States and Social Revolutions
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| Author | Theda Skocpol |
|---|---|
| Published | 1979 |
| Pages | 407 pp. |
| ISBN | 978-0-521-29499-7 |
| OCLC | 432787244 |
States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China is a 1979 book by Theda Skocpol, published by Cambridge University Press, that examines the causes of social revolutions.
In the book, Skocpol performs a comparative historical analysis of the French Revolution of 1789 through the early 19th century, the Russian Revolution of 1917 through the 1930s and the 1911 Revolution through the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. Skocpol argues that social revolutions occurred in these states because of the simultaneous occurrence of state breakdown and peasant revolution.[1]
Skocpol asserts that social revolutions are rapid and basic transformations of a society's state and class structures. She distinguishes this from mere rebellions, which involve a revolt of subordinate classes but may not create structural change, and from political revolutions that may change state structures but not social structures. What is unique about social revolutions, she argues, is that basic changes in social structure and political structure occur in a mutually reinforcing fashion and these changes occur through intense socio-political conflict. A convergence of peasant rebellion on one hand and international pressures causing state breakdown on the other hand cause revolutionary social movements.[2]
The book was highly influential in the study of revolutions, and has been credited with ushering in a new paradigm.[3][4][5]
The book was written in 1978 and is derived from Skocpol's PhD dissertation which was supervised by George Homans, Daniel Bell, and Seymour Martin Lipset.[6] She had been influenced by works by Barrington Moore, Jr, Reinhard Bendix and Samuel P. Huntington.[6] Her project started as a graduate seminar paper comparing revolutions, read by Daniel Bell who suggested she should do her thesis on this topic.[6]
Synopsis
The book uses both John Stuart Mill's methods of agreement and difference in the case selection.[7] The book is not intended to be generalizable: it only applies to the specific cases that are studied in the book.[7][8][9] The book employs process-tracing.[10][11] While the primary focus is on France, Russia and China, she also examines "moments of revolutionary crisis" in 17th century England, 19th century Prussia and 19th century Japan.[12] Those additional cases prevent Skocpol from "selecting on the dependent variable" – looking only at cases where revolutions occurred as a way to understand the causes of revolution – which would have been a methodological flaw.[12] The additional cases serve as "controls".
Before social revolutions can occur, she says, the administrative and military power of a state has to break down. Thus pre-revolutionary France, Russia and China had well-established states that stood astride large agrarian economies in which the imperial state and the landed upper classes partnered in the control and exploitation of the peasantry. However, the monarchy in each country faced an extraordinary dilemma in dealing with foreign power intrusion on the one hand and resistance to raising resources by politically powerful dominant domestic classes on the other. A revolution such as the French revolution also presented itself with a significant factor of power conducted with social, political, and economical conflicts. She describes the processes by which the centralized administrative and military machinery disintegrated in these countries, which made class relations vulnerable to assaults from below.