a more independentforce than in the twentieth century, even in the Third World (1991, pp. 468-71). Although Goldstone states explicitly that this is not a onesidedly demographiccausal model, it could be more reflexive in investigatingthe interplay of population and social structure.Moreover, in the Japanesecase, he argues that population stability rather than growth led to crises, thus raising the question of whether population is a key factor at all (pp. 468; also see p. 26). Goldstone attempts rather but successfully to add a dynamic, temporaldimension to third-generation structuralism, still does not combine structurewith agency to any great degree.

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Another major area of contention hinges on Goldstone's extensive reflections on the properrole of culturalfactors in the study of revolution(1991, pp. 415-55). His analysis is organized according to phases of state breakdown. In the prerevolutionaryperiod, criticisms of injustice and calls for restoring traditionalbalances make up ideologies of In the course of the struggle, elites make use of folk conceptions to forge "rectification." with a broad appeal aroundsuch themes as redistribution, ideologies of "transformation" rectification, and, most effectively, nationalism. Goldstone claims that ideology plays its greatestrole in the outcomes of revolutions, and indeed that it is the single most important factor in explaining the problem at hand-the difference between revolutionarypolitical reconstruction in France, England, and Japan and the conservative outcomes in the China. High levels of "ideological tenOttomanempire, Spain, and seventeenth-century sions" (challenging monarchy to the core) left England and France poised for dynamic evolution after their state breakdowns;the absence of such tension, linked to a cyclical ratherthanan eschatologicalview of history,is said by Goldstoneto accountfor subsequent stagnation in the Chinese and Ottoman cases. Here Goldstone seems to go too far: by privileging culture in the reconstructionperiod, he misses the role of materialfactors in explaining divergent outcomes. Conversely, he downplays the contributionof culture in the prerevolutionary period. Nor does he explain why culture assumed different shapes his cases. among Although Goldstone thus corrects partiallyfor a Eurocentricbias by documentingthat the East did not possess the changeless, ahistoricalessence sometimesposited by a previous generation of scholars, one is reminded of modernizationtheory by the imputationof culturealone as the explanationfor outcomes and by some of the languageused to describe versus "innothe process ("dynamic"versus "stagnationist," "traditional," "conforming" vative," and so on). Goldstone seems to believe that culturepreventedChina, Spain, and the Ottomansfrom meeting the challenge of world capitalism;this argumentdownplays military, political, and economic power considerations.Finally, he attributesthe rise of the West to the happy marriage of democracy and capitalism, and offers this as a outcomes of revoluprescriptionfor today's Third World as opposed to the authoritarian tion. These controversialclaims aside, Revolutionand Rebellion in the Modern Worldis theoriststo disproveor substantiate. a storehouseof bold conjecturesfor fourth-generation

CONCLUSIONS thirdgeneration Over the last dozen years, the deepeningof the concernsof the structuralist of the 1970s has yielded clearer insights into the natureof vulnerablestates and crises. Social theorists' new preoccupationswith culture have spilled fruitfully into the area of social change. Social structurehas begun to be assessed from a variety of new angles that promise fresh insight. Against this backdrophas emerged the profile of a new approach that uses conjuncturalmodels involving economy, polity, and culture, seeking to explain coalitional dynamics and the logic of outcomes with a new flexibility. The convergence around conjuncturalmodels by diverse writers from various theoretical orientations is significantin several respects: social theorists are reaching increasinglyfor models more complex and more multicausalthan the often one-sided argumentsof opposing camps and the pendulumswings of intellectualfashion;the new dataproducedby recentrevolutionary of the relationsof structureand agency as social processes are forcing a reproblematizing explanatoryprinciples; and in the sociology of revolutions, at least, the way forwardfor theory seems to be careful comparativework on diverse cases, conductedwith awareness of currenttheoreticalcontroversies.In this respect, theories of revolutionand conjunctural

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models of revolution become inseparable:history infuses theory, and the models arrived at throughinductive case study provide new theoreticalleads.6 In the presentessay I have tried to identify some of the themes that are likely to shape the next roundof studies. There remain significanttheoreticaldifficulties in consolidating the emergent fourth generation:a simple additive model of "factors"will not amount to an integratedtheory of revolutions, even if previously neglected areas such as cultureand agency are returnedto the forefront. Nor are the currentmultiple debates about particular causes settled fully by any means. The whole domain of culture, for example, must be explored, more deeply; we must sort out the interrelationships among discourse, political culture, ideology, and motivation, an enormous field for future students of revolution. How will these contributions shape overall theories about the causes, processes, and outcomes of revolution?This questionraises an even more profoundchallenge, with which the researchersof the 1990s and beyond must grapple as they continue to try to account for our changing social world, past and future.

REFERENCES
Arjomand, Said Amir. 1988. The Turbanfor the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran. New York: Oxford University Press. Aya, Rod. 1979. "Theoriesof Revolution Reconsidered:ContrastingModels of Collective Violence." Theory and Society 8(1): 39-99. - . 1990. Rethinking Revolutions and Collective Violence: Studies in Concept, Theory, and Method. Amsterdam.Het Spinhuis. Brinton, Crane. 1938. The Anatomyof Revolution. New York: Vintage. Brustein, William. 1986. "Regional Social Orders in France and the French Revolution." Pp. 145-61 in ComparativeSocial Research, Greenwich, CT: JAI. Burawoy, Michael. 1989. "Two Methods in Search of Science: Skocpol versus Trotsky."Theory and Society 18(6): 759-805. Calhoun, Craig Jackson. 1983. "The Radicalism of Tradition:CommunityStrengthor VenerableDisguise and BorrowedLanguage?"AmericanJournal of Sociology 88(5): 886-914. --. 1988. "The Radicalism of Traditionand the Question of Class Struggle." Pp. 129-75 in Rationality and Revolution, edited by Michael Taylor. Cambridge,UK: CambridgeUniversity Press. --. 1991. "TheProblemof Identityin Collective Action." Pp. 51-75 in Micro-MacroLinkagesin Sociology, edited by Joan Huber. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Cardoso, FernandoHenriqueand Enzo Faletto. 1979. Dependencyand Developmentin LatinAmerica. Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress. Chinchilla, Norma Stoltz. 1990. "RevolutionaryPopularFeminism in Nicaragua:ArticulatingClass, Gender, and National Sovereignty."Gender and Society 4(3): 370-97. Cole, Johnetta. 1986. "Women in Cuba: The Revolution within the Revolution." Pp. 307-17 in Revolutions: Theoretical, Comparative,and Historical Studies, edited by Jack A. Goldstone. San Diego: Harcourt,Brace and Jovanovich. Coleman, James S. 1990. Foundations of Social Theory. Cambridge,MA: HarvardUniversity Press. Davies, James C. 1962. "Towarda Theory of Revolution."AmericanSociological Review 27: 5-19. DeFronzo, James. 1991. Revolutionsand RevolutionaryMovements.Boulder:Westview. Disch, Arne. 1979. "Peasantsand Revolts (a Discussion of Jeffery M. Paige's AgrarianRevolution)."Theory and Society 7 (January-May):243-52. Dix, RobertH. 1984. "Why Revolutions Succeed and Fail." Polity 16(3): 423-46. Edwards, Lyford. (1927) 1972. The Natural History of Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Eisenstadt, S. N. 1978. Revolutionand the Transformation of Societies: A ComparativeStudyof Civilizations. New York: Free Press. Farhi, Farideh. 1988. "State Disintegrationand Urban-BasedRevolutionaryCrises: A ComparativeAnalysis of Iran and Nicaragua."ComparativePolitical Studies 21(2): 231-56.
6 I would like to acknowledge the advice of two anonymousreviewers and my colleague Thomas Wilson in and the next. trying to clarify the points addressedin this paragraph

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