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rfmcdonald[F]issures and catalysts created by the state's own processes of modernization that create the impetus towards revolution, according to Pincus. But what is modernization? Here is Pincus's brief account:By state modernization I mean a self-conscious effort by the regime to transform itself in fundamental ways. State modernization will usually include an effort to centralize and bureaucratize political authority, an initiative to transform the military using the most up-to-date techniques, a program to accelerate economic growth and shape the contours of society using the tools of the state, and the deployment of techniques allowing the state to gather information about and potentially supporess social and political activities taking place in a wide range of social levels and geographical locales within the polity. (kindle loc 613)
But not all modernizing states result in revolution; so what factors make revolution more likely? Pincus mentions Sweden, Denmark, and Meiji Japan as historical examples of societies with modernizing states and no revolution. Pincus thinks the answer lies in the degree to which the modernizing state is able to keep credible control of the apparatus of social order.
Revolutions are more likely in situations in which the modernizing regime is not clearly perceived to have a monopoly of the forces of violence.... When the modernizing state quickly demonstrates its control of resources and disarms the opposition, as in seventeenth-century Denmark and Sweden or late-nineteenth-century Japan, revolutions do not occur.
So the causal narrative the Pincus offers goes along something like these lines:
* The state initiates a process of reform and modernization.
* There are multiple visions of what "modernization" ought to look like for the polity, both within the state and outside the state.
* These multiple visions have the capacity to create advocates and processes of collective mobilization outside the state within civil society.
* One or more parties in civil society gain the intention and the resources to challenge the state.
* The state marshalls its forces to repress opposition.
* If it lacks sufficient capacity to intimidate or repress opposition, revolution occurs.
Little thinks Pincus ultimately neglects causes to revolutions other that state programs of modernization ("under-class revolt, state breakdown, demographic change, ideological conflict, the disruptive social effects of war, and fiscal crisis" etc). Still, the paradigm has uses.
The question has come to haunt every article and broadcast from Egypt, Tunisia and other countries in the region whose people have revolted: what constitutes a revolution? In the 1970s, we used to chase that question in courses on comparative revolutions; and looking back on my ancient lecture notes, I can’t help but imagine a trajectory: England, 1640; France, 1789; Russia, 1917 … and Egypt, 2011?
I would not presume to pronounce on the course of events in Egypt over the past three weeks, but I think it’s fair to ask whether the information that now arrives every second by every means of communication from Twitter to television bears any relation to the classic models of revolution. Or should Egypt teach us to abandon those models altogether and to consider a kind of upheaval undreamt of in our old varieties of political science?
[W]hy should they fit [that pattern]? Perhaps as some historians used to argue, the pattern expresses a deeper dialectic, which can be detected in every great upheaval. Yet others argued back by citing elements that were unique to particular situations, such as bungled leadership, unforeseen consequences, and sheer contingency. The element of contingency certainly weighed heavily in 1789. If Louis XVI had either compromised in time with the revolutionaries or repressed them decisively, events could have taken a different course. Mubarak—Louis XVI?
What of the other political-science principles we once evoked? The “J curve,” which described a collective reaction to short-term improvement in the economy after a period of stagnation? The “revolution of rising expectations,” in which piecemeal reforms stimulated unrealizable hopes? The over-centralized character of the state administration, leading to the atrophy of civic life outside the center and vulnerability in the capital city? The status frustrations of the bourgeoisie, the “alienated intellectuals,” the divided elite, the misconceived reforms, and, yes, the price of bread?
Go, read.
