States and Social Revolutions

States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China is a 1979 book by political scientist and sociologist Theda Skocpol, published by Cambridge University Press and explaining the causes of revolutions through the structural functionalism sociological paradigm comparative historical analysis of the French Revolution, Russian Revolution and the Chinese Revolution. Skocpol distinguishes social revolutions, in which the... more

States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China is a 1979 book by political scientist and sociologist Theda Skocpol, published by Cambridge University Press and explaining the causes of revolutions through the structural functionalism sociological paradigm comparative historical analysis of the French Revolution, Russian Revolution and the Chinese Revolution. Skocpol distinguishes social revolutions, in which the fundamental social order of a society is changed, from political revolutions in which one group of office-holders is simply replaced with another. She centers her explanation for social revolutions on state social structures, international competitive pressures and international demonstration effects, and class relations, drawing on the Marxist (class struggle) and structuralist (revolution equals response to destabilization of social system) schools, and favouring the latter. She empasizes how international events and relations between... less