Rosemary H. T. O'Kane

A Probabilistic Approach to the Causes of Coups d'Etat

‘In the last ten years on my individual reckoning’, observes S. E. Finer, ‘there have been seventy-three coups in forty-six countries’. ‘Coups’, Gurr comments, ‘can alter political processes and social institutions as drastically as any classic revolutions’. Yet the incidence and importance of coups are hardly reflected in the sparse literature proposing generalizations about their causes. Certainly, many case studies of individual coups have been undertaken, but the choice of the country has usually been decided by availability of data rather than its significance for a general theory. Given that coups have occurred all over the world, they clearly are a general phenomenon. Existing general explanations for them, however, are open to criticism. These suggest that essentially there is room for a theory which is about coups in particular rather than about wider forms of political instability, or about the narrower, military, coup; which is capable of falsification, avoiding inherently untestable hypotheses or concepts that are defined so loosely as to invite accusations of tautology; and which is, of course, able to withstand appropriate empirical examination.

Post-Revolutionary State Building in Ethiopia, Iran and Nicaragua: Lessons from Terror

This paper focuses on an earlier theorized critical stage of revolution, the Reign of Terror which is redefined with summary justice as its essence and employed in a comparative analysis of three modern revolutions, Ethiopia, Iran and Nicaragua. The analysis demonstrates the importance of national factors over international factors in explaining post-revolutionary state construction. A reign of terror is an extemporized state; it is not an inevitable stage of revolution. Comparison of Ethiopia and Iran, where terrors occurred, is contrasted with Nicaragua, where a reign of terror was avoided. This reveals the significance for post-revolutionary state construction of the timing and outcome of civil war, of domestic policy choices constrained by circumstances directly encountered and of state control over new, revolutionary, means of coercion.

Revolutions, Revolts and Protest Movements: Focusing on Violence and Transnational Action

Revolutions, revolts and protest movements are viewed in the study of politics as belonging together because they take place outside political institutions and, through collective action, involve mobilisation against established practices and the values lying behind them. As the wide variety of cases covered in the four books reviewed show, however, the differences between these revolutionary and protest actions are also striking. These books show that, if carefully chosen, a great deal can be learned from the detailed study of cases about protest movements mobilising both within and across borders and that it furthers our understanding of social movements. Highly valuable lessons on the role of violence in politics are also learned from the studies of revolts and revolutions. Looked at critically, however, the books show that the differences between violence and terror should not be overlooked and that important factors such as ideology can be missed.

Modernity, the Holocaust and politics

Modernity has faced many criticisms but none more disturbing than Baumans claim that the potential for a Holocaust exists in all modern societies. Though essentially a sociological work, Baumans Modernity and the Holocaust centers on political phenomena: bureaucracy, the States monopoly of coercion and political democracy. This claimed relationship between modernity and the Holocaust is examined critically, drawing particularly on the classic analyses of totalitarianism. The findings show that there is no inherent potential for a Holocaust in modern, rational, society. Rather, ‘common and ordinary’ aspects of modern society serve not to promote but to prevent modern genocide and chosen policies play the largest part in explaining the horrors not only of Nazi Germany but also of Stalinist Russia.

Rosa Luxemburg in Action : For Revolution and Democracy

Selected Contents: 1. Setting The Stage: Electoral Democracy, Imperial Germany and the SPD 2. Preparing The Actor: For International Socialism 3. The Revolutionary Movement: Vote-getting, Party Organization and the General Strike 4. Revolution In Russia, 1905-6: The Living Political School 5. Elections, Imperialism And War: Objective Investigation 6. War, Revolutions And Freedom: From Behind Prison Walls 7. Into The German Revolution: On Through the Weimar Republic 8. After The Russian Revolution: Through Past 1945 9. With The Eagles Flying Onward: To Socialist Democracy