Revolutions: A Worldwide Introduction to Political and Social Change

This expanded, updated edition of Revolutions offers a new chapter on terrorism and on social movements, including jihadism. Revolutions and state breakdowns are the primary focus as Sanderson presents prominent theories and describes the process of revolutions. The book covers famous revolutions from history (France, Russia, China) and several social and political revolutions in the Third World (Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, and the Philippines). Given the frequency of revolutionary movements, a key question addressed by the book is 'Why are actual revolutions so rare?'Sanderson also assesses the state breakdowns in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union after 1989, the typical outcomes of revolutions, and the future of revolutions. An appendix presents biographical and autobiographical sketches of several of the most prominent scholars of revolutions.

Stephen K. Sanderson is a visiting Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author or editor of ten previous books and numerous articles in scholarly journals and edited collections. His most recent book is Evolutionism and Its Critics: Deconstructing and Reconstructing an Evolutionary Interpretation of Human Society (Paradigm, 2007).