Riley Quinn - An Analysis of Theda Skocpols States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China

An Analysis of

A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China

Riley Quinn

Copyright 2017 by Macat International Ltd

Copyright 2017 by Macat International Ltd

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Many people want to understand what revolutions are and especially how they come about, from the academics who study them to the states that wish to prevent (or, in some cases, provoke) them. But it is arguably the US scholar Theda Skocpol who has done most to create a viable model of revolution, and States and Social Revolutions is the work in which she sets out her intellectual stall.

Skocpols magnum opus can be considered a classic product of the critical thinking skill of problem-solving. She assesses several different revolutions those of France, Russia and China and asks new, productive questions about their causes and outcomes. The answers, collectively, allow her to move beyond existing theories such as the voluntarist school (which suggests that revolutionaries have agency) and the Marxist school (which sees state institutions as nothing more than a front for class interests).

Skocpols model assumes that states are autonomous bureaucratic institutions, which act in their own interests a fundamental re-imagining based on fresh interpretations of the evidence. Her analysis extends beyond the causes of revolution to their consequences, and her argument that the revolutionary state that survives is the one that successfully implements a far-reaching program of reform helps to explain not only why the three revolutions she studied have proved enduringly influential, but also why hundreds of others, less successful, are barely remembered today.

Born in 1949 in the American Midwest, Theda Skocpol emerged in the late 1970s as one of the most challenging and original thinkers in the discipline of sociology. Her doctoral studies at Harvard led her to the conclusion that something akin to a scientific approach could be used to explain events as complex and perplexing as the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions. Skocpols later work broadened her area of study, and she particularly focused on the development of welfare states, but her contribution to thinking about revolutions is still considered extremely important.