Revolution
Rapid and fundamental political change / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In political science, a revolution (Latin: revolutio, 'a turn around') is a rapid, fundamental transformation of a society's class, state, ethnic or religious structures.[1] According to sociologist Jack Goldstone, all revolutions contain "a common set of elements at their core: (a) efforts to change the political regime that draw on a competing vision (or visions) of a just order, (b) a notable degree of informal or formal mass mobilization, and (c) efforts to force change through noninstitutionalized actions such as mass demonstrations, protests, strikes, or violence."[2]
Revolutions have occurred throughout human history and varied in their methods, durations and outcomes.[3] Some revolutions started with peasant uprisings or guerrilla warfare on the periphery of a country; others started with urban insurrection aimed at seizing the country's capital city.[2] Revolutions can be inspired by the rising popularity of certain political ideologies, moral principles, or models of governance such as nationalism, republicanism, egalitarianism, self-determination, human rights, democracy, liberalism, fascism or socialism.[4]
A regime may become vulnerable to revolution due to a recent military defeat, or economic chaos, or an affront to national pride and identity, or pervasive repression and corruption.[2] Revolutions typically trigger counterrevolutions which seek to halt revolutionary momentum, or to reverse the course of an ongoing revolutionary transformation.[5]
Notable revolutions in recent centuries include the American Revolution (1775–1783), French Revolution (1789–1799), Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), Spanish American wars of independence (1808–1826), European Revolutions in 1848, Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), Russian Revolution in 1917, Chinese Revolution in 1949, Decolonization of Africa starting in the mid-1950s, Cuban Revolution in 1959, Iranian Revolution and Nicaraguan Revolution in 1979, Eastern European Revolutions in 1989, and Tunisian Revolution in 2011.