Explaining social revolutions: First and further thoughts

States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China appeared in 1979 – the same year that two new revolutionary upheavals occurred in Iran and Nicaragua. The fall of the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua and the crumbling of the modernizing autocracy of the Shah of Iran were events that signaled the continuing relevance – and shifting patterns – of social revolutions in the contemporary world. These episodes drew attention to new explanatory dilemmas about revolutions in Third World dictatorships, even as scholars began to grapple with the intellectual challenges my book posed to previously prevalent theories of revolution.

Many years later, much has changed, both in the realm of scholarship and in the “real world” of states and societies. Central ideas from States and Social Revolutions have been embraced, refuted, reworked, and extended by scholars seeking to understand Iran, Nicaragua, and other revolutions of the mid-twentieth century. New sorts of revolutionary transformations have continued to rock the world – most recently, toppling many of the regimes of the “Second World” in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Inevitably, scholarly works in the social sciences start to become outdated the moment they are published. This situation is really more fortunate than regrettable, because scholarship is a collective endeavor, and it grows by debate and critical reflection.