The Power of Counterrevolution: Elitist Origins of Political Order in Postcolonial Asia and Africa

Abstract

Counterrevolutions have received far less scholarly attention than revolutions, despite their comparable importance in shaping the modern political world. This article defines counterrevolutions as collective and reactive efforts to defend the status quo and its varied range of dominant elites against a credible threat to overturn them from below. Unlike analysts who see the origins of political order lying in mass-mobilizing revolutionary parties, the authors illuminate the distinctive order-producing attributes of elite-protecting counterrevolutionary parties. A comparative-historical analysis of five former British colonies in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa elaborates the causal mechanisms through which counterrevolutions can produce exceedingly durable, although not invincible, political orders.