Ways to classify — taxonomy.
There are many different taxonomies for regime types, and a bewildering fauna of terms is frequently used carelessly, in ways that do more to befuddle than to clearify. The choice of terms usually not neutral, as a researcher may have a theory in which some feature is more important than others, and as normative judgment frequently is packed into an analysis. Many typologies are often strongly related to ideas, ideologies, and political theory. These’ll be examined more closely in the next lecture. Before continuing, however, it is important to underline that what we are talking of here are ideal types, and there’ll be overlaps, as different people have a pesky habit of looking at the same thing in different ways. It’s also important to remember that it’s necessary to be precise when categorising a regime.

Democracy vs. non-democracy.
We will classify democracies later in a later lecture, for now it should be enough to say that democracy equals rule by the people (many), while non-democracy or authoritarian regime is rule by a limited group or by a person. There are many kinds of non-democracy, and these will be the focus here.

A Short Detour: Legitimate Government.
In most modern societies, it is important that a government is legitimate. The question we ask in order to decide if a government is legitimate or not, is did the government come to power via means that are generally accepted? In other words, is a government accepted as rightful by subordinates, subjects or citizens? This is what we normally refer to as internal legitimacy, and it’s the most important kind of legitimacy, but there’s also an external kind, by which a government is recognised as legitimate by other governments. However, a government doesn’t need to be democratic or even constitutional to be legitimate. Governments can justify their authority by one of Max Weber’s three types of legitimacy. The first of these is the traditional, where a ruler rules e.g. because his father ruled, because it is decided by tradition that he shall rule. The second is the charismatic, where a ruler rules because of some skill or other he has. Hitler and Jesus are among the most commonly mentioned examples of charismatic leaders. Third, there’s the legal authority, by which the ruler rules because he has obtained power in accordance with the laws of the territory he rules. Most modern states are ruled by this latter kind of authority.

However, a problem quickly arises here, for how does one measure a population’s feelings for its government, especially in a non-democratic state? Does silence — lack of protests — imply consent? If one chooses to answer yes to this question, one has made an invalid assumption, as there can be mechanisms in the system that places sanctions on people who try to speak up.

The classical typology.
We’ve had a quick look at this one before, because the earliest typology of governments can be found in Aristotle’s Constitutions. (he’s “the father of CP”, remember? ;) ) His principles or criteria of taxonomy, are two: How many rule, and in whose interest do they rule. Who governs has an impact on what government is like; different rulers have different modi operandi, which produces different constitutions. It is from Aristotle’s typology (his typologies, by the way) that we have the original meaning of Republic: Mixed Constitution. In a Republic, according to Aristotle [or whoever], a King would rule, while a national assembly consisting of both an upper and a lower house would assist him, thus mixing the “one, few, many” aspect of the regimes.

The Marxist taxonomy.
Marx was influenced by Aristotle, but of course he added much more. The main principle of taxonomy is here the class basis; the relations of production, and forces of production, and who has control over these. According to Marx’ version of world history, human societies all started off as a kind of primitive Communism, in the era before the classes appeared. However, it didn’t take long before some people started taking other people as slaves, thus ushering in the era of Slave Society, in which slave owners were the ruling class. These societies then evolved into feudalist ones, where slavery was modified into serfdom, and the King and the Aristocracy made out the ruling classes. Next in line (we’ll examine the transition processes between these societies later) was the Capitalist Society, in which the Bourgeoisie had full control over the means of production. According to Marx’ vision, this would then change into a socialist society, in which the infamous Dictatorship of the Proletariat would come into effect, making the workers or their party the ruling class, in order to make up for all the eons of near-slavery the proletars had gone through, and to equalise things so that people would stop being used to be ruled by others, and so that the rulers would stop being used to rule. Eventually, this would end up as a Communist society, in which there was only one class, while everyone ruled themselves and were happy.

When looking at Marx’ theories on this, it is important to keep in mind that he saw formal institutions of government as mere superficial — they belonged to the superstructure, thus being products of the basis — and therefore he places little emphasis on them. Rathe, when looking at formal institutions of government, he tried to figure out in whose interest the government ruled, as governments existed only to protect the interests of a class. In other words, we need to knwo what class rules a state in order to understand it, and in a Capitalist society, according to Marx [and me, I might add, although a little less fervently], laws, police and other such institutions protects the bourgeoisie. It is also important to remember that Marx had a teleological view of history; history, according to Marx, onderwent periodical development, in spirals upwards, so that each level was qualitatively better than the previous one, hile not quite as good as the next one.

Classification By Source of Authority — Max Weber.
We’ve already had a superficial look at Max Weber, but his ideal types of regime legitimation is probably the most cited scheme of taxonomy. His traditional regime is a pre-modern one, where rule is based on age, family, religion, or such. It is a rule-bound society, and its rules are based on tradition, ascriptive [arbitrary? "relating to, marked by, or involving ascription"; nepotist; not meritocratic] characteristics, et cetera. Second is the charismatic regime. This is more often a modern regime, where a leader rules because of his superior wisdom or leadership ability, him being the embodiment of nation’s destiny, or where the ruler is perceived as the ultimate source of all rules. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Nasser, Castro and Peron could perhaps fall into this category. Finally, we have what we above refered to as the “legal”, but here will be called “bureaucratic”. This one’s also modern, and its most prominent feature is adherence to agreed rules and procedures. Here, the leader is chosen on a rational basis, and they’re legitimate because they’re the results of institutions.

Classification By Relationship to Religion.
From democratic to non-democratic, these can be classified as follows:

- The most democratic is the religiously neutral Republic, but it is dubious whether such an entity has ever existed, or if it ever will, as it is difficult to be neutral; many laws have grown from religious traditions.
- Next is the Republic with favoritism, of which the US is an example.
- Then there’s the (Democratic) Constitutional Monarchy with State Church, such as Great Britain, Norway and Sweden.
- Following that is the Monarchy where a secular ruler rules by the grace of God, as the situation was in many European Feudalist states, as well as in many Absolutist Monsrchies.
- The most religious regime is the Theocracy. This is the direct rule of religious leaders, and the laws of state are religious laws.
- Of the non-democratic regimes, autocracies are the most religious ones. Here, a leader claims a mandate from God as his legitimacy.
- Next in line is the secular autocracy, where there are no religious claims or links.
- And finally, there’s the Communist regime, with its open hostility towards religion.

Classification by the relationship between state and economy.
Nearly self-explanatory table. The “vertical boxes” refer to the plitical dimension, while the “horisontal boxes” deal with the economic one.

Classification According to The Relationship Between State, Economy, and Civil Society.
In order to fully understand this taxonomy, we have to take a step back and look at some terms. One of which is civil society, the sphere of institutions, organizations and individuals that is located between the family, the state and the market. People associate voluntarily in the civil society, in order to advance common interests. Examples of entities that belong in the civil society are Amnesty International, the WWF, consumer organisations, and such things. Political parties are not part of the civil society, as their goal is to take control of the state, and the state’s apart from the civil society. All societies are divided into a public and a private sphere. The public one includes all that which is of or affects the community or the people. It comes from the Latin words “publicus”, and is basically the things that are the people’s business. The private, then, is that which is of or confined to the individual; everything personal, everything that’s the business of an individual, and none others. Another relevant term is “to privatize”. this commonly refers to a change for example an industry from governmental or public ownership or control to a private enterprise. It can often be interesting to use this as a basis for categorisation of e.g. enterprises, by examining who benefits from what an enterprise does: Is the purpose of the enterprise to make a few people lots and lots of money, or is it to serve the needs of the people, or the many. This is one dimension of the area we will now begin to look at, the classification of regimes along the lines of what is public, and what is private.

Classification According to The Relationship Between State, Economy, and Civil Society: Totalitarian Regimes.
The totalitarian regime type can be both secular or religious, but it fits the Stalinist-Communist regime best. In this kind of a regime, nothing is private. The civil society and the individuals are monitored by the state. Labor unions, youth organizations, choirs, and other corporatist organisations underline an emphasis on mass-mobilization, the goal of wich is that the individual is to be transformed: Individuals are to be turned into e.g. the New Socialist man, or into good Communists through Chinese Self-Criticism sessions. In a totalitarian regime, the state is at the center, and there are no independent individual rights. The state has all the power, and reaches far down into the lives of individuals. Youth organisations are created in order to shift the allegiance of children from parents to the state. This is, as we have seen, accomplished through mass-mobilisation and other methods of socialisation.

A totalitarian regime imposes order from above — from the party or from a religion — by establishing total control of the civil society and the market. They often aim at establishing a command economy, where the state plans what is to be produced, at what price and how it is to be distributed. There’s little or no private ownership; all economic power is centralised in the state. Furthermore, there’s an official state ideology, adherence to which is non- optional for the citizens. No competition from other ideologies are allowed, and neither are any kinds of interpretation. Everyone has to affirm their allegiance, often through some kind of public display of allegiance. [Like, oh I don't know, an oath of allegiance? :roll: ] Examples of such totalitarian regimes includes the Stalinist Soviet Union and China (especially during the Cultural Revolution). There’s also a possible application to theocracies, such as the Taliban, or New England Puritans. [Personally, I'd add the Nazis to this list, but I guess that the freeish market of the Nazis make them "just" Authoritarian...]

Classification According to The Relationship Between State, Economy, and Civil Society: Corporatism, organic-statism, state corporatism.
The common denominator of all corporatist regimes, is the primacy of the collective community, or the public. The community is in other words the most important entity, and there’s an emphasis on the common good. This common good is attempted to be found through a concession theory of association. The state makes concessions of authority to various monolithic organisations that control the various fields of society, but ultimately the state controls everything. This is occasionally supplemented by a organic view of human society, where each individual or other entity has its appointed function, just like the parts of a body [parallells can be drawn to e.g. Plato's "The Republic".], with the goal of creating a harmonious society, strickly hierarchical, with everything being under the authority of a centralised state, which sees itself as The Leader of society. Power is centralized, and the civil society is limited, with there being few or none independent organizations. The intellectual sources of this way of thinking of society can be found in Aristotle, Roman law, medieval natural law, Catholic social philosophy and Hegel, while it’s most common in practice on the Iberian peninsula.

Classification According to The Relationship Between State, Economy, and Civil Society: Authoritarian.
Dictatorial or oligarchic political rule are often combined under the heading “authoritarian”. These kinds of regimes often implement a free(ish) market economy, with dispersed economic power, but the state usually applies some kind of irrational, non-market element, not allowing the economy complete freedom. However, the existance of business outside of the state provides a base for power outside of the state, which can cause problems for the authoritarian state. The same can be said of the authoritarian governments’ habit of forming some kind of alliance with another central institution or other, most commonly the Army or the Church. This gives this regime type a kind of semi-dispersed social, civic power besides the monolithic power of the state. In Latin America, the Roman Catholic Church’s affiliation with authoritarian governments have creaed an atmosphere in which Liberation Theology has been established as a kind of oppositional interpretation of the Bible. Individuals are controlled in an authoritarian regime, but not transformed, as the state settles with negatively generating order through repression, and and positively by the aforementioned alliance with civil or economic institutions.

Classification According to The Relationship Between State, Economy, and Civil Society: Democratic Corporatism.
This is the democratic form of the abovementioned corporativism. Here, too, the state has strong relations with organisations and interest groups, but here, they are independent. This relationship between the state and interest groups is one in which major decisions on domestic matters emerge from discussion between the government and a few leading peak associations, usually representing capital and labor. In Norway, the labour market represents a typical example of this, where the peak associations LO and NHO negotiate with each other, and the state as a thrid party, about wages and such things. Tyical for this kind of regime is a consensual style of decision-making, where state, market and labour work closely together in a kind of social partnership. Additionally, there’s a vibrant civil society and strong interest groups that exist beyond state control, in a significant private sphere. Here. power is dispersed to several actors, and there are several sources of order: The state imposes order from above, while the associations do the same from below. The perhaps most defining characteristics in democratic corporatist states is that negotiation is seen as good. Compromises reached without unecessary coercion is usually the goal, so that the interests of as many as possible are catered to, rather than only the interests of the people with the most power: The parts realise the importance of the other parts.

The democratic states with the most corporatist traits are today Austria, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, Finland, Belgium and Ireland, while Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands have somewhat fewer of these traits. Fewer still have France and Italy, while Canada, the UK and the US have the least of these kinds of features — they’re the most pluralist, in other words.

Classification According to The Relationship Between State, Economy, and Civil Society: Classical Liberal Democratic Ideal.
According to classic Liberalism –”Liberal” is another one of those words used in many ways, here it refers to the ideas of John Locke and Adam Smith, resting on the notion that societies regulates themselves — private interest should always be put above over public interest. The state should be a minimal one (a caretaker or nightwatchman state), and there should be a high degree of dispersed political power. A market economy would secure dispersed economic power as well, and the civil society should be pluralistic, with many competing interest groups, the membership to which should be voluntary. Power would be dispersed in the
civil society, and minimal power should be invested in the state. Individual rights are at the center, dispersing the power of social groups, and order is generated mostly by society, only secondarily imposed from above by the state.

Regimes Today.
Democracy is the leading form today, and the democratic “norm” is so powerful that all sorts of governments claim to be democratic — the first D in DDR stod for “Demokratischer”, as an example — and very few states brag about not being democratic. In this atmosphere of a single minded focus on democracy, we tend to forget that there are many forms of non-democratic government.

Gurr’s scheme.
The political scientist Gurr [first name unknown to me] has created a set of criteria for democracies, originally intended as operationalization for the Polity IV data set — a data set trying to locate the democracies and the non-democracies. According to Gurr, a democracy must (i) have institutionalized procedures for open and competitive political participation, (ii) choose and replace chief executives in open, competitive election, and (iii) substantial checks and balances on power of the chief executive.

The Polity IV is a variable-centred survey, and as such it does not take into consideration much knowledge of the states beyond the variables they deem to be relevant — an estimation which can be totally off.

In the Polity IV data set, all countries are ranked on all three features, and then given points dependent on the degrees to which they possess features, and finally they are placed in a -10 to + 10 scale.
–Democracy: +10 to + 6
•Norway, Japan, US
–But also: Columbia, Russia, Bolivia
–Autocracy: -10 to -6
•Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Singapore,
–Anocracy: -5 to +5
•Azerbaijan, Myanmar (Burma), Cambodia, Rwanda, Algeria, Haiti, Nepal , China, Vietnam

Figure of the 2005 Polity IV findings.

[I'll have to edit in the stuff about regime change tomorrow, as I just don't have the time tonight.]

EDIT: REGIME CHANGE.
What is a Regime?
Above, we suggested that by “”regime” we mean something more than just the names of those in power. And even though it is related to the “regime” definition we operate with in IR, it is not the same. Here, by “regime”, we mean the ordering principle, the fundamental essence, involved in rule. Some criteria of evaluating this can be class basis, the basis of authority, the “estate” in power (king, aristocracy, commoners), the regime’s relationship to religion, or the state-civil society-economy relationship. We can talk about regime change, but then only with reference to specific definitions of regime. Here we will only talk about some of these.

How Thorough? How much change?
Change is everywhere, so how much change do we mean? In the political sense, of regime change, there are basically two kinds of change, separated by the depth of change involved in each one. One is the superficial kind of change, a category that includes coups, elections and palace revolutions. This superficial regime change is hardly a regime change at all, but rather just a change of the people in power. One distinction that can be made between two kinds of superficial change, is that of whether the change is regular or irregular — regular changes refering to elections, irregular to coups. The latter kind is also an extralegal method of change, and e.g. authoritarian governments have to cooperate and adapt to their allies, so as not to risk any coups. Then there’s the real regime change, the fundamental one. This kind of regime change is a real change in the ordering principle of government, and it is the kind of regime change that this section will deal with.

Basic (Big) Patterns Of Regime Change (and History).
There are four basic ways to perceive change: as a cycle, as progressive change, as random change, and as no change at all. Ths first kind, the cyclical view of history, is another one of those concepts that can be tracked back to Aristotle (although he probably wasn’t the main first to think this way). According to Aristotle, a state could start out with any kind of government, with history being cyclic and all. Then you’d have an everlasting cycle of degeneration and replacement, degeneration and replacement. For example, a monarchy could start out in the “good” form (remember Aristotle’s typology!), but as time passed, the kings would become more and more corrupt, until the people rose against him, and installed a democracy. Which, in time, would be corrupted, too, giving a few powerful people the opportunity to seize control of the state, and once they had, the state would be an oligarchy. And so things continued, with change being continuous in no specific order, with context [I presume] being the determinant of what government would replace the previous one. In other words, there are, according to this model, no progress, only endless change.

The second kind is the model of progressive change, in which there is a movement from a low form of government towards a higher, ideal form. This is, as you can probably see, the idea Marx was a believer in, and he inherited it from Hegel, who understood history as a steady movement towards the German state, if I remember my philosophy correctly. [This is also one of the reasons why Marx' ideas of the ultimate crisis in Capitalism has proved to be flawed: He preceived his time as the technological peak of human civilisation, a perception he inherited from Hegel, and so he was unable to predict the technological change and innovation that drove Capitalism onwards, allowing it to bypass most kinds of crises.] Liberalism also has this kind of view of history. [This is another point in favour of my theory that Marx was really a Liberal, but that's besides the point here.] The classical example of this way of thinking is the “Whig version of history“, according to which history is a constant movement towards democracy, a theory that in time has evolved into the theories of modernisation (of which we have spoken before; you know, the ones that Immanual Wallerstein’s “world system theories” are in opposition to) which see history as a development from traditional to more and more rational, bureaucratic forms of government (or, more precicely, forms of societal organisation; this is a reference to Weber, by the way).

Third, we have the concept of relatively random change. In this model, there is definitely change, but it has no particular direction. Unlike the two models outlined above, where change is more or less inevitable, this model sees change as being not inevitable, but likely, and also possibly predictable. Structural functionalists perceives the world in this way, by claiming that if the basic functions of society aren’t maintained, or if some kind of imbalance occurs between the structure and the functions (like lots of people participating in the structure, without e.g. having the right to vote, i.e. creating an illegitimate government), a revolution is more likely to take place.

Fourth and final, we find the static view of history. This model is usually tied to the classical Burkean Conservativism and to some religious view of the world, and sees change as neither inevitable nor desirable. There is no need to change, and there is no reason to change, according to hardcore conservatives, because society is the way it is because that’s what works, and a society is a far to advanced and complicated mechanism (or, a real conservative would probably say “organism” instead of “mechanism”) for us humans to start meddling with. Burke, as an example, could point to the French Revolution as an example of what happened when people started thinking that they could build a perfect society just because they knew how to solve an equation. The religious dimension of this is that even though e.g. Christianity may have progressional concepts, such as a linear view of time as a movement towards Judgement Day, this does not necessarily imply social progress.

Views of Historical Progression and Modernization.
According to the Marxist world view, there is a dialectical historical progress towards communism, driven by class struggle. Two or more classes struggle for domination of society, and when e.g. the bourgeoisie takes over the role of the aristocracy as a society’s leading class, the society will become molded after the ideals of the bourgeoisie. (”The ruling ideas are the rulers’ ideas.” ~ Karl Marx.) More specifically, the dialectical relatonship lies in that there’s a conflict between the ruling class — the owners of the means of production — and the ruled workers.

The Liberal view of history, on the other hand (as presented in e.g. W.W. Rostow’s “A Non-Communist Manifesto: Getting to the Take Off Stage”, there is a movement from the traditional to the modern, from the authoritarian to the democratic. This process, however, is not class’driven, but rather a continuous process of modernisation. (Rostow’s book promotes the idea that it is desirable to get societies to the “take off stage”, to get them ready for rapid modernisation.

Modernization and Regime Change.
The main element of this modernisation theory, is that modern economy requires a displacement of the traditional form of government, as these are incompatible with each other. Development, then, is the results from the proliferation and integration of functional roles in a community, as roles no longer blends into one individual, unlike the situation in the old society where farmers were farmers, aristocrats aristocrats, and rulers rulers. Modernization is a particular case of development and it implies
such things as a social system that can constantly innovate without falling apart, differentiated and flexible social structures, modular men (men fitted for not one function, but rather the function they want to fullfill; education, the liberation from family traditions, “freedom from the tyranny of cousins”, to quote some social scientist who the lecturer enjoyed quoting), and a social framework to provide the skills and knowledge necessary for living in a technologically advanced world.

Crises and Sequences School.
The crises and sequences school is a school to which many of the last half-century’s most influential social scientists belong, among them Stein Rokkan, Seymor Martin Lipset, Lucian W. Pye, Leonard Binder, G. Almond, and Samuel Huntington. It sprung out of the American [I presume] Committee on Social Sciences and the Social Science Research Council, whose research found that political change has a direction — towards greater quality, capacity, and differentiation. It also suggested that neither the path to modernisation, nor pace of change was universal. IN other words, the path to modernisation is different in different societies. The Norwegian politicla scientist Stein Rokkan studied how societies met various challenges, all of which had to be overcome to reach modernity. (I seem to remember him focusing on the role of agricultural movements in European class struggles, but I might be mixing him up with some other fellow.)

Crises and Sequences School: Samuel P. Huntington.
Huntington has a tradition of raising troublesome questions. One of these are embedded in his theory of the problems of rapid modernization, where he asks if the last centuries’ economic development and modernisation are compatible with democracy, or if they really requires authoritarian government. The problem, he claims, is that change creates many social conflicts, and that democracy puts too great a demand on weak institutions, which might render them unable to cope with these problems.

Crises and Sequences School: Modernization and Barrington and Moore: “The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy.”
B&M were two political scientists who focused on the modernizing period, and the transition from agrarian societies to modern ones. They asked the question: Why did some European states end up with facist governments, some as liberal democracies, and some as “communists”? Their answer war that the class basis and class alliances in a society was of critical importance. In states such as Great Britain, the USA and France, where a rising bourgeoisie allied with an agrarian aristocracy, yet became the dominant class, democracy became the dominant model of rule. In other states, like Germany and Japan, a rising bourgeoisie allieed with the agrarian aristocracy, but was subordinated to it. These states ended up as facist ones. And in yet other states, the rising bourgeoisie or capitalist class was effectively repressed by the agrarian class, ending with a violent revolution and eventually some kind of Communism, as happened in China and Russia.

Marxist school.
According to the Marxists, history is driven by material conditions. One such condition is the forces of production, where the means of production give rise to the relations of production; different kinds of technology requires different kind of ownership, and so the windmill gave us the feudalist society and the aristocracy. while the factory, requiring more capital and a different kind of ownership, gave us modern capitalism and the bourgeoisie. In this model, the dominant class owns the means of production, and changes in forces or means of production produces tensions as the relations of production fail to change. In Marxist theory, this happens when the owners of the forces of production no longer participate in the creation of values; in the pre-industrial society, the aristocracy stopped doing useful stuff, ending up as parasites, living off the work of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie didn’t much like this, and so they revolted in France in 1789, taking control of the means of production, which they had been de facto running without getting all the benefits they should have received. In Capitalism, it is the bourgeoisie who have become parasites on the work of the proletariate (Marx believed in the old labour theory of value, according to which the value of a good is determined by the amount of labour put into the production of it. This theory has been proved wrong, though, as the prices are today believed to be determined by a mechanism of supply and demand in the market), and this will lead to an overthrow of the capitalists, which will release productive forces. Changeis seen as inevitable and eventually it will end in the classless society, or communism. (A shorter and perhaps more easily understandable explanation of this theory: Failure of relations of productions to adapt to the means of productions causes change; proletars work, bourgeoisie rules.)

Revolution.
The original meaning of “revolution” is basically the same as “cyclical”, refering to Aristotle’s notion of degeneration and replacement of Constitutions. In recent times, a superficial meaning has come into being, including coups (”Bolivia’s revolution was late this year” ), palace revolutions, and rebellions (mass violence, upheaval) in the term. However, in political science, it is the Marxist meaning that is the most precise. It defines “revolution” as a change in the ruling class, an unidirectional “Social Revolution”, usually refering to the change from Capitalism to Socialism — The Revolution.
Theda Skocpol, inspired by B. Moore, has come up with a definition of “revolution” that sounds like this: “rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structures; .. Accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts from below” (1979, 4).

Views on Revolution, etc.
Samuel Huntington has come up with a more general, non-Marxist meaning of “revolution”, defining it as sudden, violent, deep change. Even so, most people tend to think about change in a democratic direction (even if this isn’t quite achieved) — e.g. Russia or China, where the social revolution starts out as popular revolution, but is taken over by non-democratic elements. It is also possible to imagine revolutions going in a conservative (anti-modern) direction. Fascism was introduced in Italy in the early 1920s, where the idea was to revive a romanticised past. Both Hitler and Mussolini had these kinds of projects, whhich were essentialy mass mobilisations in an anti-rational, anti-modern direction. Another dimension of the conservative revolution, is the religious one, where conservative religious elements rejects corrupting influences and cultural degeneration. Iran can be seen as an example of this, but it is an open question whether or not this refers to religious fundamentalists in general. A final kind of conservative revolution is the counter revolution; a dramatic roll-back of an original revolution. These have happened after almost every revolution in world history, even if only for short periodes of time when e.g. the aristocracy regained power for a while, taking their revenge on the revoutionaries, trying to turn back time to an age where they had complete control. There’s also a multitude of failde revolutions, which occasionally were nothing more than mass rebellions that were put down, or revolutions where change stopped short of the goal.

Theories of Revolution.
As we have seen, there are many who have spent time on analysing revolutions throughout the years. Aristotle was one of the first, with his continual degeneration and revewal, while Marx probably was the one who sparked the modern interest in revolutions, with his theories of shifts in underlying forces and relations of production as the cause of revolutions. Liberals, while not seeing violent social revolutions as necessary, also has their ideas about the cause of revolutions — ideas that aren’t so far from those of Marx. They hold that changes in the economy and other social areas occasionally happen to rapid for the political structure to keep u, and so a revolution occurs. A social-psychological explanation of revolutions is that relative deprivation makes people revolt; they see that others have it way better than they do themselves, and so they revolt (Gurr, Davies). Another social-psychological explanation claims that feelings of injustice can cause revolutions. No real injustice is necessary, though, so long as enough people actually thinks that there is some injustice going on. A rational choice explanation holds that individuals runs a costs and benefits evaluation, and if enough people comes to the conclusion that they have more to win than to lose from revolting, they do so. Of the sociological explanations, we have already examined the Marxist and the structural-functionalist ones. Additionally, there are several political explanations, such as Tilly’s resource mobilisation school which focuses on actors and resources; there’s Huntington’s political functionalism/political conflict theory; and Mosca and Pareto’s theory of failures of the governing elite, and failures of circulation of the elite. An example of a structural explanation is Skocpol’s theories of centralized agrarian bureaucratic regimes, extreme pressure on the state, and revolts from below.

Transitions from Authoritarian to Democratic Rule.
According to Huntington’s “The Third Wave” (1991), establishment of democracy in the past has gone in waves. The first wave lasted from 1828 to 1926, during which time Britain, USA, France, and some other Western states became democracies. In the second wave, lasting from 1943 to 1962, India, Israel, Japan, and (West) Germany were among the new democracies. The third wave, from 1974 to 1991, saw the democratisation of Southern and Eastern Europe, Latin America, parts of Africa, and the Philippines, amongst others.

Note here that we are speaking of bureaucratic authoritarianism, such as in South America, where the army or a similar institution served as the base for the authority of the government.

Transitions from Democratic Rule to something else.
Francis Fukuyama claimed around 1990 that history had come to an end, that liberal democracy had triumphed, and that because of this, we had reached the apex of human progress. He also claimed that democracy now has no real competitors. However, the three waves of democratisation has their counterparts in the “reverse waves”, a first from 1922 to 1942, and a second from 1978 to 1985. Also, the 1960s saw democratisation in Latin America, followed in the 1970s by a return to authoritarian rule. The same happened in Greece.

Transitions, Demo→?
If a popular anecdote is to believed, a woman once asked Benjamin Franklin, “What, sir, have you given us [with this Constitution]?” Franklin replied, “A Republic, ma’am — if you can keep it.” This highlights an important problem: What will happen to democracy in the future? It is undeniable that democracy requires effort, and that we are the guardians of our own democracy, and therefore it runs the risk of being cancelled due to boredom, as the population prefers its bread and circuses to the necessary effort required. Robert Michels‘ iron law of oligarchy, also represents a problem, with its conclusion that organisation equals hierarchy, and that hierarchy equals concentration of power, and that an erosion of the limits of power can dramatically weaken democracy, as oligarchies develop and take all control of the system. Additionally, national crises might destroy (weak?) democracies; loss in a war, economic depression and such things have the potential of obliterating people’s trust in democratic organisations, such as the case was with the Weimar Republic during the Great Depression. Some Americans, in light of the recent constrictions of civil liberties, also ask if not the War On Terrorism represents such ajeopardy for their democracy. An aggressive, expansionist foreign policy can also be a problem. This has two causes. First, if you spend a lot of time out conquering other territories, military solutions easily becomes the preferred solution to most problems. Second, you need popular support at home to maintain foreign engagements in a democracy, and the desire of eliminating this need can make authoritarian government look more tempting to warlike politicians.

Transitions: Demo ⇨?
It is also an open quetion whether or not “the people” can choose freely to not be (liberal) democratic. An election in Algeria in the 1990s was declared as void because the people gave a majority of its votes to an anti-democratic Islamic party. Also, you have the current situation in Palestine, where the lawfully election of a Hamas government has caused an international embargo against the country. [And never mind that the Israeli government hardly recognises Palestine... :roll: ] In other words, how easy is it to know what the people want? And should elites with power resources be allowed to disregard the wishes of the people just because they think they know better? And is there an End of History?

To quote Queen, keep yourself alive, and you’ll find out.