Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures, Tables, and Maps
- Abbreviations and Acronyms
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Part 1 Introduction
- 1 COMPARING REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS
- 2 THE STATE-CENTERED PERSPECTIVE ON REVOLUTIONS: STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS
- Part 2 Southeast Asia
- Part 3 Central America
- Part 4 Further Comparisons and Theoretical Elaborations
- Annotated Bibliography
- Index
- Titles in the series
2 - THE STATE-CENTERED PERSPECTIVE ON REVOLUTIONS: STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures, Tables, and Maps
- Abbreviations and Acronyms
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Part 1 Introduction
- 1 COMPARING REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS
- 2 THE STATE-CENTERED PERSPECTIVE ON REVOLUTIONS: STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS
- Part 2 Southeast Asia
- Part 3 Central America
- Part 4 Further Comparisons and Theoretical Elaborations
- Annotated Bibliography
- Index
- Titles in the series
Summary
The basic question of every revolution is that of state power. … [T]hat “power” which is termed the state [is] … a power arising from society, but placing itself above it and becoming more and more separated from it. What does this power mainly consist of? It consists of special bodies of armed men who have at their disposal prisons, etc. … A standing army and police are the chief instruments of state power. But can this be otherwise?
– V. I. Lenin (1974 [1917]: 370; 1943 [1917]: 10)This chapter analyzes the strengths and limitations of the state-centered perspective on revolutions, which I briefly introduced in the previous chapter and which I deploy in the chapters that follow. As I noted earlier, the discussion here is primarily theoretical and somewhat abstract, although I do try to ground this discussion in a short case study of the Cuban Revolution, itself one of the major revolutionary conflicts of the Cold War era. Nonetheless, some readers may wish to forge straight ahead into the more empirical chapters on revolutionary movements in Southeast Asia and Central America in Parts 2 and 3, respectively.
I argue in this chapter that state-centered theoretical approaches comprise some of the most powerful analytic tools that are currently available to analysts of revolutions – more powerful (as I argued in the previous chapter) than the modernization and Marxist perspectives.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- No Other Way OutStates and Revolutionary Movements, 1945–1991, pp. 35 - 64Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001