The End of Revolution? (original) (raw)

2000, Journal of Democracy

Revolutions can be compared to migrations. While reform is an attempt to improve life through a series of adjustments, revolution rejects the idea of piecemeal improvement, demanding that the past-the life we have been living, the ancien régime-be abandoned altogether in favor of a plunge into a completely new world of unknown risks and possibilities. When discussing motivations for migration, social scientists usually distinguish between "push" factors that lead people to become dissatisfied with life in their homeland and "pull" factors that o er a promise of a better life somewhere else. Similarly, there are two sorts of incentives for revolutions. On the one hand, conditions may become so intolerable that at some point people simply refuse to accept the existing order of things any longer. On the other, revolutionaries usually also have a vision of a better-more free, more just, more prosperous, or whatever else "better" may imply-political, social, or economic order. Revolutions are like migrations to the future-migrations in time rather than in space. Unlike the countries to which people emigrate in search of a better life, the promised lands of revolution do not yet exist, save in the minds of those who believe in them. Without such a "pull" factor, the "push" factor of dissatisfaction with the existing reality produces revolts that are "revolutions" only in the literal sense of revolving, cyclical [End Journal of Democracy (bio)