Successful Revolution Research Articles

Revolution at the Point of Production: An Interview with Mike Hamlin of DRUM and The League of Revolutionary Black Workers

Mike Hamlin was a central figure of the Black Power Movement that manifested in Detroit. He believed Black workers needed to be organized at the point of production for a successful revolution to occur. As such, Hamlin and other radicals formed the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) and helped organize a wildcat strike at Dodge Main on May 2, 1968. As a result of the strike and increased organization and agitation, other revolutionary union movements, for example the Ford Revolutionary Union Movement (FRUM), began to emerge and struggle for economic and racial justice. The successful formation of revolutionary union movements at different workplaces led to the formation of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. The League was inspired by Third World anticolonial struggles and the theoretical work of Marx, Lenin, Mao Tse-Tung, Frantz Fanon, and Fidel Castro. The following interview took place outside of Mike Hamlin’s apartment in the summer of 2010 when we discussed the history and theory leading to the

On the Mobilizing Role of Social Media in Revolutions: A Game-Theoretic Approach

A distinctive feature of recent revolutions was the key role of social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube). We study the role of social media in mobilization. In a simple model we assume that while social media allow to observe all previous decisions, mass media only give aggregate information about the state of a revolt. We show that when individuals’ willingness to revolt is publicly known, then both sorts of media foster a successful revolution. However, when willingness to revolt is private information, only social media ensure that a revolt succeeds, with mass media multiple outcomes are possible. This suggests that social media enhance the likelihood that a revolution triumphs more than traditional mass media.

The analysis on the possibilities of pro-democratizing NKs - Focusing mainly on the factors that has led the success of revolutions in the Middle East -

The analysis on the possibilities of pro-democratizing NKs - Focusing mainly on the factors that has led the success of revolutions in the Middle East -

Adaptable autocrats: regime power in Egypt and Syria

The decades-long resilience of Middle Eastern regimes meant that few anticipated the 2011 Arab Spring. But from the seemingly rapid leadership turnovers in Tunisia and Egypt to the protracted stalemates in Yemen and Syria, there remains a common outcome: ongoing control of the ruling regimes. While some analysts and media outlets rush to look for democratic breakthroughs, autocratic continuity - not wide-ranging political change - remains the hallmark of the region's upheaval. Contrasting Egypt and Syria, Joshua Stacher examines how executive power is structured in each country to show how these preexisting power configurations shaped the uprisings and, in turn, the outcomes. Presidential power in Egypt was centralized. Even as Mubarak was forced to relinquish the presidency, military generals from the regime were charged with leading the transition. The course of the Syrian uprising reveals a key difference: the decentralized character of Syrian politics. Only time will tell if Asad will survive in office, but for now, the regime continues to unify around him. While debates about election timetables, new laws, and the constitution have come about in Egypt, bloody street confrontations continue to define Syrian politics - the differences in authoritarian rule could not be more stark. Political structures, elite alliances, state institutions, and governing practices are seldom swept away entirely - even following successful revolutions - so it is vital to examine the various contexts for regime survival. Elections, protests, and political struggles will continue to define the region in the upcoming years. Examining the lead-up to the Egyptian and Syrian uprisings helps us unlock the complexity behind the protests and transitions. Without this understanding, we lack a roadmap to make sense of the Middle East's most important political moment in decades.

Equivocators or zealots? Post-revolutionary re-imaging colonial languages, names and name change in Ireland and South Africa

Successful revolutionaries often find themselves in a distinctly uneasy position vis-à-vis the cultural burden of the pre-revolution which they inherit. Establishing a stable and effective government often means alienating their own ‘wild men screaming through the key hole’. Yet, they also need to stamp their revolutionary credentials both on the new society they wish to construct and as a territorialising edict to the defeated. This also serves as an implicit edict to the defeated that their day has passed. To achieve this, manipulation of imagery is fundamental in the successful revolutionary’s arsenal. This article documents the reaction of two very different counties, Ireland and South Africa, in their post-revolutionary eras. It notes their differing, and at times bizarre, attempts at re-branding nationhood in the image of the successful revolution. Ireland after 1922 was on the whole more restrained in its image-making than was South Africa after 1994, yet both, for reasons of revolutionary fervour, revenge or strategy, showed the old order that change was non-negotiable, be it in language policy, civic honours and titles, emblems and symbols of state, or simply in place and street names. In such instances heritage is frequently the handmaiden of political necessity, often crude but sometimes subtle.

Para un baño de belleza… Salud y publicidad infantil desde la prensa en Cuba (1902-1959)

El artículo analiza la publicidad relacionada con la saludinfantil, tanto en el área de la farmacopea como en la dela higiene. El canal de comunicación seleccionado para elestudio es la prensa escrita producida entre el establecimientode la República de Cuba, en 1902, y el triunfo de larevolución cubana, en 1959. El texto se estructura en unepígrafe inicial que aporta presupuestos teóricos básicosrelacionados con la publicidad infantil y tres tópicosde análisis –historia de la ciencia, historia económicae historia cultural– que permiten leer continuidadesy transformaciones en las estrategias de los anuncios.Palabras clavePublicidad infantil, higiene, fármacos, industria, prensa.

Social network media and political activism: a growing challenge for law enforcement

The use of the internet for political purposes is not new; however, the introduction of social media tools has opened new avenues for political activists. In an era where social media has been credited as playing a critical role in the success of revolutions (Earl & Kimport, 2011; Papic & Noonan, 2011; Wooley, Limperos & Beth, 2010), governments, law enforcement and intelligence agencies need to develop a deeper understanding of the broader capabilities of this emerging social and political environment. This can be achieved by increasing their online presence and through the application of proactive social media strategies to identify and manage potential threats. Analysis of current literature shows a gap in the research regarding the connection between the theoretical understanding and practical implications of social media when exploited by political activists, and the efficacy of existing strategies designed to manage this growing challenge. This paper explores these issues by looking specifically at the use of three popular social media tools: Facebook; Twitter; and YouTube. Through the examination of recent political protests in Iran, the UK and Egypt from 2009–2011, these case studies and research in the use of the three social media tools by political groups, the authors discuss inherent weaknesses in online political movements and discuss strategies for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to monitor these activities.

The Evolution of Java-Men and Revolutionaries

This article undertakes an in-depth exploration of the trope of human evolutionary development undergirding Pramoedya Ananta Toer's Buru Quartet – a trope that has hitherto received no detailed critical attention in Pramoedya scholarship. Drawing on the traditional Javanese values of Pramoedya's childhood and the Marxist ideological values of his early adulthood, the Quartet casts the individual's moral development from selfish individualism to selfless community-mindedness as the development from animalism to ‘modern humanity’. In the context of traditional Javanese and Marxist cosmologies, such self-denial ends in victory: respectively, the accumulation of personal power and the successful revolutionary replacement of capitalism with socialism. However, during his brutal imprisonment in the Darwinian wilderness of Buru, Pramoedya experienced an environment that rewarded animalism and made it difficult for those ascribing to ‘human’ values to survive. Originally composed in Buru, the Quartet bears the mark of its origins and its author's disillusionment, portraying the attainment of Javanese and Marxist standards of humanity as a decision to defy the laws of natural selection and overcome one's instinct for self-preservation. By dissociating the acquisition of humanity from the acquisition of power, the Quartet produces modified versions of the Javanese and Marxist moral human development based not on the expectation of success and the will to live, but on the expectation of failure and the determination to die.

The Sustainability of Empire in Global Perspective: The Role of International Trade Patterns

European empires had two key economic aspects: the extraction of colonial wealth by colonizers, and the relevance of trade for the colonial economies. I build a simple model of decolonization that puts these two elements at centre stage. By controlling policy in the colony, the mother country can appropriate part of her wealth; the colony, however, can stage a successful revolution at a stochastic cost. I incorporate this mechanism in a three-country, two-good trade model where countries (the mother country, the colony and a third independent country) can decide whether to trade with each other, and revolution is expected to generate trade frictions between the mother country and the rebel colony. Thus, the attractiveness of revolution and the sustainability of empire come to depend on the capacity of the rebel colony to access international markets, which, in turn, depends on the economic fundamentals that shape the pattern of trade as well as the optimal trade policy of the third country. I present detailed historical evidence showing how to use this model to put a few important cases of decolonization in global perspective. My results have important implications for the debate on the economic legacy of colonial empires.

Cross‐class Coalitions and the Making of the Arab Revolts of 2011

Theorists of social movements and revolutions have given great attention to the factors creating vulnerability for the state – including elite divisions, loss of foreign support, and economic problems. Substantial attention has also been given to factors facilitating the mobilization of protest actors, including framing, prior network ties, social and public media, and political openings. Somewhat less evident has been the role of cross-class coalitions, which play a vital role in affecting both the strength of the state and mobilization, and in shaping the outcomes of protest and revolutionary change. If a protest draws support mainly from just one class or group (peasants, workers, students, urban shopkeepers, professionals), the state can confront that group as a disruptive force, and seek to unify elites from other sectors against that threat. However, if protestors represent many different groups, it is much harder for the state to find allies against them. Moreover, while a state can claim to be preserving society by acting against isolated disruptive elements, it is far more difficult to maintain legitimacy when acting against a broad cross-class coalition. Elites are more likely to desert the state, creating crippling elite divisions, if protestors represent a broad spectrum of society. In addition, a broad cross-class coalition facilitates further mobilization by creating ‘meganetworks’ linking prior, tightly-linked within-group networks to each other. The impact of public media in favor of the protestors is also greater if media representation shows protestors as representative of the whole society, rather than as one particular group seeking partisan advantages for itself. For these reasons, virtually all successful revolutions were forged by cross-class coalitions that bridged the diverse goals and interests of different groups, thus pitting society as a whole against the regime and its loyalist supporters. Conversely, revolts rooted in the needs and organization of one particular class or group – peasant revolts, urban uprisings, student protests, regional rebellions – have usually been effectively repressed by regimes able to draw on other groups for support. The three successful revolutions in the Arab world in 2011, in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, all demonstrate the crucial role of cross-class coalitions.

Collective Action with Uncertain Payoffs: Coordination, Public Signals, and Punishment Dilemmas

How can one analyze collective action in protests or revolutions when individuals are uncertain about the relative payoffs of the status quo and revolution? We model a “calculus of protest” of individuals who must either submit to the status quo or support revolt based only on personal information about their payoffs. In deciding whether to revolt, the citizen must infer both the benefit of successful revolution and the likely actions of other citizens. We characterize conditions under which payoff uncertainty overturns conventional wisdom: (a) when a citizen is too willing to revolt, hereducesthe incentives of others to revolt; (b) less accurate information about the value of revolution can make revoltmorelikely; (c) public signals from other citizens canreducethe likelihood of revolt; (d) harsher punishment canincreasethe incidence of punishment; and (e) the incidence of protest can bepositivelycorrelated with that of repression.

Moldova's internet revolution: Analyzing the role of technologies in various phases of the confrontation

In recent times we have witnessed the fundamental impacts that information and communication technologies (ICTs) have had on the outcomes of contentious political confrontations. In this paper, we analyze the role played by Internet-based and cellular ICTs in Moldova's Revolution of April 2009. Specifically, we identify what, why, and how technologies were used during various phases of the uprising. Our findings show that: 1) the protesters organized their initial mobilization through social network services (SNS) and short message service (SMS); 2) Twitter was mostly used during later phases of the revolution – the active street protests and the subsequent information war – for communication about the conflict both locally and globally; and 3) through skillful use of new Internet-based ICTs, it is possible to conduct a successful revolution without noticeable prior offline organization. Theoretical and practical implications for the use of ICTs in contentious political environments are also discussed.

Th e Arab “Youth Quake”: Implications on Democratization and Stability

Th e Arab Spring has advanced the prospects for democracy in the region. After years during which any democratic transition seemed implausible in the Arab World, masses across the region have risen to challenge the political status quo, inspired by the successful revolution in Tunisia. A major cause to the political unrest can be identifi ed in the large number of unemployed youth in Arab nations, whose political frustrations were aggravated by their inability to express themselves in a tightly controlled police state, political corruption, and the incapability of the state to deal with social and economic problems. In addition, social media was a vital vehicle in both sustaining reform movements within single countries, and spreading the wave of demonstrations across the region. Yet, the events of the Arab Spring have challenged the stability of countries undergoing these transitions. Th e possibility for the creation of failed states or international interventions, and the necessity of governments to deal with large numbers of refugees, sectarian tensions, and deeply rooted economic problems threaten to derail the recent political transformations. In spite of these challenges, however, the recent political changes do provide encouraging opportunities for creating peace in the region and moderating Islamic parties.

Collective Action, Opacity, and the "Problem of Irrationality": Anarchism and the First of May, 1890-1892

Collective Action, Opacity, and the "Problem of Irrationality":Anarchism and the First of May, 1890-1892 Davide Turcato, Independent Scholar Introduction The history of anarchism is often approached as a simple and odd business. Anarchist collective action tends to be depicted as a succession of unconnected and hopeless initiatives: futile insurrectionary attempts by isolated and ill-equipped bands, such as the 1877 Benevento expedition led by Errico Malatesta and Carlo Cafiero, or spontaneous outbursts of rage by exasperated mobs in backward areas, such as was allegedly typical of Andalusian anarchism. In all cases, available historical evidence seems to leave little doubt about the anarchists' lack of preparation and organization, in stark contrast with their high-sounding proclaimed ends. Ultimately, the patent inconsistency and unsustainability of anarchist tactics support charges of irrationalism, as epitomized by E. J. Hobsbawm's influential depiction of anarchism as millenarian.1 There has been no lack of attempts to rescue anarchism from such dismissive accounts in the last three decades. Some of these have involuntarily reinforced stereotypes. For example, Peter Marshall, in his justified effort to dispel the [End Page 1] customary association of anarchism with terrorism and violence, remarks that "at its most violent the [anarchists'] action has typically not gone much beyond throwing up barricades or entering a village armed with rudimentary weapons," just as the millenarian stereotype would have it.2 Still, the advent of the "new social history" has spurred new research on anarchism, which persuasively argues for the effectiveness and relevance of anarchism. To mention only a few examples, this literature includes the books of Bruce Nelson on the Haymarket affair, of Richard Sonn and Alexander Varias on French anarchism, of John Lear on Mexico, of Kirwin Shaffer on Cuba, and of Matthew Thomas on Great Britain.3 Most of these works leave aside the mode of operation of anarchist direct action and insurrectionary tactics—and the related stereotypes about them—to focus on anarchist culture and its ability to influence society. Yet in focusing on the effectiveness of anarchism such works have failed in their own way to do justice to its rationality, in the standard sense of coherence among desires, beliefs, and behavior. In emphasizing the realism of anarchism and its ability to grapple with issues in the here and now, the adaptability and effectiveness of anarchist means are not gauged by the anarchists' goals, which tend to be regarded as a dead letter at best, or a dead weight at worst, but in contrast to them. Thus, Nelson's and Lear's emphasis on workers' traditions implies that anarchism had an instrumental value for workers who embraced it without fully sharing its objectives; likewise, anarchist goals were ultimately a liability for the countercultures studied by Thomas; and for Sonn and Varias, anarchist diversity, which enabled anarchists to be in tune with the culture of their times, was also the very reason that precluded them from successfully pursuing their anarchist ends. From the perspective of rationality, those who share Hobsbawm's judgment of "monumental ineffectiveness," and those who seek to rescue anarchism from that charge, are two sides of the same irrationalist coin. Either way, anarchism is made sense of by introducing an element of irrationality, whether in the form of impossible aims, futile means, or absurd beliefs. In contrast, the present article focuses on rationality, rather than on effectiveness. The two issues are distinct, as is commonly recognized in social sciences. An example is the debate on magical thought since Durkheim and Weber, with its rejection of Lévy-Bruhl's theory of "primitive mentality." As Raymond Boudon puts it, "the case of magic is paradigmatic, since magical [End Page 2] beliefs are by definition false beliefs," and therefore magic is ineffective; yet, "although their beliefs are without objective foundation, magicians have good reasons for believing what they believe," and therefore they are rationa1.4 This distinction is not equally familiar to historians; thus, the anarchists' failure to carry through a successful revolution tends to be taken as evidence against their rationality. Moreover, the focus of the present article is precisely on the organizational background of anarchist insurrectionary tactics. With few notable exceptions, such as Jerome Mintz's...

Blind faith: some personal reflections on Nigerian fieldwork

My own interests in Africa were nurtured in the late 1960s as an undergraduate in London, but they took form in, and were shaped by, the great political, economic and social firmament of the 1970s. With the powers of hindsight one can see what an extraordinary decade it was and how it necessarily framed our research programs, both in Geography and the social sciences more generally. The events of that decade bear repeating: an imperialist war in southeast Asia, a troubled American Fordism feeling the pressures of global competition, deepening class struggles over the future of embedded liberalism, the Nixon dollar devaluation and the turn to global financialization, massive volatility in commodities markets especially food and oil, a robust Third World nationalism and a raft of successful revolutionary movements ultimately hobbled by balance of payments deficits, massive public sector debt and Cold War 'low-intensity conflict' and proxy wars, popular energies unleashed by a global environmental movement, and not least, the first stirrings of what was to become, to quote Perry Anderson (2000), the global neoliberal 'grand slam'. My experience of the continent, in sum, came hot on the heels of the rebellion and turmoil of the 1960s and in the wake of the genuinely revolutionary moment of 1968. The 1970s actually became the high watermark for radical theorizing, enriched by exciting (and not so exciting) political experiments, not the least of which were the various African socialisms in the former Portuguese colonies (GuineaoBissau, Angola, Mozambique), in Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Tanzania and elsewhere. Some locations--one thinks in particular of Dar es Saalam, Zaria, Dakar, Nairobi--became centers of great intellectual vitality often attracting significant numbers of European and North American scholars, and became central to the global debate over development and underdevelopment. Any assessment of what has changed on the continent, and what it might mean for both knowledge production, field research and scholarly collaboration, must start, of course, from the firmament of the present moment. On its face the parallels between now and then are striking: another imperialist war-making adventure (prosecuted not in the name of anti-communism but of global democracy and anti-terrorism), another round of oil and food volatility (and more Malthusian talk of scarcity), another space-ship earth moment (this time detonated by the spectre of global climate change), seething nationalisms (or proto-nationalisms and communalisms of multifarious stripe) in the global south in reaction to decades of structural adjustment and 'economic realism', an anti-imperialism issuing not from the secular or revolutionary Third Worldist left but in the name of political Islam, and, of course, a deep crisis of capitalism triggered by the wreckless commodification of money and monetized assets. This time around one might say that the crisis is defined by the catastrophic consequences of the capitalist project launched in the late 1970s. Naturally the contrasts between the 1970s and the current conjuncture are as striking as the resemblances or repetitions. Nobody would question the observation that US hegemony, from the vantage point of 2010, looks much more rocky. China now appears as a profound counterweight to the American sense of a Pacific Century. The US militarization of its program of global financialization ('military neoliberalism') exceeds virtually anything encompassed by the military Keynesianism of the 1970s. Whether we believe that the last vestiges of the 1960s have been finally swept away, the fact is that neoliberalism does rule undivided across the globe. In this sense Karl Polanyi's (1947) belief that free-market liberalism was finally dead and gone (he wrote at the end of the Second World War) was horribly wrong. At the very least one can say that Africa itself was radically shaped and reconfigured by this neoliberal revolution--the 'counter-revolution' in development theory as it was called--and the continent, as a consequence, looks very different now. …

TOWARD A SLOVENE CULTURAL STUDIES

Given the large amount of completed research and the existence of several undergraduate and graduate programs, we can say that cultural studies is currently well established in Slovenia, especially considering the relative size of the country and the newness of the discipline. Within this context, however, it is possible to see that most research merely borrows and applies concepts and rudimentary studies developed in other countries, primarily in Great Britain. While this development has its own weight and meaning, the Slovenia's cultural situation is specific enough to oblige cultural studies to develop, at least to some degree, a specific research apparatus that could perceive and thematize the distinctive aspects of Slovene culture. The article addresses this possibility and highlights specifics in the Slovene political, cultural, and historical context that could serve as a point of departure for the development of a distinctively Slovene cultural studies practice. This article identifies four basic conditions: Slovene culture is actually an intersection of cultures; culture occupies a special symbolic place in Slovene public life; the experience of a successful communist revolution; and the powerful influence of the punk movement.

Role of Internet-based information flows and technologies in electoral revolutions: The case of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution

Internet-based information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the information flows they support have played an important role in the advancement of society. In this paper we investigate the role of Internet-based ICTs in electoral revolutions. Employing a case study approach, we examine the part played by ICTs during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine (2000-2004). Roles and activities of the dissenters, as well as their associates, the incumbent authorities and their allies are analyzed with regard to Internet-based technologies during the electoral revolution in Ukraine. The case of the Orange Revolution is particularly salient, as even though only one-two percent of the Ukrainian population had access to the Internet, this was sufficient to mobilize the citizens towards an eventually successful revolution. This paper lays the groundwork for further investigations into use of ICTs by political dissenters.

Revolutionaries, despots, and rationality

The role of groups has often been invoked as an explanation of how successful revolutions can be the outcome of rational action. This paper attempts to show that the focus on groups fails to incorporate an important aspect of oppression, namely the oppressive regime itself. If rational choice theory is to be taken seriously and if it is assumed that the potential revolutionaries are rational, then similar assumptions should be made about the despot. If this is done, then it is far from obvious that groups help to solve the free-rider problem. Rather it is shown that in this case the revolutionaries become subject to a higher order free-rider problem.

Rational choice, Round Robin, and rebellion: An institutional solution to the problems of revolution

Two collective action problems plague successful revolution. On the one hand, would-be revolutionaries confront a “participation problem,” whereby no rationally self-interested individual has an incentive to participate in rebellion. On the other hand, individuals face a “first-mover problem” whereby no rationally self-interested individual has an incentive to lead rebellion. This paper argues that 18th-century merchant sailors who confronted these problems devised a novel institution to facilitate maritime revolution and assist them in overthrowing abusive captains. This institution was called a “Round Robin.” Round Robins helped overcome both the participation and first-mover problems by aligning the interests of individual sailors desiring mutiny and restructuring the payoffs of leading versus following maritime rebellion.

Collective Action with Uncertain Payoffs: Coordination, Public Signals and Punishment Dilemmas

We provide a framework for analyzing collective action in contentious contexts such as protests or revolutions when individuals are uncertain about the relative payoffs of the status quo and revolution. We model the calculus of of individuals who must decide whether to submit to the status quo or revolt based on personal information about their payo ffs. When deciding whether to revolt, a citizen must infer both the value of successful revolution and the likely actions of other citizens. We characterize the conditions under which payoff uncertainty overturns conventional wisdom: (a) when a citizen is too willing to revolt, he reduces the incentives of others to revolt; (b) less accurate information about the value of revolution can make revolt more likely; (c) public signals can reduce the likelihood of revolt; (d) harsher punishment can increase the incidence of punishment; and (e) the incidence of protest can be positively correlated with that of repression.