Taking Power On the Origins of Third World Revolutions [Hardcover]

This book analyzes the causes behind some three dozen revolutions in the Third World between 1910 and the present.Taking Power analyzes the causes behind some three dozen revolutions in the Third World between 1910 and the present. It advances a new theory that seeks to integrate the political, economic, and cultural factors that brought these revolutions about. It attempts to explain why so few revolutions have succeeded, while so many have failed. The book is divided into chapters that treat particular sets of revolutions and it closes with speculation about the future of revolutions in an age of globalization.Taking Power analyzes the causes behind some three dozen revolutions in the Third World between 1910 and the present. It advances a new theory that seeks to integrate the political, economic, and cultural factors that brought these revolutions about. It attempts to explain why so few revolutions have succeeded, while so many have failed. The book is divided into chapters that treat particular sets of revolutions and it closes with speculation about the future of revolutions in an age of globalization.Analyzing the causes behind thirty six revolutions in the Third World between 1910 and the present, this text attempts to explain why so few revolutions have succeeded, while so many have failed. The book is divided into chapters that treat particular sets of revolutions including the great social revolutions of Mexico (1910), China (1949), Cuba (1959), Iran (1979)and Nicaragua (1979), the anticolonial revolutions in Algeria, Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe from the 1940s to the 1970s, and the failed revolutionary attempts in El Salvador, Peru, and elsewhere.Introduction; Part I. Perspectives: 1. Theorizing revolutions; Part II. Revolutionary Success: 2. The great social revolutions; 3. The closest cousins: the great anti-colonial revolutions; Part III. Revolutionary Failure: 4. The greatest tragedies: reversed revolutions; 5. The great contrasts: attel£"