What Are the Causes of Revolution
Essay Topic: What are the causes of revolution?
Introduction
This essay deals with one of the most fascinating subjects in social and political sciences – revolutions – and focuses specifically on the causes of these dramatic episodes in human society. John Dunn (1989) believes that the questions of what causes revolutions to occur and what revolutions mean cannot be separated from one another. Hence, before addressing their causes, it is necessary to first clarify the meaning of revolutions. In this essay, instead of formulating a new scholarly definition of ‘revolution’, I will use this term to refer to the large-scale movements which lead to changes in power relations on both the political and social levels, i.e. political revolutions and social revolutions.
With this in mind, it is also necessary to specify the spectrum of ‘causes’ of revolutions that will be covered in this essay. Among the many scholarly approaches to revolutions or social movements, some paradigms (e.g. psychological analysis, political-opportunity) seem less convincing than others (e.g. the general structural analysis), when explaining what causes revolutions to occur. This is partly because scholars can mistakenly equate the ‘causes’ of revolutions with their ‘conditions’, neglecting the nuances between the two things. As a matter of fact, the causes of revolutions should be distinguished from their conditions as specifically indicating what gives rise to revolutions, the things that directly lead revolutions to take place, whereas ‘conditions’ often merely play a supportive rather than decisive role in the revolutionary process.
The political-opportunity approach serves to show the difference between the causes of revolutions and their conditions. According to Eisinger (1973: 25), the political opportunity of revolutions refers to the ‘degree to which groups are likely to be able to gain access to power and to manipulate the political system’. Indeed, the more likely groups are to be
Introduction
This essay deals with one of the most fascinating subjects in social and political sciences – revolutions – and focuses specifically on the causes of these dramatic episodes in human society. John Dunn (1989) believes that the questions of what causes revolutions to occur and what revolutions mean cannot be separated from one another. Hence, before addressing their causes, it is necessary to first clarify the meaning of revolutions. In this essay, instead of formulating a new scholarly definition of ‘revolution’, I will use this term to refer to the large-scale movements which lead to changes in power relations on both the political and social levels, i.e. political revolutions and social revolutions.
With this in mind, it is also necessary to specify the spectrum of ‘causes’ of revolutions that will be covered in this essay. Among the many scholarly approaches to revolutions or social movements, some paradigms (e.g. psychological analysis, political-opportunity) seem less convincing than others (e.g. the general structural analysis), when explaining what causes revolutions to occur. This is partly because scholars can mistakenly equate the ‘causes’ of revolutions with their ‘conditions’, neglecting the nuances between the two things. As a matter of fact, the causes of revolutions should be distinguished from their conditions as specifically indicating what gives rise to revolutions, the things that directly lead revolutions to take place, whereas ‘conditions’ often merely play a supportive rather than decisive role in the revolutionary process.
The political-opportunity approach serves to show the difference between the causes of revolutions and their conditions. According to Eisinger (1973: 25), the political opportunity of revolutions refers to the ‘degree to which groups are likely to be able to gain access to power and to manipulate the political system’. Indeed, the more likely groups are to be