[ 1 ]
CHAPTER ONE
A Theory of
Revolutionary Durability
IN JUNE 1941, SOVIET POWER hung by the barest of threads. Overwhelmed
by invading Nazi armies, the Soviet Union ceded vast tracts of
territory as entire Russian divisions lost contact with their commanders.
Across the country, the Red Army disintegrated into bands of fugitives
seeking to escape German encirclement. In the central corridors of power,
panicked confusion reigned.1
One might have expected the Soviet regime to collapse, falling prey
to either an uprising by citizens who had suffered years of starvation and
repression or a coup by army officers angry at Joseph Stalin’s brutal purges
and catastrophic meddling in military affairs. Indeed, military disaster
during World War I had precipitated the fall of the tsarist regime. Moreover,
the devastating first weeks of the invasion could be traced directly
to Stalin’s leadership. He had refused to prepare for an invasion despite
numerous intelligence reports that an attack was imminent; in fact, he
had ordered the dismantling of existing defense fortifications in the east,
leaving the Soviet army largely defenseless in the rear.2 Several days after
the German invasion, Stalin retreated to his dacha, leaving the rest of the
leadership in the lurch. A small group of Politburo members ventured
out to see him uninvited—a risky move in Stalinist Russia.3 According to
one account, the Soviet leaders found Stalin alone in the dark, slumped
in an armchair, seemingly expecting arrest.4 He later admitted that “any
other government which had suffered such losses of territory . . . would
have collapsed.”5 Yet Stalin’s government survived, and Soviet communism
endured for another half century.
[ 2 ] CHAPTER 1
The Soviet regime’s survival amid extreme adversity highlights a
broader phenomenon of great significance. Revolutionary autocracies—
those born of violent social revolution—are extraordinarily durable. Soviet
communism lasted seventy-four years; Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary
Party (PRI) regime ruled for eighty-five years; revolutionary regimes
in China, Cuba, and Vietnam remain in power today after more than six
decades. Among modern states, only a small handful of Persian Gulf monarchies
match this longevity.
Revolutionary autocracies do not merely persist over time. Like the
Soviet Union, most of them have survived despite external hostility, poor
economic performance, and large-scale policy failure. The Chinese Communist
Party held on to power in the face of the catastrophic Great Leap
Forward and the “Great Chaos” unleashed by the Cultural Revolution. Vietnam’s
Communist regime endured the devastation caused by thirty years
of war; Cuba’s revolutionary regime survived a U.S.-backed invasion, a
crippling trade embargo, and the economic catastrophe that followed the
Soviet collapse; and the Islamic Republic of Iran endured four decades of
intense international hostility, including a bloody eight-year war with Iraq.
Finally, most revolutionary regimes survived the global collapse of
communism. During the 1990s, the loss of foreign patrons, economic crisis,
and unprecedented international democracy promotion undermined
autocracies across the world.6 Yet many revolutionary regimes—including
erstwhile communist regimes in China, Cuba, and Vietnam—remained
intact. Indeed, all the communist regimes that survived into the twentyfirst
century were born of violent revolution.7 Likewise, in sub-Saharan
Africa, the only Soviet client states to survive the end of the Cold War
were Angola and Mozambique, both of which emerged out of violent social
revolution.
These cases are not anomalies. In a statistical analysis of all authoritarian
regimes established since 1900, undertaken with Jean Lachapelle and
Adam E. Casey,8 we find that authoritarian regimes that emerged out of
violent social revolution survived, on average, nearly three times as long
as their nonrevolutionary counterparts.9 Revolutionary regimes broke
down at an annual rate that was barely a fifth of that of nonrevolutionary
regimes.10 To help visualize these differences, figure 1.1 presents the
Kaplan-Meier estimates for the two regime types, along with 95 percent
confidence envelopes. It shows that a striking 71 percent of revolutionary
regimes survived for thirty years or more, compared to only 19 percent
of nonrevolutionary regimes.11 Importantly, revolutionary origins are
A THEORY OF REVOLUTIONARY DURABILITY  [ 3 ]
positively associated with regime longevity, even when we control for
standard variables such as level of economic development, GDP growth,
oil wealth, and type of authoritarian regime (party-based, military, monarchy,
or personalist).12
The durability of revolutionary regimes is highly consequential. Though
rare (we count twenty since 1900), revolutionary autocracies have had an outsized
impact on modern world politics. Revolutions expand state power,
sometimes dramatically. As Theda Skocpol observed,13 the destruction of
old elites and mobilization of vast human and other societal resources may
permit rapid industrial and military advances, enabling states to leapfrog
others in the geopolitical pecking order. Thus, the Russian Revolution
transformed a predominantly agrarian society into a modern industrial
power capable of defeating Germany in World War II and achieving
nuclear parity with the United States. The revolution shook the global
capitalist system and gave rise to the Cold War rivalry that defined the
post-1945 geopolitical order. Likewise, the Chinese Revolution brought
the centralization of what had been a weak, fragmented state and fueled
the country’s emergence as a superpower. Cuba’s revolution transformed
Year
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Survivalprobability
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
Revolutionary regimes
Nonrevolutionary regimes
FIGURE 1.1: Kaplan-Meier Survival Curves.
[ 4 ] CHAPTER 1
a peripheral state into one capable of successful military intervention in
Africa.
Revolutions also bring war.14 Dramatic shifts in national power tend to
destabilize the regional and even international order, increasing the likelihood
of military conflict.15 Revolutionary governments generate heightened
uncertainty and perceptions of threat among both neighboring states
and global powers, which increases the likelihood of interstate conflict.16
Thus, from revolutionary France to Communist Russia and China, to
postcolonial Vietnam, to late twentieth-century Iran and Afghanistan,
revolutionary governments have often found themselves engulfed in war.
Overall, revolutionary governments are nearly twice as likely as nonrevolutionary
governments to be involved in war.17
Revolutionary regimes also engender new ideological and political
models that spread across national borders. The Bolshevik Revolution
gave rise to an economic model (state socialism) and a political model
(Leninism) that diffused across the globe during the twentieth century.
Similarly, the Cuban Revolution gave rise to a new guerrilla strategy that
transformed the Latin American Left, polarizing politics across the region
for a generation.18 The Iranian Revolution created a new model of a modern
theocracy.
Revolutionary regimes, moreover, have been responsible for some of
the most horrific violence and human tragedy in modern history, including
the 1932–1933 Ukrainian famine, Stalin’s Great Terror, the Great Leap
Forward in China, and the Khmer Rouge’s genocide in Cambodia.
Finally, revolutionary regimes have posed major foreign policy challenges
for Western democracies. Few states were more closely associated
with U.S. foreign policy ineffectiveness—if not outright failure—than revolutionary
Vietnam, Cuba, Iran, and Afghanistan.
This book seeks to explain the extraordinary durability of modern revolutionary
regimes.19 Drawing on comparative historical analysis, we argue
that social revolutions trigger a reactive sequence that powerfully shapes
long-run regime trajectories.20 Revolutionary governments’ attempts to
radically transform the existing social and geopolitical order generate
intense domestic and international resistance, often resulting in civil or
external war. This counterrevolutionary reaction is critical to long-run
regime durability. Counterrevolutionary wars pose an existential threat
to newborn regimes, and, in some cases (e.g., Afghanistan, Cambodia),
they destroy them. Among revolutionary regimes that survive, however,
early periods of violence and military threat produce three key pillars of
regime strength: (1) a cohesive ruling elite, (2) a highly developed and
A THEORY OF REVOLUTIONARY DURABILITY  [ 5 ]
loyal coercive apparatus, and (3) the destruction of rival organizations and
alternative centers of power in society. These three pillars help to inoculate
revolutionary regimes against elite defection, military coups, and mass
protest—three principal sources of authoritarian breakdown. Such a trajectory
almost always yields durable autocracies.
Defining Revolutionary Regime
A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a
picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle,
so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained, and magnanimous.
—MAO ZEDONG21
Revolutionary autocracies are political regimes that emerge out of social
revolutions. We define a social revolution as the violent overthrow of an
existing regime from below, accompanied by mass mobilization and state
collapse, which triggers a rapid transformation of the state and the existing
social order.22
Social revolutions possess four characteristics that jointly distinguish
them from other types of regime change. First, they occur from below, in
that they are led by mass-based movements that emerge outside the state
and regime.23 These may be armed guerrilla movements (China, Cuba,
Eritrea, Vietnam), political parties (Russia), or militant social movements
(Iran) that seize power amid mass unrest. In all cases, the revolutionary
elite is drawn from outside the preexisting state. Military coups are not
social revolutions.
Second, social revolutions involve the violent overthrow of the old
regime.24 This may take the form of a civil war (Mexico, Rwanda), a guerrilla
struggle (China, Cuba, Eritrea, Mozambique), or a rapid and violent
seizure of power (Russia, Bolivia in 1952, Iran).
Third, social revolutions produce a fundamental transformation of the
state.25 State transformation initially involves the collapse or crippling
of the preexisting coercive apparatus.26 Military chains of command are
shattered by mutinies or widespread desertion, preventing the security
forces from functioning as coherent organizations. In many cases, preexisting
coercive structures simply dissolve (e.g., Mexico, Cuba, Cambodia,
Nicaragua, Russia) or, in anticolonial revolutions (e.g., Algeria, Mozambique,
Vietnam), are withdrawn. Upon seizing power, revolutionary forces
usually dismantle remaining coercive agencies and build new armies,
police forces, and bureaucracies—often from scratch.27
[ 6 ] CHAPTER 1
Fourth, social revolutions involve the initiation of radical socioeconomic
or cultural change.28 Revolutionary governments attempt to impose, by
force, measures that attack the core interests of powerful domestic and
international actors or large groups in society. Such measures include the
systematic seizure and redistribution of property; attempts to eliminate
entire social classes (e.g., China, Russia); campaigns to destroy preexisting
cultures, religions, or ethnic orders (e.g., Iran, Rwanda); efforts to impose
new rules governing social behavior (e.g., Afghanistan, Iran); and foreign
policy initiatives aimed at spreading revolution and transforming the
regional or international order (e.g., Hungary in 1919, Cuba, Iran, Russia).
Because such efforts at radical social transformation trigger substantial
resistance, often from powerful places, they are invariably accompanied by
a heavy dose of coercion. For this reason, social revolutions are antithetical
to the development of liberal democracy.
Our definition of social revolution is demanding.29 It excludes at least
three types of regime change that scholars sometimes describe as revolutionary.
First, it excludes cases of mass-based regime change in which
states and social structures remain intact, such as the so-called color
revolutions in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan; the Arab Spring
transitions in Egypt and Tunisia; or Third Wave democratizations in the
Philippines (1986) and South Africa (1994).
Second, our definition excludes cases of radical change initiated by
actors within the state. So-called revolutions from above,30 such as those
in Turkey under Kemal Ataturk, Egypt under Gamal Nasser, or Ethiopia
under Mengistu Haile Mariam, do not meet our definition of revolution
because they were led by state officials rather than mass-based regime
outsiders. Far from involving the collapse or transformation of the state,
revolutions from above are led by the state.
Third, we exclude cases that emerge out of violent regime change but
do not initiate radical social transformations. These cases—which include
China under the Kuomintang (1927–1949), postcolonial Indonesia and
contemporary Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Uganda—might be characterized
as political revolutions, as opposed to social revolutions.31 Regimes
that emerge out of political revolutions sometimes share important characteristics
with social revolutionary regimes, such as the creation of new
armies. As a result, they too are often robust. However, only social revolutions
trigger the revolutionary reactive sequence that generates the
extraordinary durability observed in countries like Mexico, the Soviet
Union, Communist China, and Vietnam. When we use the term “revolutionary
regime,” then, we refer to regimes born of social revolution.
A THEORY OF REVOLUTIONARY DURABILITY  [ 7 ]
Our definition does not encompass some prominent cases that have
been described as revolutionary, such as the postcommunist “refolutions”
of 1989–1991.32 Because the fall of communism in Eastern Europe
involved mass uprisings and produced far-reaching socioeconomic transformations,
these transitions have been described as revolutionary.33 They
do not meet our criteria, however. With the exception of Romania,34 postcommunist
transitions were peaceful, in that they were driven by either
peaceful demonstrations (Eastern Europe) or, in the Soviet case, elections
(in 1990) and peaceful protest (after the 1991 putsch).35 In addition, most
postcommunist transitions left important state structures, including preexisting
armies, intact.36
Our definition also excludes fascist regimes. Although Nazi Germany
and Italy under Benito Mussolini have been described as revolutionary,37
the Nazis and the Italian fascists came to power through institutional
means, and with the backing of state officials.38 States never collapsed.
Our definition of revolution is thus more demanding than those used
in much of the contemporary literature. Minimalist definitions, such as
those of Mark R. Beissinger, Jack Goldstone, Jeff Goodwin, and others,
categorize as revolutions all cases “of irregular, extraconstitutional, and
sometimes violent changes of political regime and control of state power
brought about by popular movements.”39 By excluding criteria such as
state and societal transformation, these definitions broaden the concept of
revolution to encompass a wide array of cases, ranging from violent social
revolutions in China and Russia to the protest-driven removal of autocrats
such as the fall of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, Slobodan
Milošević in Serbia, and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia. Our definition
yields a narrower—but more uniform—set of cases.
To identify revolutionary regimes, we compiled a list of all 355 autocracies
since 1900 by drawing on data from Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright,
and Erica Frantz’s “Autocratic Breakdown and Regimes Transitions” data set
(GWF).40 We then narrowed the set of cases to governments that came to
power in an irregular fashion (i.e., not via succession or election) and from
outside the state (i.e., not via a military coup).41 Finally, we excluded cases in
which new governments did not initiate an effort to radically transform the
state and the social order. (Our coding criteria and reason for excluding each
nonrevolutionary case may be found in appendixes II and III.)42
To ensure that we did not miss any revolutionary governments that
collapsed before the end of the first calendar year, thereby failing to meet
GWF’s inclusion criteria for being a regime,43 we also examined all 219
autocratic leaders who were in power for at least a day but less than a
[ 8 ] CHAPTER 1
year.44 We identified two revolutionary governments that died in their
infancy: Finland in 1918 and Hungary in 1919.45 The fact that we could
identify only two such cases increases our confidence that we have not
inadvertently failed to identify short-lived revolutionary governments.46
Overall, then, we find twenty revolutionary autocracies since 1900;
these are listed in table 1.1. In terms of regime longevity, our cases range
from those that survived less than a year (Finland, Hungary) to those lasting
more than seventy years (China, Mexico, Russia). They include both
regimes that emerge out of classic social revolutions, such as those in
China, Cuba, Mexico, and Russia, and those founded in radical national
liberation struggles, as in Algeria, Angola, Mozambique, and Vietnam. The
list also includes some post–Cold War cases that are not always treated as
social revolutions, such as Rwanda, where the Rwandan Patriotic Front
government took steps to overturn the preexisting ethnic order,47 and
Eritrea, where the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front sought to radically
overhaul the country’s rural social structure.48
Table 1.1 Revolutionary Regimes since 1900
Afghanistan, 1996–2001
Albania, 1944–1991
Algeria, 1962–
Angola, 1975–
Bolivia, 1952–1964
Cambodia, 1975–1979
China, 1949–
Cuba, 1959–
Eritrea, 1993–
Finland, January 28–April 13, 1918
Guinea-Bissau, 1974–1999
Hungary, March 21–July 29, 1919
Iran, 1979–
Mexico, 1915–2000
Mozambique, 1975–
Nicaragua, 1979–1990
Russia, 1917–1991
Rwanda, 1994–
Vietnam, 1954–
Yugoslavia, 1945–1990
A THEORY OF REVOLUTIONARY DURABILITY  [ 9 ]
Seventeen of the twenty regimes listed in table 1.1 are left-leaning. This
pattern may be attributed to the fact that radical challenges to the existing
social order, a defining characteristic of social revolution, were more
likely to be undertaken by leftist (and, more recently, Islamist) forces in
the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Conservative or right-wing
forces usually seek to preserve the existing social order.49
Finally, all the regimes encompassed by our definition are authoritarian.
This should not be surprising. Because efforts to carry out radical social
transformation attack the vital interests or way of life of powerful domestic
actors and large societal groups, they require a level of violence and
coercion that is incompatible with liberal democracy.50 Social revolutions
may contribute to long-run democratization, for example, by destroying
institutions or social classes that inhibit democratic change, as Barrington
Moore argued in the case of France.51 In all revolutionary cases, however,
the initial regime was authoritarian.
A Theory of Revolutionary Regime Durability
This book seeks to explain the durability of authoritarian regimes. Durable
authoritarian regimes are those in which a single party, coalition,
or clique remains continuously in power, usually beyond the lifetime
of founding leaders, and often despite adverse conditions.52 Durable
autocracies are less likely to suffer serious contestation, either from
within (e.g., coups) or from society (e.g., large-scale protest), even in
circumstances—such as economic crisis, major policy failure, or leadership
succession—that often give rise to such contestation. Moreover,
when regime challenges do emerge, durable autocracies are better
equipped to thwart them.
The early twenty-first century witnessed a proliferation of research
on the sources of authoritarian durability. Some scholars pointed to
economic sources of regime stability. One of these is growth. Studies
have shown that economic growth helps sustain autocracy by limiting
public discontent and providing governments with the resources to both
maintain pro-regime coalitions and co-opt potential rivals.53 Other
research highlighted the role of natural resource wealth, particularly oil,
in sustaining autocracies.54 However, few revolutionary regimes have
achieved sustained economic growth (at least initially) or possess vast
natural resource endowments. In fact, most of them have experienced
the kind of severe economic crisis that is widely associated with authoritarian
breakdown.
[ 10 ] CHAPTER 1
Much of the contemporary literature on authoritarian durability
highlights the role of political institutions.55 Scholars argue that pseudodemocratic
institutions such as elections, legislatures, and ruling parties
help autocrats gain access to information,56 co-opt opponents,57 and provide
mechanisms of coordination and cohesion among the ruling elite.58
The most prominent institutionalist arguments center on the role of
political parties.59 Ruling parties are said to enhance authoritarian stability
by creating incentives for elite cooperation over defection. By providing
institutional mechanisms to regulate access to the spoils of public office
and by lengthening actors’ time horizons through the provision of future
opportunities for career advancement, ruling parties encourage long-term
loyalty.60 Those who lose out in short-term power struggles remain loyal
in the expectation of gaining access to power in future rounds. Ruling parties
thus reduce the incentives for elite defection, which is widely viewed
as a major cause of authoritarian breakdown.61
Given that most revolutionary regimes are governed by strong ruling
parties, revolutionary cases may appear to conform to such theories.
Nevertheless, there are limits to the explanatory power of institutionalist
approaches. As Benjamin Smith has shown, party-based authoritarian
regimes vary widely in their durability.62 Whereas some party-based
regimes survive for decades, even in the face of intense opposition and
severe economic crises (e.g., Malaysia, Zimbabwe), others (e.g., Pakistan
in 1958, Ghana in 1966) quickly collapse, often at the first sign of duress.
Indeed, as we show in this book, the formal existence of a ruling party tells
us virtually nothing about its strength.63
Furthermore, ruling parties may not exert the independent causal
force that is often assigned to them in the literature.64 Looking back at
the origins of many party-based autocracies, we see that ruling parties
were often initially weak or nonexistent. Mexico’s ruling party was not created
until fifteen years after the revolutionary elite took power; Cuba’s
Communist Party was not established until six years after the revolution,
and the party remained inoperative for a decade after its founding. Even
the Bolshevik Party, which became the model for Leninist party regimes,
was initially weak and riven by internal conflict. In these and other cases,
ruling parties strengthened over time, together with processes of statebuilding
and regime consolidation. This sequencing suggests that other,
more exogenous, factors may be at work. In other words, strong ruling
parties may contribute to durable authoritarianism, but we still need to
understand where strong ruling parties come from.
Our statistical analysis offers further evidence that revolutionary origins
are associated with more durable party-based authoritarianism.65 We
A THEORY OF REVOLUTIONARY DURABILITY  [ 11 ]
found that among the party-based authoritarian regimes that emerged
since 1900, those with revolutionary origins are considerably more robust
than those without such origins. The likelihood that a revolutionary
regime will collapse in any given year is less than half that of nonrevolutionary
party-based regimes.66
Recent scholarly efforts to explain variation in authoritarian durability
have taken a historical turn, examining the role of regime origins.67 This
approach may be traced back to Samuel Huntington, who argued more
than half a century ago that strong ruling parties were rooted in “struggle
and violence.”68 For Huntington, the strength of single-party regimes was
grounded in the “duration and intensity of the struggle to acquire power or
to consolidate power after taking over the government.”69 Thus, ruling parties
that emerged out of violent revolution or prolonged nationalist struggle
were most durable, whereas parties that seized and consolidated control of
the state “easily, without a major struggle,” usually “withered in power.”70
Katharine Chorley,71 writing a full generation before Huntington, pointed
to the critical role of social revolutions in facilitating the construction of
strong and loyal coercive agencies. This book expands upon and tests these
insights.
There exists a rich tradition of research on social revolutions.72 Much
of this research focuses on the causes of revolution. Scholars have long
debated the causal role of modernization, class structure, culture, ideology,
and leadership.73 Since publication of Theda Skocpol’s pathbreaking
book States and Social Revolutions,74 however, there has been a near consensus—to
which this book adheres—that state weakness is a necessary
condition for revolution.75 Revolutions occur only where states are disabled
by war, decolonization, or the breakdown of a sultanistic regime.76
We know less, however, about the consequences of revolution, especially
for political regimes. Scholars have examined the impact of revolution on
culture,77 redistribution and social equality,78 and state-building.79 They
have linked revolutions to the development of powerful coercive structures,80
heightened repression and terror,81 and war.82 Nevertheless, there
have been fewer efforts to theorize how social revolutions shape political
regimes.83
THE REVOLUTIONARY REACTIVE SEQUENCE
Building on Huntington,84 as well as more recent work by scholars such
as James Mahoney,85 Benjamin Smith,86 and Dan Slater,87 we argue that
developments during a revolutionary regime’s foundational period have a
profound impact on its long-term trajectory. Revolutionary origins trigger
[ 12 ] CHAPTER 1
what Mahoney calls a “reactive sequence,”88 or a series of violent conflicts
that, if they do not destroy the regime early on, dramatically strengthen
state institutions and weaken societal ones, laying a foundation for durable
authoritarianism.
In the ideal-typical revolutionary reactive sequence, which is summarized
in figure 1.2, early radicalism triggers a violent counterrevolutionary
reaction, often supported by foreign powers. This counterrevolutionary
reaction is critical to long-run regime durability because it creates an existential
threat that reinforces elite cohesion, encourages the development
of a powerful and loyal coercive apparatus, and facilitates the destruction
of rival organizations and independent centers of societal power. This process
of state-building and societal weakening lays a foundation for durable
authoritarian rule. In classical cases (e.g., Russia, Cuba, Iran), or what
Huntington called the “Western” type of revolution,89 the reactive sequence
begins after the seizure of national power. In some cases (e.g., China,
Vietnam, Yugoslavia), however, much of the conflict and transformation
occurs prior to the seizure of national power (Huntington called this the
“Eastern” type of revolution). Notwithstanding this difference in timing, this
book shows that the “Western” and “Eastern” revolutionary paths unfold in
comparable ways and give rise to similarly durable regimes.
Two alternative revolutionary paths yield less durable regimes. One is
a radical path to early death, in which revolutionary attacks on powerful
domestic and international interests trigger a military conflict that
Loyal/developed
coercive apparatus
Creation of
new army
Revolutionary
seizure of
power*
Early
radicalism
Counter-
revolutionary
conflict
Cohesive
elite
Weak alternative
power centers
Durable
Authoritarianism
Destruction of old army
FIGURE 1.2: The Ideal-Typical Revolutionary Reactive Sequence.
* In some cases (e.g., China), the reactive sequence occurs before seizure of power.
A THEORY OF REVOLUTIONARY DURABILITY  [ 13 ]
destroys the regime. Hungary (1919), Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge,
and Afghanistan under the Taliban (1996–2001) followed this path. The
other alternative path is one of accommodation, in which revolutionaries
initiate far-reaching social change but then temper or abandon most
of these measures to avert a counterrevolutionary reaction. This more
pragmatic approach often succeeds at limiting violent conflict, but in the
absence of such conflict, revolutionary governments are less likely to forge
a cohesive elite, build a powerful and loyal coercive apparatus, or destroy
independent power centers. Such regimes tend to survive in the short run,
but without a durable foundation, they are prone to instability. Opposition
challenges—both from within and from society—are more frequent, more
potent, and thus more likely to undermine the regime. This was the path
followed by regimes in Algeria, Bolivia, and Guinea-Bissau.
THE SEIZURE OF POWER: EARLY RADICALISM
AND THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY
You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of
madness.
—THOMAS SANKARA90
In observing the strength of regimes in Mexico and the Soviet Union during
the 1950s and 1960s, or in contemporary China and Vietnam, it is easy
to forget that most revolutionary autocracies are born weak. Revolutionaries
seize power in a context of state collapse, in which preexisting armies,
police forces, and bureaucracies have been partially or fully destroyed.
Inevitably, then, new revolutionary elites inherit weak states. Rebel armies
are often too small, ill equipped, and inexperienced to maintain order
across the national territory.91 In Russia, for example, Bolshevik forces
had virtually no presence outside the major cities in October 1917. Likewise,
Albanian revolutionaries barely possessed any state structures when
Enver Hoxha declared victory in late 1944,92 and Iranian revolutionaries
controlled only a “hastily gathered, disorganized and ill-trained militia”
upon seizing power in 1979.93
Ruling parties also tend to be weak in the immediate aftermath of revolution.
In Cuba, for example, Fidel Castro ruled without a party between
1959 and 1965. Even after being formally established in 1965, the Cuban
Communist Party barely functioned.94 It never even held a congress
before 1975, allowing Castro to rule in an “institutional void.”95 Likewise,
Mexican revolutionaries lacked a ruling party during their first twelve
[ 14 ] CHAPTER 1
years in power. Even in Russia, the birthplace of the Leninist party model,
the Bolshevik Party was initially plagued by internal conflict and loose
discipline.96
The absence of a strong party or coercive apparatus leaves revolutionary
governments vulnerable to challenges from diverse actors, ranging
from ancien régime elites to remnants of the old army to rival political
organizations seeking power in the wake of the old regime’s collapse. For
example, Mexico’s revolutionary government confronted remnants of the
old Federal Army, landowners, and rival armies led by Francisco (Pancho)
Villa and Emiliano Zapata for nearly a decade after the seizure of power.
The Bolsheviks faced opposition from the White Armies and other remnants
of the tsarist regime, as well as two rival socialist parties: the Mensheviks
and the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs).
Without an effective army or party and surrounded by a multitude of
real and potential enemies, new revolutionary governments tend to be vulnerable.
As George Pettee keenly observed, victorious revolutionaries take
power “not like men on horseback . . . but like fearful children, exploring
an empty house, not sure that it is empty.”97
The aftermath of the seizure of power may be understood as a critical
juncture,98 during which the behavior of the revolutionary elite can
have powerful long-term consequences for the regime. Nonrevolutionary
governments tend to respond pragmatically to conditions of extreme vulnerability
by seeking to broaden their domestic coalitions, build investor
confidence, and cultivate international legitimacy in order to attract foreign
support. In postcolonial Indonesia, for example, Sukarno sought to
forge a broad governing coalition that included nationalist, Marxist, and
conservative religious factions.99 Likewise, when the People’s Liberation
Movement won power in South Sudan in 2011, it moved to strengthen traditional
chiefs and reconcile with competing groups across the country.100
Most revolutionary governments do the opposite. Upon seizing power,
revolutionary elites launch radical policy initiatives that threaten the
vital interests of powerful domestic and foreign actors and disrupt the
way of life of much of society.101 For example, the Bolsheviks abolished
private property, halted all bond payments, and repudiated Russia’s foreign
debts, causing “shock waves” in the international financial system.102
Similarly, Cuban revolutionaries ignored the advice of their Soviet patrons
and attempted to export armed revolution throughout Latin America in the
1960s.103 This “revolutionary messianism” placed Cuba in the crosshairs of
the U.S. government, which posed a direct threat to the regime’s survival.104
Such radical behavior cannot be understood in strictly powermaximizing
terms. Initiatives such as radical land reform, large-scale
A THEORY OF REVOLUTIONARY DURABILITY  [ 15 ]
expropriation of foreign-owned companies, confrontation with neighboring
or Western powers, and efforts to wipe out secular culture challenge
powerful interests and disrupt the lives of millions of people. For new governments
presiding over weak states, such strategies are extraordinarily
risky—sometimes fatally so (e.g., Hungary, Afghanistan, Cambodia). Such
risk-acceptant behavior is very often driven by ideology.105 Revolutions
“put extreme idealists . . . in positions of power they do not ordinarily
have.”106 As Stephen E. Hanson has argued, strong ideological commitments
lengthen actors’ time horizons. Ideologues operate “secure in the
‘knowledge’ of long-term success” and thus “rationally forgo the benefits of
short-term egoistic behavior in order to advance the cause of the ideological
collective.”107 Indeed, there is evidence that revolutionary leaders such
as Vladimir Lenin, Béla Kun, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Mullah Mohammed
Omar, Ho Chi Minh, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and Samora Machel
were unusually ideological, in that they placed considerable emphasis on
utopian or eschatological visions of a new world order.108
COUNTERREVOLUTIONARY REACTION
Forrest D. Colburn observed that “just as Newton demonstrated that every
action brings about a reaction, so every revolution evokes a counterrevolution.”109
The radical initiatives undertaken by new revolutionary governments
almost invariably generate violent reactions, both at home and
abroad.110 Large-scale expropriation of private property, attacks on dominant
cultural or religious institutions, and efforts to challenge the existing
geopolitical order almost invariably trigger domestic counterrevolutionary
movements or external military aggression, or both.111
Most revolutions thus spark the emergence of armed counterrevolutionary
movements, often backed by foreign powers, which must be
defeated if the new regime is to consolidate.112 The Bolsheviks were
thrown into a civil war against White Armies backed by British, French,
Japanese, and American forces. The Castro government confronted a U.S.backed
counterrevolutionary campaign that culminated in the 1961 Bay
of Pigs invasion. In Mozambique, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique’s
(Frelimo) radical agrarian experiments and support for insurgents
in Rhodesia led to the emergence of a large Rhodesian- and South
African–backed insurgency at home.
Revolutions also provoke external wars, often with neighboring states
whose governments perceive a threat from the revolutionary government
or a window of opportunity in the wake of state collapse.113 For example,
the bloody Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) was a direct consequence of the
[ 16 ] CHAPTER 1
Iranian Revolution, as Saddam Hussein viewed the Khomeini government
as a threat.114 Vietnam’s revolutionary government fought a devastating
war with the United States, while the Cambodian Revolution led to a war
with Vietnam. In the 1990s, Eritrea engaged in military conflict with every
country with which it had a land border. Overall, a striking seventeen of
our twenty revolutions were followed by a civil or external war.115
Postrevolutionary conflicts generate enduring existential threats,
often from powerful enemies.116 Vietnam, for example, was in a state
of continuous war—with France and later the United States—for three
decades. Cuba’s revolutionary regime faced decades of unrelenting U.S.
hostility, and its leaders maintained a “siege mentality” as late as the early
2000s.117
REVOLUTIONARY LEGACIES: THREE PILLARS
OF DURABLE AUTHORITARIANISM
The existential threats posed by counterrevolutionary reactions sometimes
prove fatal for regimes. As chapter 7 shows, for example, the Hungarian
Soviet Republic collapsed after only five months at the hands of invading
Allied-backed Romanian troops. Likewise, revolutionary dictatorships in
Cambodia and Afghanistan were destroyed by foreign military responses
to their belligerent behavior.
Where regimes survive these counterrevolutionary reactions, however,
military conflict generates processes of revolutionary state-building and
societal transformation that lay a foundation for durable authoritarianism.
The violent conflict triggered by efforts to radically transform the existing
social or geopolitical order generates a prolonged perception of extreme
threat, which reinforces elite cohesion, contributes to the development of
strong and loyal coercive institutions, and facilitates the destruction of
alternative centers of societal power. These three legacies serve as crucial
pillars of regime durability because they help to inoculate revolutionary
regimes against elite defection, military coups, and mass protest—three
major sources of authoritarian breakdown.
A Cohesive Ruling Elite
Counterrevolutionary conflict tends to produce a cohesive regime elite,
or one in which high-level government or ruling party defection to the
opposition is rare, even during crises. Revolutions enhance elite cohesion
because they polarize societies, often for decades. Intense polarization
A THEORY OF REVOLUTIONARY DURABILITY  [ 17 ]
sharpens “us–them” distinctions, strengthening within-group ties and
fostering perceptions of a “linked fate” among cadres.118 Revolutionary
polarization is often accompanied by an enduring perception of existential
threat. Due to continuing counterrevolutionary challenges, most revolutionary
regimes face persistent threats to their survival. Such existential
threats tend to generate a siege mentality among the revolutionary elite,
which creates powerful incentives to close ranks. With the regime’s survival
perceived to be at stake, elite defection—or even open dissent—is
often viewed as treason. As a result, the costs of defection are high.
To be clear, the cohesion generated by revolutionary and counterrevolutionary
conflict does not eliminate the factional power struggles that are
endemic to all large political organizations. However, postrevolutionary
conflict creates powerful obstacles to defection, especially during periods
of crisis when the regime’s survival is at stake. Thus, revolutionary leaders
may compete for power and disagree over policy and strategy, but they
almost never attack the regime itself. Due to the heightened cost of defection,
elite schisms are less frequent in revolutionary regimes than in other
autocracies. In Russia, China, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Cuba, Albania, Mozambique,
Nicaragua—and even the hyper-factionalized Islamic Republic of
Iran (see chapter 6)—revolutionary autocracies suffered virtually no defections,
often for decades.
The claim that revolutions generate elite cohesion may appear to fly
in the face of events in Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, and Cambodia
under the Khmer Rouge, where revolutionary governments carried out
massive purges of the ruling elite. Indeed, since the time of the Jacobin
Terror, revolutions have been said to “devour their own children.” However,
revolutionary purges are not as common as is sometimes believed—
there were no purges, for example, in Cuba, Mozambique, Nicaragua, or
Vietnam. Crucially, moreover, purges should not be treated as an indicator
of low cohesion. There is broad scholarly agreement that leaders in
Russia, China, and Cambodia used purges primarily as means to concentrate
power. In other words, Stalin’s and Mao’s purges were not responses
to serious threats of defection and opposition.119 Likewise, years after the
Khmer Rouge fell from power, Cambodian foreign minister Ieng Sary
acknowledged that widespread claims of elite conspiracies against Pol Pot
made during his tenure were simply concocted to justify purges.120 Where
elites are cohesive, dissident officials close ranks (or at least remain silent)
even under the worst of circumstances. Thus, the fact that Stalin, Mao,
and Pol Pot carried out massive purges without triggering schisms suggests
a strikingly high degree of cohesion.
[ 18 ] CHAPTER 1
A cohesive elite is an important pillar of durable authoritarian rule.
Internal schisms often pose a serious threat to authoritarian survival.121
Those best positioned to remove autocrats are members of the inner circle
because they have access to the coercive, administrative, patronage, and
media resources needed to challenge the dictator. In autocracies facing
economic or other crises, signs of regime vulnerability may induce erstwhile
loyalists to abandon ship, which can trigger collapse.122 For example,
Zambia’s single-party regime collapsed in 1991 after economic crisis and
mounting protest triggered a wave of defections from the ruling United
National Independence Party (UNIP). As one defecting UNIP member
put it, “Only a stupid fly . . . follows a dead body to the grave.”123
By contrast, revolutionary elites tend to remain loyal even during
severe crises. For example, after Lenin’s incapacitation in Russia, perceived
threats from Western powers dissuaded Leon Trotsky and other
dissident Bolsheviks from challenging Stalin or defecting at a time when
such opposition might have succeeded. Instead, Trotsky, a revolutionary
war hero who was widely considered Lenin’s natural successor (and who
personally despised Stalin), pledged loyalty to Stalin’s ruling triumvirate
even after he was excluded from it.124 Although they might have used their
considerable prestige to oppose Stalin, Trotsky and other dissidents were
“paralyzed by fear” at the prospect of creating a rival party.125 Similarly,
Vietnam’s Communist Party leadership suffered no defections during the
entirety of the war against the United States,126 and Cuba’s Communist
Party leadership suffered no defections despite a catastrophic economic
crisis in the wake of the Soviet collapse.127
A Strong and Loyal Coercive Apparatus
Social revolution and its aftermath tend to produce strong and loyal coercive
organizations. While the collapse and reconstruction of the state
allows revolutionaries to create new army, police, and intelligence agencies
that are fused with, and tightly controlled by, the ruling elite, sustained
counterrevolutionary or external military threats almost invariably lead to
the development of a large and effective coercive apparatus.
Political-Military Fusion. Because social revolutions are accompanied
by the crippling or collapse of prerevolutionary states, revolutionary leaders
must build new coercive agencies, often from scratch.128 Indeed, in
nearly all our cases, revolutionary elites built entirely new armies, police
forces, and intelligence services.129
Revolutionary armies differ from nonrevolutionary ones in several
important ways. First, they tend to be tightly fused with ruling parties,
A THEORY OF REVOLUTIONARY DURABILITY  [ 19 ]
creating what Amos Perlmutter and William M. LeoGrande call a “dual
elite.”130 Revolutionary army, police, and intelligence forces are led and
staffed by cadres from the liberation struggle, and military officials hold top
positions in the government and the ruling party. In such cases, it “makes
no sense to ask whether the dual elite functions as the agent of the party
within the army or the agent of the army within the party. It is both.”131 For
example, Cuba’s revolutionary regime was marked by a near-total overlap
between civilian and military elites.132 Civilian control over the military was
not an issue because civilian leaders “were the armed forces.”133 Likewise, in
Vietnam, where Communist guerrillas founded the People’s Army of Vietnam
in the 1940s, effectively fusing party and army leaderships,134 the military
command “was nothing more than a segment of the party leadership.”135
A similar degree of party-army fusion could be observed in China, Mexico,
Mozambique, Nicaragua, Yugoslavia, and elsewhere.
Party-army fusion enhances the authority of political leaders, many
of whom led the armed struggle. Thus, in Albania, Angola, China, Cuba,
Eritrea, Mexico, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Yugoslavia, and elsewhere,
party leaders were guerrilla commanders during the revolutionary war.
Their military achievements and demonstrated willingness to share battlefield
risks earned them “martial prestige.”136
Building new armies from scratch also allows revolutionary elites to
penetrate the armed forces with political commissars and other institutions
of partisan oversight and control.137 Partisan penetration enhances
the ruling elite’s capacity to monitor militaries and identify potential
conspirators. In most cases, such penetration is extraordinarily difficult
to achieve. Partisan interference is often fiercely resisted by traditional
militaries, whose leaders value their autonomy.138 For example, Kwame
Nkrumah’s attempts to introduce political commissars and party cells into
the Ghanaian military met strong resistance and contributed to the coup
that toppled him in 1966. Such politicization is easier when ruling parties
create militaries from scratch.139 In Albania, China, Cuba, Nicaragua,
Rwanda, the Soviet Union, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, and elsewhere, revolutionary
leaders successfully established political commissars, party cells,
and other institutional mechanisms at all levels of the armed forces to
ensure ruling party control.
The fusion of revolutionary party and army structures fosters an
unusual degree of military loyalty. In most nonrevolutionary autocracies,
militaries retain strong corporate identities and thus view their interests as
distinct from those of the government. In postcolonial Burma, for example,
military leaders believed that politicians “could not be trusted” with
holding the country together.140 Likewise, the Pakistani army viewed itself
[ 20 ] CHAPTER 1
as the primary guardian of the national interest and able to run the country
more efficiently than civilians.141 In revolutionary regimes, by contrast,
civilian and military elites share an identity.142 Army commanders view
themselves as partners in the revolutionary struggle and thus tend to be
staunchly loyal to the revolution and its ideology.143 Thus, in China, there
was little danger of the military betraying the revolution because the military
“had become the revolution.”144 Likewise, in Nicaragua, Sandinista
military officials viewed themselves as “defenders . . . of a revolutionary
political project,”145 and in Iran, the Revolutionary Guard viewed itself as
the “principal bastion and perpetuator of revolutionary purity.”146
Party-army fusion dramatically reduces the likelihood of military
coups.147 Coups were the principal cause of regime collapse—authoritarian
and democratic—during the Cold War era.148 Militaries seized power
throughout the developing world in the decades after World War II.149
According to Naunihal Singh,150 coups were attempted in 80 percent of
sub-Saharan African states, 76 percent of Middle Eastern and North African
states, 67 percent of Latin American states, and 50 percent of Asian
states during the second half of the twentieth century.151
Yet coups are extremely rare in revolutionary regimes. Among our
twenty cases, only two regimes—those in Bolivia and Guinea-Bissau—
were overthrown by the military.152 In an analysis conducted with Jean
Lachapelle and Adam E. Casey, we found that revolutionary regimes are
considerably less likely to suffer coup attempts than nonrevolutionary
regimes.153 Indeed, revolutionary armies have remained loyal even in circumstances
that frequently trigger intervention. In China, for example,
the military remained loyal to Mao during the Cultural Revolution, even
though Mao encouraged violent factional conflict that brought the country
to the brink of civil war. In Soviet Russia, Stalin faced no challenge from
the army despite purging 90 percent of top military officials in 1937–1938.
In Mozambique, the military did not attempt a coup despite a 1992 peace
agreement that required Frelimo to disband the military and create a
new force that integrated its rival, the Mozambican National Resistance
(Renamo).154 Regimes in Cuba, Iran, and Nicaragua did not suffer coups
despite severe economic crises.
In sum, party-army fusion has a powerful coup-proofing effect. Because
coups are a leading source of authoritarian breakdown,155 revolutionary
state-building contributes in an important way to regime durability.
A Strong Coercive Apparatus. Social revolutions frequently increase
the power and reach of the state.156 Existential military threats compel
revolutionary governments to build a vast security apparatus. Faced
A THEORY OF REVOLUTIONARY DURABILITY  [ 21 ]
with counterrevolutionary violence and, in many cases, real or threatened
foreign invasion, revolutionary governments often must invest
heavily in building up their armies and internal security forces.157 In
Vietnam, decades of war gave rise to one of the world’s largest and most
effective armies.158 In Cuba, the threat of a U.S-backed invasion led the
Castro government to transform its “ragtag army” of 5,000 soldiers into a
300,000-strong force capable of deterring the United States.159 In Eritrea,
counterrevolutionary conflict in the 1990s transformed the country from
a weak state into one of the most militarized autocracies in the world—
second only to North Korea.160
A developed coercive apparatus—especially one that is tightly wedded
to the ruling elite—enhances a regime’s repressive capacity. In addition to
elite schisms and coups, autocrats face potential threats from below.161 To
combat such challenges, they rely on both low-intensity and high-intensity
repression.162 High-intensity repression refers to high-visibility acts that
target large numbers of people, well-known individuals, or major institutions.
An example is violent repression of mass demonstrations, as in
Mexico City in 1968, Tiananmen Square in China in 1989, or Iran in 2019.
Low-intensity repression refers to less visible, but more systematic, forms
of coercion, such as surveillance, low-profile harassment or detention by
security forces, and intimidation by paramilitary forces.
Revolutionary origins increase the capacity of autocrats to engage in
both low- and high-intensity repression. The vast expansion of the central
state apparatus, often in a context of wartime mobilization, enhanced
revolutionary regimes’ capacity for surveillance and other forms of lowintensity
repression. The Soviet KGB stationed officials in every significant
enterprise, factory, and government institution and drew on roughly 11
million informers who infiltrated virtually every apartment block in the
country.163 Vietnam’s intelligence agency (Cong an) mobilized as many
as a million agents,164 which allowed it to penetrate society “down to the
smallest alley.”165 With informants in workplaces and classrooms and
“wardens” overseeing every neighborhood, the Vietnamese state was able
to monitor every active dissident in the country.166
Revolutionary governments also possess an unusual capacity for highintensity
repression. Large-scale and public repression of mass protest
involves considerable risk. Not only is it likely to trigger international
condemnation, but it may erode the domestic legitimacy of the security
forces, which can undermine internal discipline and morale.167 Due to
fear of prosecution or other forms of public retribution, both security
officials and rank-and-file soldiers may resist orders to repress. For this
[ 22 ] CHAPTER 1
reason, governments are often reluctant to order high-intensity coercion,
and where such orders are issued, security officials often refuse to
carry them out. Indeed, numerous authoritarian regimes have collapsed
due to the government’s unwillingness—or inability—to repress protest
in a consistent and sustained manner. (Twenty-first-century examples
include Serbia in 2000, Madagascar in 2002 and 2009, Georgia in 2003,
Ukraine in 2004, Kyrgyzstan in 2005 and 2010, and Egypt and Tunisia
in 2011.)
By contrast, states that emerge from revolutionary conflict are well
equipped to crack down on protest. Years of military struggle give rise to
a generation of elites and cadres with experience in violence. Ruling elites
that have engaged in violent conflict are more likely to unite behind coercive
measures, and, crucially, security officials who belong to those revolutionary
elites are more likely to carry out controversial orders to engage
in high-intensity repression. Thus, revolutionary ties between government
and security forces facilitated the PRI government’s brutal repression of
student protesters in Mexico City in 1968, the Chinese Communist government’s
high-intensity crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protesters in
1989, and the Algerian military’s crackdown on Islamists in the 1990s. In
Iran, the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij—organizations created by
revolutionary forces and strengthened by years of counterinsurgency and
war—consistently carried out orders to repress during the 2009 Green
Revolution protests as well as the 2019 uprisings.
The Destruction of Rival Organizations and
Independent Centers of Societal Power
Finally, revolutionary and counterrevolutionary conflict facilitates the
destruction of both existing rivals and the social institutions that could
serve as the bases for future challenges.168 Wars allow governments to do
things ordinary dictatorships often cannot do. For one, they provide revolutionary
elites with both a justification and the means to destroy political
rivals. For example, Russia’s civil war allowed the Bolsheviks to wipe out
other socialist parties, including the Mensheviks and the popular SRs.169
In Yugoslavia, the revolutionary war allowed the Partisans to destroy the
nationalist Chetniks, who had competed for control of the country. By
the war’s end, almost all potential rivals to the revolutionaries had been
destroyed.170 Likewise, the Vietnamese Communists undertook the violent
destruction of rival nationalist and religious organizations during
their struggle against the French.171 By the time the Communist Party
A THEORY OF REVOLUTIONARY DURABILITY  [ 23 ]
gained control of North Vietnam in 1954, all major challengers had been
eliminated.172
Crucially, moreover, revolutionary and postrevolutionary wars facilitate
the weakening or destruction of independent centers of societal
power: institutions or social classes whose power, resources, or legitimacy
can serve as a basis for opposition. These include local elites, landowning
classes, preexisting armies, and traditional monarchic and religious
authorities whose “symbolic power” could be used to mobilize opposition
to the regime.173 Thus, Mexico’s bloody 1913–1915 civil war weakened
landowners and destroyed the old army,174 while Russia’s civil war
finished off the last remnants of the tsarist forces and the landowning
classes. In Yugoslavia, military conflict during World War II undermined
local authority structures, weakening the traditional village chiefs who
had long dominated the country,175 and in China, the revolutionary war
and land reform wiped out the dense network of local gentry, foreign and
domestic churches, warlords, criminal gangs, secret societies, and clan
networks that had limited the reach of the prerevolutionary state.176
The destruction of independent power centers weakens the structural
bases of future opposition. The mobilization of trade unions, religious institutions,
and other civic associations undermined dictatorships in Argentina,
Brazil, the Philippines, Poland, South Africa, South Korea, and elsewhere
during the Third Wave of democratization. Revolutionary regimes are less
likely to face such societal mobilization. In the absence of independent
sources of finance, infrastructure, or legitimacy, the organizational bases
of opposition effectively disappear. In China, the elimination of criminal
gangs and local fiefdoms—which had provided the Communist Party with
safe havens during the revolutionary struggle—deprived opponents of
means to resist attacks by the central state. At the start of the twentyfirst
century, China had a much weaker civil society than did many countries
with similarly high levels of economic development. In Vietnam, the
destruction of the landowning class and the weakening of the Catholic
Church eliminated potential sources of opposition to communist rule.177
By the 1960s, all independent sources of power outside the state had been
crushed, leaving opponents without a mass base.178 As we shall see in the
cases of China and Iran, the destruction of alternative power centers does
not inoculate regimes against large-scale protest; however, the absence of
mobilizing structures makes it harder to sustain such mobilization.
In sum, we argue that in most revolutionary regimes, robust authoritarian
institutions emerge out of a reactive sequence. Notwithstanding
the initial weakness of many revolutionary governments, ideologically
[ 24 ] CHAPTER 1
driven revolutionary elites launch radical initiatives that challenge powerful
domestic and international interests, resulting in civil war (Angola,
Mexico, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Russia), external war (Afghanistan,
Cambodia, China, Eritrea, Iran, Vietnam), or existential military threats
(Albania, Cuba). Such conflict sometimes brings early regime collapse. But
where regimes survive, counterrevolutionary conflict leads to the development
of a cohesive elite, a strong and loyal military, and the destruction
of alternative power centers. Because elite schisms, coups, and mass protest
are three of the main sources of authoritarian breakdown, revolution and its
aftermath effectively inoculate regimes against three leading causes of death.
We measure the three pillars of regime durability in the following way.179
First, a cohesive elite is one in which defection to the opposition of highlevel
regime officials is rarely observed, even during periods of crisis.180
When defections occur, few regime actors join them. Although intra-elite
conflict may be extensive (and even violent), losers of factional battles and
other dissident elites either close ranks or remain silent—rather than work
against the regime—during crises.
Second, we separate the strength and loyalty of the coercive apparatus
into its two component parts. A strong coercive apparatus is one in which
the security sector—including the army, the police, intelligence agencies,
and other specialized internal security agencies—is sufficiently large and
effective to monitor dissent and thwart protest across the national territory,
down to the village and neighborhood levels. A loyal coercive apparatus
is one that consistently supports the revolutionary regime, even
during periods of crises. Loyal militaries are characterized by the absence
(or near-total absence) of coup attempts or military rebellions aimed at
changing the regime or removing its elite.
Third, in measuring the destruction of alternative centers of societal
power, we distinguish between full and partial destruction. We score as full
destruction cases in which all significant societal institutions, economic
actors, and organized groups are either destroyed or emasculated and
rendered dependent on the state. This was the case, for example, in communist
revolutions such as in Russia, China, Vietnam, and Cuba. We score
as cases of partial destruction those in which revolutionary governments
destroy or emasculate some independent centers of societal power, but
one or more societal institution survives and retains the capacity to mobilize
against the regime. Examples include mosque networks in Algeria, the
Catholic Church in Nicaragua, and trade unions in Bolivia. As we shall see,
this difference can be consequential. Whereas revolutionary regimes that
only partially destroy independent power centers often confront higher
A THEORY OF REVOLUTIONARY DURABILITY  [ 25 ]
levels of societal contention (e.g., Bolivia in the early 1960s, Algeria in the
early 1990s), in cases of full destruction, such as the Soviet Union, Cuba,
and Vietnam, it is often extraordinarily difficult for opposition movements
to establish themselves.
DIVERGENT PATHS
Although the revolutionary reactive sequence described above may be considered
the ideal-typical trajectory of revolutionary regimes (figure 1.2), it
is not the only one. Two other postrevolutionary paths generally lead to
less durable authoritarianism. These paths are summarized in figure 1.3.
In the ideal-typical sequence, early radicalism triggers a revolutionary
reactive sequence that leads to a robust authoritarian regime. However,
the reactive sequence may be aborted in two ways, resulting in less stable
regimes. First, early radicalism may trigger an external military reaction
that brings violent defeat, thereby causing an early death. Nascent
revolutionary regimes suffered such military defeats in four cases: Finland
(1918),181 Hungary (1919), Cambodia (1975–1979), and Afghanistan
(1996–2001). In Cambodia, for example, the Khmer Rouge government
recklessly provoked a war with Vietnam, which led to the regime’s demise
amid military defeat. In Afghanistan, the Taliban regime’s refusal to break
with al-Qaeda in the wake of the 2001 World Trade Center attacks led to
a U.S. military intervention that ended the regime. Challenging powerful
actors and states is a risky venture, and it sometimes has fatal consequences
for regimes.
We have too few cases to generalize with any confidence about the conditions
under which early radicalism leads to rapid regime collapse. However,
such outcomes appear most likely in small, geopolitically vulnerable
states. Each of the four cases of early death—Finland, Hungary, Cambodia,
and Afghanistan—occurred in small states that were highly exposed
to external intervention. In larger states (e.g., China, Iran, Russia), revolutionary
governments are more likely to survive their early radicalism,
allowing the reactive sequence we have theorized to unfold.
Second, revolutionary elites may prove insufficiently radical to trigger
a full reactive sequence. This is the accommodationist path depicted in
figure 1.3. In Algeria, Bolivia, and Guinea-Bissau, three borderline cases
of revolution, ruling parties launched radical reform initiatives (if they
did not, they would not be scored as revolutionary) but then scaled back
or ceased many of these initiatives to avoid conflict with domestic interests
or foreign powers. Because this more pragmatic approach threatened
[ 26 ] CHAPTER 1
fewer interests at home and abroad, it provoked weaker counterrevolutionary
reactions. Revolutionary governments that confiscate less property
from powerful domestic and foreign actors, pursue less invasive cultural
transformations, and avoid foreign policies that threaten the regional or
geopolitical order are less likely to face strong counterrevolutionary resistance
or external aggression. As a result, they tend to avoid the kind of
destructive military conflict that threatened embryonic revolutionary
regimes in Russia, Cuba, and Iran—and destroyed them in Afghanistan
and Cambodia. Yet, precisely because they do not confront existential military
threats, accommodationist governments build weaker regimes. They
are less likely to develop cohesive elites or powerful garrison states, and
they often lack the will or capacity to wipe out rivals and independent centers
of power. In other words, they fail to develop the bases for long-run
durability. The resulting regime is less stable because internal challenges
and societal contestation are more frequent, more potent, and more likely
to trigger a breakdown of the revolutionary regime.
Ultimately, then, where revolutionary elites were less extremist during
the initial period, regimes avoided the counterrevolutionary reaction
Revolutionary
seizure of power
Counter-
revolutionary
reaction
Radical path
Accommodationist
path
DURABLE
AUTHORITARIANISM
EARLY DEATH
No counter-
revolutionary
reaction
UNSTABLE REGIME
1. Less cohesive elite
2. Weaker, less disciplined army
3. Persistence of independent
power centers
Military defeat
1. Cohesive elite
2. Strong loyal army
3. Destruction of
independent power
centers
FIGURE 1.3: Three Revolutionary Regime Paths.
A THEORY OF REVOLUTIONARY DURABILITY  [ 27 ]
that either destroyed or fortified revolutionary regimes. Accommodationist
governments tended to survive the early revolutionary period, but their
regimes remained prone to both internal schism and opposition mobilization.
In Bolivia, the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR) government
fell prey to a coup after just twelve years. In Guinea-Bissau, the
regime suffered numerous coup attempts and finally collapsed in the face
of military rebellion after twenty-five years. Although the Algerian regime
survived, it was ridden by periodic crisis, including a palace coup and a
series of debilitating schisms in the 1960s and massive protest, another
palace coup, and a descent into civil war in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
What explains the choice between radical and accommodationist strategies?
Leadership plays a role. Radical strategies are often undertaken by
unusually strong-willed and risk-acceptant leaders who impose them over
internal resistance and despite daunting odds. It is plausible to argue, for
example, that strong-willed leaders such as Lenin and Stalin, Mao, Castro,
and Khomeini pushed through radical initiatives that their governments
might not otherwise have adopted. In Iran, for example, Khomeini’s
single-minded pursuit of an Islamic republic was critical to its founding,
as the strategy was fiercely resisted by many of his revolutionary allies.182
Likewise, the Vietnamese Communists’ costly pursuit of revolution in
South Vietnam—which provoked a massive U.S. military intervention—
was driven by General Secretary Le Duan, whose “dogged persistence”
enabled the “go for broke” strategy to prevail over the more cautious “North
first” strategy advocated by other party leaders.183 Finally, Castro’s voluntarism
and “revolutionary messianism”184 was likely decisive in steering
Cuba’s revolutionary government toward an “unequivocal, unwavering,
and reckless” strategy of confrontation with the United States.185 It is also
plausible that different leaders in accommodationist cases might have
pursued more radical strategies. For example, Guinea-Bissau’s founding
president, Luis Cabral, was more moderate than his Lusophone counterparts
in Angola and Mozambique, even though the Party for African Independence
in Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) was in a stronger military
position than the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA)
in Angola or Frelimo in Mozambique.186
Beyond leadership, two factors appear consequential in shaping the
choice between radicalism and accommodation. The first is ideology.
Where revolutionary elites share a commitment to a well-defined revolutionary
ideology prior to the seizure of power,187 as was the case with the
Bolsheviks in Russia, the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cambodian Communists,
and Shiite leaders in Iran, they are more likely to adopt radical or
[ 28 ] CHAPTER 1
risk-accepting strategies.188 Shared ideological commitments—whether
to Marxism, anti-imperialism, or religious fundamentalism—distort
leaders’ understanding of the world and induce the belief (frequently
unwarranted) that radical strategies either are inevitable or will succeed in
the end.189
Where revolutionary leaders lack a shared ideology, as in Algeria,
Bolivia, Guinea-Bissau, and Mexico, pragmatic strategies are more likely
to prevail. In such cases, pressure from below, in the form of worker or
peasant mobilization, may lead nonideological revolutionaries to adopt
radical strategies. This occurred in the aftermath of the Bolivian Revolution
and at critical moments in revolutionary Mexico. However, whereas
ideologically committed leaders in Russia, China, Vietnam, and Iran sustained
radical strategies, often at great cost, pragmatists in Bolivia and
Mexico abandoned them as soon as it was politically expedient to do so.
Second, foreign support facilitates the introduction of radical measures.
Superpower patronage expands revolutionary governments’ room
to maneuver, giving the revolutionary elite greater confidence that they
will be bailed out if their radical policies fail—or protected if their behavior
triggers conflict. Cuba’s radical foreign policy, for example, was made
possible by Soviet support.190 In Bolivia, by contrast, the absence of superpower
support left the MNR government dependent on the United States,
which encouraged accommodation.191
In sum, durable revolutionary regimes emerge out of a reactive
sequence. Most of them are born weak. Revolutionary elites that do not
build powerful party-armies and wipe out rivals during protracted guerrilla
struggles (as in China and Vietnam) must do so after they seize power.
Such postrevolutionary state- and party-building generally occurs only in
response to an existential military threat. Radical measures undertaken by
revolutionary governments, which create powerful domestic and external
enemies, tend to generate such threats. These counterrevolutionary conflicts
sometimes prove fatal, and they are sometimes insufficient to trigger
a full-blown reactive sequence. But where revolutionary governments
survive violent counterrevolutionary conflicts, as occurred in two-thirds of
our cases, rapid state- and party-building and the destruction of independent
power centers lay a solid foundation for durable authoritarianism.
Moderate strategies undertaken by revolutionaries thus have a paradoxical
effect. Measures aimed at accommodating powerful domestic and
international actors may help ensure regime survival in the short term,
but they do little to inoculate the revolution against standard threats (elite
schisms, coups) that imperil most authoritarian regimes.
A THEORY OF REVOLUTIONARY DURABILITY  [ 29 ]
Of course, social revolution is hardly the only source of robust authoritarian
institutions. Scholars have identified several other phenomena that
generate one or more of the pillars of durable authoritarianism described
in this chapter. For example, as research by Dan Slater and others has
shown, violent counterrevolutionary conflict may also enhance elite
cohesion, strengthen ruling parties, and encourage the development of
a powerful coercive apparatus.192 Likewise, political revolution, in which
successful insurgents build new armies but do not engage in radical social
transformation, may give rise to relatively cohesive ruling parties and
loyal militaries.193 Finally, large-scale agrarian reform weakens a powerful
alternative power center by destroying traditional landowning classes.194
Yet, whereas counterrevolution, political revolution, and land reform
strengthen one or two pillars of durable authoritarianism, social revolution
strengthens all three of them. In other words, the revolutionary reactive
sequence is not a unique source of authoritarian durability, but it is
an especially potent one because it helps inoculate autocrats against three
principal sources of regime breakdown: elite schism, coups, and societal
mobilization.
THE ROLE OF THE INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENT
Regime trajectories are powerfully shaped by the international environment.195
The geopolitics of the Cold War—and the emergence of the
Soviet Union as a global superpower—weighed heavily on twentiethcentury
regime outcomes,196 particularly those of revolutionary regimes.
The Soviet Union inspired revolutionary movements across the globe, provided
a model (Leninism) for organizing revolutionary regimes, and eventually
became an important source of military and economic assistance
for both aspiring revolutionary movements and existing revolutionary
regimes. Either directly or through allies, the Soviets contributed to the
success of revolutionary movements in Angola, Cambodia, China, GuineaBissau,
Mozambique, and Nicaragua. Soviet bloc assistance also helped to
shore up revolutionary regimes in Angola, Cuba, Mozambique, and Vietnam,197
and in some cases, such as Cuba, it likely encouraged their radicalization.
At the same time, Cold War polarization intensified the domestic
and international reaction to revolutionary regimes,198 which increased
both the likelihood and the intensity of counterrevolutionary conflict. The
heightened stakes and threat created by Cold War geopolitical competition
appears to have strengthened regimes in Angola, Cuba, Mozambique,
and Vietnam by enhancing elite cohesion. By contrast, regimes that were
[ 30 ] CHAPTER 1
born after the Cold War, such as those in Eritrea and Rwanda, faced less
polarized international environments and weaker external threats, which
appears to have resulted in less cohesive elites.
Ultimately, however, the international environment is a secondary
factor shaping revolutionary regime trajectories. In nine of our cases,
including two of the most durable, Mexico and Russia, revolutionary
regimes emerged either before or after the Cold War.199 Four other revolutions
(in Algeria, Bolivia, Cuba, and Iran) occurred during the Cold
War but without Communist bloc assistance. Moreover, it is worth noting
that among our revolutionary cases, the four leading beneficiaries of
Soviet assistance (Angola, Cuba, Mozambique, and Vietnam) all survived
for more than three decades after the Soviet collapse. Finally, revolutionary
elites in post–Cold War Eritrea and Rwanda may be less cohesive than
many of their Cold War counterparts, but as we show in the book’s conclusion,
reactive sequences in both countries nevertheless gave rise to durable
autocracies. Robust revolutionary regimes, then, are not simply an artifact
of the Cold War.
THE DURATION OF REVOLUTIONARY LEGACIES
Revolutionary legacies are enduring but not permanent. The pillars of
authoritarianism degrade over time, albeit slowly and incompletely, eventually
leaving regimes more vulnerable to breakdown. This process of
decay was most evident in the cases of Mexico and the Soviet Union, the
earliest and longest-lived regimes covered in this book.
The bases of revolutionary regime durability erode at different speeds
and to varying degrees. Elite cohesion appears to degrade most rapidly.
The siege mentality characteristic of most revolutionary regime elites
tends to diminish as domestic and external threats subside. The process
varies across cases. Where external threats persist for decades, as in Cuba,
Iran, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam, cohesion erodes more slowly. Elite
cohesion also weakens with generational change. The founding generation
of revolutionary leaders tends to be more ideologically committed and
wedded to a siege mentality, and the prestige of founding leaders such as
Stalin, Mao, Josip Broz Tito, Castro, and Khomeini can have a powerful
unifying effect even after the counterrevolutionary threat has disappeared.
For example, Chinese veterans of the Long March in the 1930s
(the “elders”) almost universally viewed the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests
in polarized, zero-sum terms and played a critical role in unifying
the party leadership behind a repressive response.200 The departure of
this founding generation can thus be expected to yield a less cohesive elite.
A THEORY OF REVOLUTIONARY DURABILITY  [ 31 ]
As existential threats recede and the founding generation disappears,
the nonmaterial bases of revolutionary elite cohesion weaken. Ambition
and patronage replace ideology and perceived threat as the primary glue
binding together regime elites,201 gradually transforming revolutionary
parties into the more run-of-the-mill ruling party machines theorized in
the literature on parties and authoritarianism.202 For example, ruling parties
appear to grow more vulnerable to elite defection during crises,203
which increases the importance of economic growth as a source of authoritarian
stability.204
Even when the original bases of elite cohesion disappear, however,
most revolutionary regimes continue to enjoy many of the advantages
of institutionalized ruling parties. In the Soviet Union, China, Mexico,
Vietnam, and Mozambique, for example, established formal and informal
institutions governing collective decision-making, leadership selection,
and succession helped regulate intraparty conflict and limit elite defection
after the revolutionary generation had passed from the scene. In addition,
decades of dominance often reinforce elite perceptions of ruling party
hegemony, thereby discouraging defection.205
The coercive pillars of revolutionary regime durability appear to
degrade more slowly and unevenly. For example, the size and effectiveness
of the coercive apparatus appears largely unaffected by generational
change. This is certainly the case in China, where the Communist
regime not only retained its capacity to monitor and control dissent in
the early twentieth century but in many respects—most notably, surveillance
capacity—enhanced it.206 Regimes in Vietnam and Cuba similarly
retained vast repressive infrastructures—with a demonstrated capacity for
low-intensity coercion—into the twenty-first century.
Institutionalized party-army linkages are also slow to change. Decades
of party-army fusion help revolutionary regimes steer clear of selfreinforcing
coup traps, in which each coup reinforces patterns of military
intervention, thereby increasing the likelihood of future coups.207
Most revolutionary regimes establish institutionalized patterns of civilian
control that endure long after party-army fusion erodes and the
armed forces professionalize.208 Likewise, party penetration of the
armed forces often persists, providing enduring mechanisms for political
surveillance that reinforces political control. As a result, even after
the revolutionary generation passed from the scene in Mexico, the Soviet
Union, China, Vietnam, and Cuba, security forces remained strikingly
subordinate to civilian authorities. Although many of the original sources
of military loyalty, such as existential threat, overlapping leaderships,
and the founding generation’s “martial prestige,”209 weaken or disappear
[ 32 ] CHAPTER 1
over time, we observe little evidence of military disloyalty in aging revolutionary
regimes.
One area in which revolutionary coercive capacity appears to erode over
time is that of high-intensity coercion. With the passing of the revolutionary
generation, the regime’s capacity for high-intensity repression—such
as the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico, the 1989 Tiananmen Square
crackdown in China, the 1992 anti-Islamist repression in Algeria, and the
quelling of the 2009 Green Revolution protests in Iran—almost certainly
diminishes. Whereas military officers from the founding generation tend
to be ideologically committed, experienced with violence, and especially
prestigious among rank-and-file soldiers, succeeding generations, which
are made up of more ordinary professional soldiers with more limited
revolutionary commitments, wartime experience, and prestige, may lack
the confidence or “stomach” to fire on crowds or engage in other highprofile
acts of repression. Such a generational change was evident, for
example, in the Soviet Union in the late 1960s and the 1970s. According
to an unpublished study by Liudmilla Alexeyeva and Valery Chalidze,210
the use of high-intensity coercion against protests declined dramatically
in the mid-1960s—after the founding generation of Soviet leaders had
died off.211 Partly as a result, Soviet leaders had difficulty motivating the
armed services to crack down on protests in the late 1980s and early
1990s. The erosion of the capacity for high-intensity coercion may thus
leave aging revolutionary regimes more vulnerable to large-scale opposition
protest.
Finally, the state-society power asymmetries created by the destruction
of independent power centers also degrade slowly, if at all. For example,
in Mexico, a middle-income country in a region that witnessed the emergence
of powerful democracy movements in the late 1970s and the 1980s,
organized opposition remained weak as late as the 1990s.212 In early
twenty-first-century Cuba and Vietnam, opposition groups rarely mobilized
more than a few dozen followers and were largely confined to the
internet.213 Eventually, independent social, economic, or cultural actors
may (re)emerge (e.g., business associations in northern Mexico, nationalist
organizations in Yugoslavia, the Church in Mexico and Yugoslavia).
However, the speed and extent of this emergence varies. In wealthier countries
with more open economies, such as late twentieth-century Mexico
and Yugoslavia, the emergence of independent associations is likely to be
more rapid. However, in countries with more extensive state controls (e.g.,
China, Vietnam), societal organizations have remained weak after decades
of rapid economic development and show no signs of strengthening.
A THEORY OF REVOLUTIONARY DURABILITY  [ 33 ]
In sum, the pillars of revolutionary regime durability degrade over
time, but they do so slowly and unevenly. Even though the initial sources
of durability—an ideologically committed and prestigious founding elite
facing an existential military threat—eventually disappear, undermining
the bases of elite cohesion and high-intensity coercive capacity, other
revolutionary legacies, such as vast coercive structures and extreme statesociety
power asymmetries, tend to endure long after counterrevolutionary
threats fade and founding generations exit the stage.
Alternative Explanations
In the statistical analysis summarized above (and detailed in appendix I),
we showed that revolutionary origins are strongly associated with authoritarian
durability, even when we control for various other factors that have
been shown to affect regime stability, such as economic performance, oil,
and type of authoritarian regime.214
As in any observational study, we cannot know with certainty that we
have controlled for all potential confounding explanations. It could be the
case, for example, that revolutionary origins are endogenous to some other
factor that is causing both social revolution and subsequent regime durability.
Perhaps regime durability is a function not of revolutionary origins
but rather of some antecedent condition that facilitates both revolution
and robust authoritarian rule.
There are sound reasons, however, for treating social revolution as
exogenous to authoritarian survival. Above all, the factors that are widely
viewed as the principal causes of social revolution, namely, weak or collapsing
states, defeat in war, and neopatrimonial or sultanistic rule, which hollows
out state institutions,215 are all conditions that undermine, rather than
enhance, authoritarian durability. Social revolutions are always accompanied
by a weakening or collapse of the state.216 It is virtually impossible
for revolutionary outsiders to seize power and initiate a transformation of
the social order unless the armed forces of the old regime have been fundamentally
weakened.217 As Jack Goldstone notes,218 “It is now a truism,
but worth restating, that fiscally and militarily sound states that enjoy the
support of united elites are largely invulnerable to revolution from below.”
Indeed, nearly all the regimes examined in this book emerged out of
weak or collapsed states. In Algeria, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique,
and Vietnam, colonial powers had undermined indigenous authority structures
and failed to build (or, in the case of Algeria, sustain) an effective
central state. In Afghanistan, Albania, Cambodia, China, Finland, Hungary,