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Social Revolutions and Mass Military Mobilization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Theda Skocpol
Theda Skocpol
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Abstract

Despite their limited accomplishments in promoting economic development, the authoritarian regimes brought to power through social-revolutionary transformations—from the French Revolution of the 18th century to the Iranian Revolution of the present—have excelled at conducting humanly costly wars with a special fusion of popular zeal, meritocratic professionalism, and central coordination. Revolutionary elites, whether communist or not, have been able to build the strongest states in those countries whose geopolitical circumstances allowed the emerging new regimes to become engaged in protracted and labor-intensive international warfare.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , January 1988 , pp. 147 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1988

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References

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3 See Skocpol, Theda, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, and China (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 161CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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8 For fuller discussion and references, see Skocpol (fn. 3), 174–77.

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31 See, for instance, Wolf (fn. 21), chap. 4. For a discussion of alternative perspectives on the Vietnamese peasantry, see Skocpol (fn. 22).

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