Revolution

The history of revolutions reveals extraordinary variety in their causes, development, and outcomes. From classical times to modern, governments have been overturned by groups seeking change, but their methods and goals have varied. No form of regime seems wholly immune from revolution, although traditional monarchies, empires, and personalist dictatorships seem especially vulnerable.
Mass theories and class theories of revolution are too simple to account for this variation and complexity. A process model that pays attention to changes in the structures of and relationships among states, elites, and popular groups, and to the roles of revolutionary coalitions, international pressures, and ideologies, is more useful.
Revolutions occur in countries that are facing the pressures of international conflict or population growth with weak states, contentious and divided elites, and populations whose grievances and mobilization potential are high. As long as such conditions occur--and there are still prospects of such conditions developing in many parts of Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Asia, and even China--the history of revolutions will not be over.