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Rebellion, Violence and Revolution: A Rational Choice PerspectiveAuthor(s): Erich Weede and Edward N. MullerSource: Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Jan., 1998), pp. 43-59Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/425230Accessed: 16/10/2010 12:14

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? 1998 Journal of Peace Research, vol 35, no. 1, 1998, pp. 43-59 Sage Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) [0022-3433(199801)35: 1; 43-59; 003136]

Rebellion, Violence and Revolution: A Rational Choice Perspective*

ERICH WEEDE Department of Sociology, University of Bonn

EDWARD N. MULLER

Department of Political Science, University of Arizona

There are many rebellions, fewer successful rebellions, and extremely few social revolutions. First, the relative frequencies of elite and mass rebellions are investigated. Because a rational choice approach finds it easier to explain elite rebellions and a deprivation approach seems tailored to the explanation of mass rebellions, the relative frequencies of these two types of rebellion favor rational choice. Second, the small number of mass rebellions is related to military issues, such as loyalty and defeat in war. Although military defeat in war is neither close to a necessary, nor to a sufficient condition of successful rebellion, it still might multiply its likelihood. Third, it is argued that the link between international rivalries and great revolutions via ruler discouragement and rebel encouragement is compatible with a rational choice approach. Because it is obviously so important in revolutions, nationalist and religious zealotry needs to be integrated into rational choice approaches to rebellion and revolution.

Rebellion, Violence and Revolution The number of different approaches to rebellion, violence and revolution depends on your tolerance of heterogeneity within what you classify as a single approach. Rule (1988) organized his discussion of Theories of Civil Violence in seven chapters, only some * Before Edward N. Muller's tragic death in Summer 1995, this paper was scheduled to become a chapter in a jointly authored book on Rebellion and Revolution: A Rational Action Perspective. Some of the findings of our abruptly ended common research project were published during Muller's lifetime (Muller & Weede, 1990, 1993, 1994; Weede & Muller, 1990), other parts will never be finished. Because Weede wrote the first draft of this chapter or paper, and since the two of us discussed it, Weede felt capable of finishing this article. Some obvious uncer- tainty remains about what the article might have looked like, if we had finished it together. Comments from Mancur Olson and several anonymous JPR reviewers are appreciated, although the surviving author found it hard to incorporate many of their insights.

of which refer to related views, while others focus on as widely divergent perspectives as those of Marx and Pareto. Splitting Rule's most heterogeneous chapters provides us with about ten distinct perspectives. For the purpose of writing a history of ideas, such a degree of refinement is essential. By contrast, our purposes are different and more parti- san. Instead of outlining the diversity of historical approaches to rebellion, violence and revolution, we want to argue the superi- ority of a specific approach, i.e. rational action. We shall limit ourselves to what we believe to be a decisive rejection of the leading contender, i.e. deprivation theory, and the presentation of what we hope to be persuasive arguments in favor of a rational choice approach.

A crucial problem in our endeavour is

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44 journal of PEACE RESEARCH

that neither the rational choice assumption nor the deprivation assumption by themselves suffice to derive testable conclusions about rebellions and violence. At a more general level of theorizing, Simon (1985) has made the same point and demonstrated that the consequences and fruitfulness of both a perfect rationality and a bounded rationality (or satisficing) point of departure very much depend on the auxiliary assumptions applied jointly with assumptions about either kind of rationality. From an even more abstract philosophy of science perspective, Lakatos (1968-69) insisted that the hard cores of scientific research programs in themselves are not directly testable, but that their consequences and explanatory value very much depend on a belt of auxiliary assumptions.

Neither a rational choice nor a deprivation research program on rebellion, violence, and revolution necessarily enforce a commitment to a specific set of auxiliary assumptions. But all comparisons of the relative merit of both research programs have to discuss the research programs together with some specific assumptions. Since we want to advance a rational choice approach, we pick a set of auxiliary assumptions that maximes the explanatory power of this approach. Elsewhere one of us (Weede, 1992, 1996) has demonstrated that acceptance of the auxiliary assumptions of prominent proponents of deprivation theories - from Marx (184811966) to Gurr (1968, 1970) - does not suffice to make the deprivation research program into an explanatory success. Here, we pick auxiliary assumptions for the deprivation program which are similar to those used in previous writing and which permit the derivation of contrasting expectations about observable phenomena. Admittedly, there is no logical reason why one could not attempt to marry both research programs, a possibility Eckstein (1980) has commented upon before. We

explain below why we reject this research strategy.

We distinguish between different kinds of rebellion - in particular between mass and elite or military1 rebellions, between successful and unsuccessful rebellions, and between rebellions and revolutions (which presup- pose successful rebellion). In our view to be elaborated here, relative deprivation and rational action theory entail some arguments about the relative frequencies of different types of rebellion and about the relationship between rebellion and revolution. Rational action theory, moreover, highlights the role of the military in these events.

Rebellions and revolutions are matters of degree. Take Russell's (1974: 6) concepts as a starting point, 'where rebellion is defined as a form of violent power struggle in which the overthrow of the regime is threatened by means that include violence ... A successful revolution may be said to have occurred when substantial social change follows a rebellion .. '. Obviously, rebellions thus defined differ in the number of people and in the proportion of the population who challenge the established regime by violent means as well as in the degree of violence.2 Some rebels or some regime agents, i.e., soldiers and police, may be ready to use violence only against those who either use violence themselves or at least only against those where readiness to use violence may plausibly be ascribed. Other rebels and

l Analytically, one may and even should distinguish between elite and military rebellions because even in milita- rized societies not all of the elite consists of military officers. In fact, however, the military component of the elite dominates elite rebellions. 2 A JPR reviewer pointed out that making violence into a defining characteristic of rebellions and revolutions implies a refusal to analyze the massive upheavals in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989. Whether these events shouldmake one redefine rebellion and revolution or not, depends on whether or not one believes that violent rebellions and less violent upheavals share most of their causes and consequences. To us, it is not obvious that they do. Weede (1993) has discussed events in Eastern and Central Europe elsewhere.

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regime agents, however, engage in the wholesale slaughter of any human target, including babies, women and the aged.

If you want to produce lists of rebellions, you have to commit yourself to certain thresholds of participation and violence, before you call an event a rebellion. No conceivable threshold can avoid arbitrariness altogether. In research on violence and rebellions, no generally accepted threshold exists. By contrast, in research on war the correlates of war threshold of 1000 battle-deaths (Singer & Small, 1972; Small & Singer, 1982), which separates 'wars' from lesser military conflicts, is widely accepted. The reason for this difference in the state of affairs in both fields is not that a victimization threshold is more meaningful for war than for rebellion, since defining war by at least 1000 battle-deaths is arbitrary.3 The main reason why there is something like consensus about the operational definition of war, but none about rebellions or revolutions, seems to be the existence of the correlates of war project and its data output on the one hand, and the lack of a comparable correlates of rebellion or revolution project on the other hand.

There is another reason why nothing like a consensus list of rebellions and/or revolutions exists. Most of the work on political violence and rebellions (for example, Feierabend & Feierabend, 1966; Gurr, 1968, Gurr & Duvall, 1973; Hibbs, 1973; Muller & Weede, 1990, 1993, 1994) has avoided the problem of establishing some necessarily arbitrary threshold between rebellion and lesser events. Instead, almost all previous work applies some kind of continuous scale for proneness-to-violence or proneness-to- rebellion of nations.

3 First, there is no theoretical justification for neglecting civilian deaths - only the very practical point that data for civilians are generally less accessible and less reliable than those for the military. Second, there is no theoretical reason why 1000 is a 'better' number than either 897 or 1039 - or, of course, almost any other number in between, say, 500 and 1500.

There is only a single type of rebellion where specific coding rules have gained some degree of general acceptance. This is the coup d'etat or, in Taylor & Jodice's (1983: 88) terminology, an 'irregular executive transfer', defined as 'a change in the office of national executive from one leader or ruling group to another. The change is accomplished outside the conventional legal or customary pro- cedures for transferring power in effect at the time of the event. Such events are accompa- nied either by actual physical violence or its direct threat'. Taylor & Jodice (1983: 89-94) produce lists of 304 unsuccessful irregular executive transfers and 238 successful ones during the 1948-77 period. So, coups - usually military rebellions - are quite frequent, i.e. 542 in the thirty years covered by Taylor & Jodice or about 18 per year, of which about eight tend to be successful.

Relative Frequencies

According to a rational choice perspective, action is motivated by expected utilities.4 Rebellion and violence should become likely, if the probability of success and the utility of a successful rebellion, for example a transfer of power, are high. By and large, the probability of success is affected most if an actor can simultaneously and significantly add to rebel strength and reduce the power of the current regime. Powerful office- holders in the previous administration provide the most vivid illustrations. If a colonel in command of a tank unit close to the capital joins a rebellion against the government, he is likely to affect the outcome. By contrast, if a starving and exploited laborer or farm-hand who commands few resources commits himself on either side in a rebellion, he is unlikely to affect the outcome. So,

For a criticism of and alternative to this theory, see Kahneman & Tversky (1979). In spite of Lindenberg's (1989) efforts we are not yet persuaded that prospect theory is a fruitful starting point for macrosociological theorizing.

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resourcefulness or elite status should be a determinant of the capability to affect probabilities.

Concerning the utility of successful rebellion, largely unavailable data have to be replaced by fairly bold assumptions. We assume that resource endowments and the utility of successful rebellion are positively correlated over almost all conceivable resource endowments. At the very top end of the hierarchy of power and privilege where one dominates a society, the returns of a successful rebellion must be negative, because one is thrown out of office. Elsewhere it is reasonable to expect that the richest rewards go to the most resourceful actors contribut- ing to a transfer of power. Under these assumptions one should expect elite status or resourcefulness to be a determinant of rebellion and violent anti-regime action because it positively affects expectations and utilities attached to rebellious outcomes.

The results of rebellion and violence imply not only private benefits and costs, but also public benefits and costs. Following Olson (1965) and Tullock (1974), we tend to dis- regard these effects inspite of their magnitude (see Rummel, 1994; or Weede & Muller, 1997) because they are unlikely to determine the choices of most actors. Self-seeking actors are only motivated by benefits and costs affecting themselves, i.e., resort to rebellion and violence should at best be marginally affected by public goods considerations.5

5 This is not a statement about what rebels say. Survey researchers (Muller & Opp, 1986; Opp, 1988) sometimes argue that some dissidents misperceive and exaggerate their political influence, even that they are motivated by public goods, too. This assumption looks useful in making sense of survey data. It is much less attractive to the macrosociologist who wants to arrive at testable statements about the relative frequencies of mass or elite rebellions, the egalitarian or oli- garchical, progressive or simply murderous consequences of revolutions. Certainly, the gap and implicit contradiction between micro- and macrosociological theorizing on rebellion and revolution (see Weede, 1992: 275, 1996; Weede & Muller, 1997 for further comments) has to be overcome. We did not succeed in doing so in the limited time we worked together on our joint research project.

According to a rational choice perspective and our auxiliary assumptions, resourcefulness, elite status and access to the means of violence should determine engagements in violent conflict and rebellion. If resourceful and privileged actors are likely to rebel while powerless people do not, then elite rebellions should be frequent and mass rebellions should be rare. Actually, as Olson has re- minded us (in a comment on an earlier version) a rational choice approach implies more than infrequency of mass rebellions. Pure mass rebellions or revolutions - defined not only by mass participation but also by absence of elite leadership - should not happen. The crucial role of leading elites in the great revolutions in France, Russia and China is well documented by Brinton (1965), Pipes (1990) and, at least for the Chinese case, even by Skocpol (1979). In Pipes account, the October revolution in Russia actually was a coup executed by a party elite. Moreover, in his reading of events, mass participation was token and episodic. Most adult Russians most of the time did not participate in the making of the revolution. Admittedly, there has been more mass participation than a strict reading of the rational choice approach permits,6 but the balance of the qualitative evidence supports the view that mass rebellions or revolutions are events where masses are lead (or mislead) by elites.

By contrast to the rational choice paradigm, at least some deprivation theories (e.g. Feierabend & Feierabend, 1966, to a lesser degree see also Gurr, 1970) build on the idea that frustration may lead to aggression, to some degree irrespective of the consequences of violence in terms of expected utilities. Compared with a rational action approach, deprivation theories place much less empha-

6 In the view of Weede (1992), a strict reading of the rational choice approach implies that the masses should be incapable of collective action. To ask for a strict reading is equivalent, however, to a request for deterministic laws.

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sis on the expected consequences of actions. Because we cannot directly assess the frustration or relative deprivation of most rel- evant actors at reasonable cost, we again rely on auxiliary assumptions. A deprivation theorist could argue that resourcefulness or elite status is negatively correlated with frustration or deprivation: the better off one is, the less likely one is to be deprived, frus- trated, and inclined to rebel. Therefore, a deprivation approach building on this particular auxiliary assumption leads to the opposite of our rational choice based expectation. Because the masses are likely to be deprived, they should rebel frequently. Because elites are privileged, they should rarely rebel. Whereas a rational choice approach naturally leads to the expectation of many elite rebellions and few mass rebellions, a deprivation approach seems to imply the opposite pattern.

For further clarification we want to em- phasize that our deprivation argument is a relative deprivation one, it does not refer to absolute standards of deprivation. We only assume that the masses are less resourceful and privileged than the elites. We do not assume that they are absolutely poor, as in India or Africa. The masses may be as rich as in Norway or Switzerland. Of course, a deprivation theorist may reject our auxiliary assumption about resource endowments and relative deprivation. If one replaces our assumption of a reasonably strong negative correlation with the assumption of a zero correlation, then deprivation theory no longer implies anything about the relative frequencies of mass and elite rebellions. Therefore, deprivation theory becomes safe from empirical criticism on this score. In our view, picking auxiliary assumptions in such a way that you become safe from empirical criticism, whatever the data say, is an unde- sirable way of proceeding.

Alternatively, one may combine a rational choice and a relative deprivation approach.

A reasonable starting point is the assumption that deprived actors, i.e. the masses, attach a higher utility to overcoming the status quo than privileged actors, i.e. the elite. If we re- tain our auxiliary assumption about resources determining expectations and outcomes, then conclusions about elite and mass rebellions become impossible. On one hand, deprivation and utility considerations should drive the masses toward rebellion because they have nothing to lose but their chains. On the other hand, expectations of success should incline the elites instead of the masses toward rebellion. Because nothing can be derived about the relative frequency of mass and elite rebellions, this combination strategy does not look promising to us.

Although most adherents of relative deprivation theory have not addressed this issue, the relative frequencies of elite rebellions and mass rebellions have important implications for the evaluation of relative deprivation and rational choice or power contention theories of rebellion. So, we would like to present lists of mass rebellions that either support or refute our claim. But such lists are hard to come by. Moreover, they are by no means tailored to our task or methodological preferences. The Small & Singer (1982) list of civil wars with its high fatality threshold is one available substitute for a list of mass rebellions. It contains 106 civil wars for the entire 1816-1980 period, which is less than one per year and definitely less than the about 18 attempted irregular executive transfers per year during 1948-77 (based on data from Taylor & Jodice, 1983), which we consider to be acceptable proxies for elite rebellion.7

Of course, one may object to this com- 7 A JPR reviewer had some doubts about the validity of 'irregular executive transfers' as indicators of 'elite rebellion'. Admittedly, there is an analytical difference between the two concepts. Only a major data collection project could clarify the degree of overlap between elite rebellions and irregular transfers.

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parison because it overlooks the expansion of the number of independent states in the time periods covered. Even if the number of coups (or coup attempts) per state and year were identical with the number of civil wars per state andyear, one could produce some spurious difference by comparing frequencies of coups for a period with (on average) more states and frequencies of civil wars for a period with (on average) a somewhat smaller number of states. To counter this plausible objection, we can compare frequencies for an identical period of observation, where the same number of states therefore was at risk of civil war or coup d'etat. There were 37 civil wars (Small & Singer, 1982: 222) in the 1948-77 period, compared with the 542 attempted irregular executive transfers or coups d'etat. Rebellions from above, whether successful or not, still outnumber civil wars by 542:37 or about 15:1. However, because civil wars are often separatist wars where some regional elite leads 'its' masses into the fight against another regional or national elite supported by 'its' masses, the Small & Singer (1982) list is a poor substitute for a list of cases where we can be reasonably certain that the rebellion pits 'masses' against ruling classes or elites instead of peripheral regions or tribes against central or imperial governments.

Fortunately, Russell (1974: 73, 148) has produced a list of 28 such mass rebellions resulting in fifty or more casualties for the 1900-70 period, out of which 12 were successful in capturing political power. This gives us 0.4 mass rebellions and 0.17 successful mass rebellions in the average year. These numbers are definitely smaller than the 18 military rebellions and eight successful military rebellions for the overlapping but, by and large, later period of observation referred to above. According to Singer & Small's count (1966: 264), the mid-period (1935) number of states for Russell's period

of observation (1900-70) is 66, while the mid-period (1965) number of states for Taylor & Jodice's period of observation (1948-77) is 121 (Small & Singer, 1973: 596). Taking the near-doubling of the number of nations at risk of mass rebellion or military coup into account, this still gives us a ratio of about 26:1 for successful coups versus mass rebellions and a ratio of 25:1 for all attempts at coups versus all attempts at mass rebellions.8 In our view, these differences are so large that even significant im- provements in the quality of the data would not affect the existence of an order of magnitude gap. These differences in relative frequencies are easy to reconcile with a rational choice or power contention theory of rebellion but difficult to reconcile with a relative deprivation theory.

While most mass rebellions do not result in revolutions, revolutions from below pre- suppose successfiul mass rebellions. Finding an acceptable list of revolutions from below is no easy task. The longest ones tend to be the least acceptable. Calvert (1970) counts 363 'revolutions' between 1900 and 1969. A close look at his coding rules and a super- ficial inspection of his list demonstrates that most events on it are merely successful military coups and therefore not mass rebellions; moreover, most of the compara- tively few mass rebellions are not revolutions from below in the usual sense of the term where violence as well as structural change are components of the definition of revolution.

Of course, if structural change is made part of one's definition of revolution, as it should be in our opinion, then there is another threshold problem where arbitrariness is hard to avoid, namely, how much structural change is necessary for a successful

8 Without corrections for the different numbers of states in both periods, the ratio is 47:1 for succesful coups versus mass rebellions and 45:1 for all attempted coups versus all attempted mass rebellions.

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mass rebellion to qualify as a revolution. As far as we know, no serious attempt at measuring the depth or pervasiveness of structural change exists. Instead, scholars seem to rely on their own implicit criteria.

Table I compares the Russell (1974: 73) list of 28 mass rebellions9 during 1900-70 with the Walt (1992: 325) list of nine revolutions and the Zimmermann (1990: 40) list of 11 revolutions in the twentieth century.10 One would expect that all of the revolutions listed by Walt or Zimmermann would be in- cluded in the 12 successful mass rebellions on Russell's list. Except for the Turkish case (on Walt's list) and the Chinese case (on Zimmermann's list) and for the wars of liberation that Russell disqualified but Zimmermann did not, this is so. Because of different treatments of wars of liberation a comparison of Russell's list with Zimmermann's is less meaningful than a comparison of Russell's list with Walt's. Out of 28 mass rebellions (Russell), 16 failed. Out of 12 successful mass rebellions before 1970, only four resulted in revolutionary change (Walt). We dismiss the Turkish case because it was clearly a 'revolution from above' (Trimberger, 1978) and for analytical purposes it is important to maintain the dis- tinction between mass revolutions and so-

" This list excludes not only military rebellions (coups d'etat) but also domestic conflicts with significant external intervention (which makes Austria 1934 a borderline case), anticolonial conflicts, and civil wars. Russell (1974: 61) provides the following rationale for excluding anticolonial rebellions: 'For example: in anticolonial rebellions, with- drawal by the colonial power is a possible outcome, in striking contrast to mass rebellions, where those over- thrown have nowhere to withdraw'. Although it is quite difficult to distinguish mass rebellions from civil wars, Russell (1974: 65) attempts to make some distinctions: '"Civil war" seems a more appropriate term when there is a violent conflict between two semi-autonomous political systems, each with its own regime, and in which each side enjoys considerable means of coercion in fairly distinct ge- ographical areas. Also, in contrast to mass rebellions, sep- aration or secession is a possible outcome of civil war'. 5? Their lists also include some pre-20th century revolutions.

called revolutions from above (which may have quite different causes).

Thus, in regard to the undisputed cases, it is clear that most mass rebellions fail to succeed in overthrowing the ruling class or the established regime. And of the few that do achieve this much success, most of them fail to generate sufficient structural change to be called 'revolutions' by scholarly consensus (in as much as this exists). Although one should not place excessive trust in the exact numbers, four true revolutions out of 28 mass rebellions, or a a ratio of 1:7, seems to us to be an educated guess of the chances of success for revolutionaries.ll

Armies, War and Revolution If mass rebellion succeeds as infrequently as Table I suggests, we have to address the question why. Lack of success cannot be ex- plained by the freerider problem or by lack of significant resource mobilization because the rebels must have succeeded in overcoming these obstacles, otherwise they could never have begun a mass rebellion in the first place. In a struggle between rebels and regime forces, success should depend on relative military prowess, on luck, and, possibly, on the balance of popular assistance to each side. We will begin the analysis with military factors. Luck, of course, is a residual category of 'causes' that is inherently impossible to analyze, and neither rebels nor government have any control over it. The balance of popular assistance is difficult to analyze because even crude but generally undisputed data about regime and chal-

11 For the sake of simplicity, we neglect the possiblity that revolutionaries may 'succeed' in generating structural change of a different kind rather than the change at which they aim. Probably, many socialist revolutionaries aimed at less repressive societies than what they produced. This might be a very important qualification of their 'success'. Although Gurr & Goldstone (1991: 324) apply a broader definition of revolution than we do, their estimate of the chances of success for revolutionaries is about 1 in 5 and thereby similar in order of magnitude to our 1 in 7.

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Table I Mass Rebellions and Revolutions in the 20th Century

Mass Rebellions (Russell) Romania 1907 Mexico 1911

Cuba Italy Portugal Russia

Bulgaria Ireland Albania

Portugal Afghanistan Bolivia Brazil Spain Cuba Honduras Austria Spain

Columbia Bolivia China Bolivia

Burma Philippines Cuba Sri Lanka (Ceylon) Cameroon Tanzania

1912 1914 1915 1917

1923 1923 1924

Revolutions (Walt)

Mexico

Russia Turkey

Revolutions (Zimmermann)

1910

1917 1919

Mexico China

Russia

China 1927 1929 1930 1930 1930 1933 1933 1934 1934

Yugoslavia Vietnam

1948 1949 1949 1952

1954 1954 1958 1958

China

Cuba

1949

1959

Bolivia Algeria

Cuba

1910-20 1911-27

1917

1927-49

1960 1964

Ethiopia 1974 Cambodia 1975 Iran 1978 Iran 1978 Nicaragua 1979 Nicaragua 1978-90

Some of the non-overlap is caused by the fact that Russell's data compilation ends by the late 1960s. The differences in dates can be neglected here since there can be no reasonable doubt that Russell, Walt and Zimmermann refer to the same events. It is noteworthy, however, that there are 'revolutions' (e.g. Turkey 1919 in the Walt list or China 1911-27 in the Zimmermann list) which were not preceded by any country-wide mass rebellion. Successful mass rebellions (according to Russell, 1974: 73) are in italics.

1941-45 1945-73

1952 1954-62

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Erich Weede e- Edward N. Muller REBELLION, VIOLENCE AND REVOLUTION

lenger popularity seem unavailable for most mass rebellions and revolutions.'2

There have been amazingly few studies of the role of the military in mass rebellions and revolutions. By our definition (following Russell, 1974), mass rebellions can become revolutions only if they are successful in replacing the old regime. The military (and the police), if loyal to the established regime, may stand in the way of revolutionary success. In the earliest largely historical study of this topic, Chorley (1943: 243) concluded: 'In a revolutionary situation the attitude of the army is ... of supreme importance. It is the decisive factor on which will depend success or failure'. Similarly, Andreski (1968: 71) claims 'so long as the government retains the loyalty of the armed forces, no revolt can succeed'.'3 Brinton (1965) and Johnson (1966) concur. This idea has been tested and supported by Russell in a systematic comparison of seven successful and seven unsuccessful mass rebellions, where each set of seven cases was drawn randomly from her universe of cases (see the first column of Table I above). Her findings are neatly summarized by the statement: 'Armed-force disloyalty is necessary for a successful outcome of rebellion, but it is not a sufficient condition' (Russell, 1974: 79).

If loyal and effective armed forces may stand between rebellion and its success, another variable might be a substitute for disloyalty, i.e. military defeat by foreign armed forces. If foreigners are able to destroy much of the army of the established regime, then the government must face the rebels naked. Also, defeat in war might be a factor 12 In general, both the regime and its challengers claim popularity and even active popular support. But revolutionary situations are not conducive to public opinion polls. As Kuran (1991) has forcefully argued, there are likely to exist strong incentives for preference falsification or concealment in unstable, repressive, or prerevolutionary societies. 13 After Castro's success in the Cuban revolution, however, Andreski (1969) withdrew this proposition.

that contributes to disloyalty of the armed forces. In either case, lost campaigns or wars might be the midwife of successful mass rebellion and revolution.

It is easy to find comments on this proposition in the literature, but it seems impossible to find systematic quantitative research of even the crudest variety.'4 Laqueur (1968: 501) is an outspoken proponent of the view that international conflict and war (or defeat) contribute to revolutions: 'War appears to have been the decisive factor in the emergence of revolutionary situations in modern times; most revolutions, both successful and abortive, have followed in the wake of war (the Paris Commune of 1871, the Russian revolution of 1905, the various revolutions after the two world wars, including the Chinese revolutions)'. Other prominent writers on revolution who seem to subscribe to similar views include Adelman (1985), Greene (1974), Huntington (1968), Johnson (1966), Skocpol (1979) and Tilly (1978). By contrast, Eckstein (1980: 159-160) objects: 'Examples of revolutions after lost wars abound: France in 1871; Russia in 1905 and 1917; Turkey in 1918; China after World War II. Unfortunately, countercases can be invoked just as readily: Japan or Italy after the last great war, for instance. Perhaps these cases only show that losing a war is not a sufficient condition for revolution; but then, neither is it a necessary condition, or even a normal occurrence (e.g. France, 1789; Mexico, 1910; Cuba, 1959, etc.)'.

Working from Table I, it is easiest to ask whether there is evidence in favor of the strong view that war involvement without victory, i.e. lost military campaigns or even lost wars, are necessary conditions

14 Stein & Russett (1980: 411) report a related finding. The losers of major power war between 1870 and 1945 have always undergone regime change. Bueno de Mesquita et al. (1992) also found that lost wars undermine regimes. Unfortunately, these analyses say little about the relationship between lost wars and revolutions, because most regime change is not covered by the term revolution.

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(or close to it) for revolutions to occur. Going through the Walt (1992) list (ex- cepting the Turkish revolution from above), serious military defeats occurred before the revolutions in Russia and China and an equivalent of defeat arguably occurred in Cambodia;5ls but military defeats by foreign armies did not occur before the revolutions in Mexico, Cuba, Ethiopia, Iran, or Nicaragua. Because the majority of 20th century revolutions on Walt's list occurred without previous military defeats, war involvement or defeat in military campaigns clearly is far from being a necessary condition of revolution.

Turning to the Zimmermann (1990) list, military defeats possibly may be related to later revolutions in China (twice), Russia, Yugoslavia, Bolivia, Algeria and Vietnam but not in Mexico, Cuba, Iran and Nicaragua. Here, we have classified debatable cases (Bolivia, Algeria and Vietnam)'6 in favor of the proposition linking defeat with revolution. Nevertheless, there still are only seven out of 11 cases compatible with the view that defeat in military campaigns or wars have been necessary conditions of revolution. While we do not claim that our coding is necessarily valid, we are confident that it is impossible to provide a defensible coding that provides better support for the 'war as midwife of revolution' view than ours; and even this purposively biased coding does not suffice to support the idea that lost military campaigns are a necessary condition of revolution or something close to it.

15 While the temporary occupation of Cambodia by American and South Vietnamese troops in early 1970 did not technically inflict 'defeat' on Cambodian military forces, the mere presence of these foreign troops served to delegitimize the government without permanently bolster- ing its capability to repress the communist insurgency. It is therefore possible to question whether Cambodia is compatible with the 'war as midwife of revolution argument'. 16 The Bolivian revolution of 1952 has been related to the outcome of the Chaco war (1932-35) and the Vietnamese and Algerian revolutions have been related to the fate of France in World War II.

Lost military campaigns are generally invoked to explain revolutions rather than mere mass rebellions, most of which never develop into revolutions. But from a rational choice or power contention perspective, it is implausible to expect that military troubles or defeat should affect only the likelihood of revolution instead of the likelihood of mass rebellion in general, since military defeat weakens any government and thereby invites challenges. Moreover, military weakness should contribute to rebel success because it is easier to defeat government troops that recently have been beaten by foreigners.

Looking to Russell's 12 successful mass rebellions first, seven cases - Mexico, Portugal, Bolivia (1930), Brazil, Cuba (twice) and Tanzania - clearly did not suffer recent military defeat by foreign armed forces and therefore challenge the idea that military defeat is a precondition of successful mass rebellion. And the other five cases include some where a link between earlier war involvement and later rebellion is by no means always persuasive (e.g. Bolivia 1952). Turning to all 28 instances of attempted mass rebellion, one has to add Romania, Cuba (1912), Italy, Portugal (1927), Spain (1930 and 1934), Honduras (1933) and Columbia (1948) to the seven cases listed above that challenge the hypothesis of a linkage between military defeat by foreigners and mass rebellion. This leaves at most 13 out of 28 cases in which the outbreak of mass rebellion might be related to previous war involvement and/or defeat. This again is insufficient to establish anything close to a necessary condition.

Is it plausible that military defeat by foreigners could be a sufficient condition of either mass rebellions in general, successful mass rebellions, or revolutions? In other words, does mass rebellion or revolution always follow from military defeat? To answer this question we need to know the universe of instances of defeat in interstate war.


Erich Weede ed Edward N. Muller REBELLION, VIOLENCE AND REVOLUTION

According to the Correlates of War Project (Singer & Small, 1972: 64-69; Small & Singer, 1982: 87-96) there were 66 instances of states suffering military defeat during the 1900-80 period. Because Russell lists only 28 attempts at mass rebellion and 12 successful ones, and since the number of Walt's or Zimmermann's revolutions in the twentieth century is still smaller, it is clear that the majority of instances of defeat in interstate war were not followed by mass rebellion or revolution and, therefore, that defeat in interstate war cannot be anything close to a sufficient condition for rebellion or revolution.

Thus, a crude analysis forces one to reject war or defeat as either necessary or sufficient conditions of mass rebellion or revolution. A more refined analysis, however, would re- quire better data on mass rebellion and revolution. Moreover, even the war data would have to be refined. Singer & Small are not interested in temporary losers of wars, such as Russia in World War I before Germany was defeated by the Western allies, or China in World War II (and in the preceding Sino- Japanese war) before the United States defeated Japan. But it is these undocumented campaign defeats of Russia and of China that loom large in analyses that treat war as the mid-wife of revolution.

Although we find no evidence to support hypotheses of an extremely strong relationship between defeat in war and rebellion or revolution, i.e. one that conforms to either a necessary or sufficient condition, nevertheless, there still could be a weaker positive as- sociation. We now will try to assess whether the likelihood of revolution is increased at all by defeat in war or is unrelated to it.

According to Singer & Small (1966: 275), there were 62 states in 1940 - i.e. in the middle of our 1900-80 period of observation. If we assume that military defeat might affect the likelihood of revolution within a decade, then there should be 8 (the number of decades) times 62 (the average

number of states in the period of observation) or 496 cases for analysis.17 According to Singer & Small (1972: 64-69; see also Small & Singer, 1982: 87-96), there were 66 instances of states suffering military defeat in the first eight decades of this century. Thus, about 430 of the 496 cases are not characterized by military defeat. Four of the undisputed revolutions (Mexico, Cuba, Iran and Nicaragua) occurred within this set of cases. This provides something like a little bit less than a 1% chance of revolution per state and decade for those states that avoid severe military problems.

By contrast, there were two revolutions (Russia, China) in the subset of 66 cases suffering severe military pressure and at least temporary defeat. For these defeated states, the risk of revolution within a decade seems to be about 3% (instead of the less than 1% for undefeated states). While almost all defeated states do not undergo revolution (64 of 66), these estimates of likelihood of revolution demonstrate that defeat in war might nevertheless multiply the risk of revolution. The chief virtue of this exercise is not that our estimates deserve to be taken literally - they are suggestive, no more - but that they indicate the compatibility of the idea that war involvement and campaign defeat might multiply the risk of revolution with the fact that most revolutions have not been preceded by war or defeat.'8

17 There are two reasons why we use the nation-decade instead of the more familiar nation-year as a unit of analysis. First, there is case dependency. Obviously, events in one time unit affect events in later time units in the same nation. The smaller the time slices, the more we treat cases as independent which are, in fact, closely dependent on earlier ones. Second, theorizing is not advanced enough to give us a good idea about the lag between military defeat on the one hand and rebellion or revolution on the other hand. A decade covers a wider variety of conceivable lags than a year. 15 Chorley (1943: 244) seems to link unsuccessful war with an increased risk of revolutionary disturbances. In her view, unsuccessful large-scale war is more likely than anything else 'to disintegrate the rank and file against the will of their officers', and thereby make them available for rev-

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Discussion

In our view, the relative frequencies of mass and elite rebellions constitute an important argument in favor of rational action or power contention theories and against relative deprivation theories. Although there has been insufficient rigorous research on opera- tionalizing rebellion - in particular mass rebellion - and revolution, we argued that there is a difference in the order of magnitude of the frequencies of elite and mass rebellions, which is apparent even with the crude data currently available.

Concerning the role of armies in mass rebellions, which may or may not turn into revolutions, there is again more historical de- scription than systematic and rigorous test- ing. To our knowledge, Russell's (1974) study is still unchallenged and conclusions seem to be valid in regard to the importance of army loyalty for the prevention of revolutions or army disloyalty (to the old regime) for the promotion of revolutions.

Armed forces disloyalty may result from military defeat - it is only human for defeated soldiers to blame the political leadership and to withdraw their support from those who led them into catastrophy; or the condition of armed forces disloyalty may be replaceable by military defeat as a facilitating condition of revolution. Unfortunately, the entire literature on war or defeat as background conditions or mid-wife of revolution seems to consist of plausible arguments and enumerations of positive or negative cases.

olutionary initiatives - as happened in Russia in 1917 and in Germany and in Austria in 1918. The acceptance of a humiliating peace by would-be revolutionary governments, e.g.. the post-imperial governments of Germany or Austria at the end of World War I, may do much to delegitimize the new regime and thereby prevent the consoli- dation of the incipient revolution (see Chorley, 1943: 39, 122, 227-231). According to this line of reasoning, unsuccessful war should have a much stronger effect on revolutionary disturbances than on fully developed revolutions. Unfortunately, 'revolutionary disturbances' are an amorphous concept that would be difficult to oper- ationalize and use in empirical analyses.

While these enumerations suffice to reject the ideas that war involvement or defeat in military campaigns might be either necessary or sufficient conditions of revolution, a major effort at coding rebellions, revolutions, and military campaign results seems required before we can judge whether or not war involvement or campaign defeats are facilitating conditions of revolutions. It is conceivable that most revolutions are not preceded by war involvement or campaign defeat, but these variables might still multiply the likelihood of revolutions. This is the view to which we subscribe - admittedly, without truly reliable evidence to support (or to question) it.

War involvement and campaign defeat do not constitute the only interface between international politics and revolutions. In our view, the penetration of weaker members of the international system by great powers and the desertion of weak client states by their perceived masters in the hours of need may play a conspicuous role in revolutionary events. On the one hand, regime dependence on foreign (great power) support tends to delegitimize it. DeFronzo (1991: 3) provides some illustrations: 'The Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Iranian revolutions were also, in part, reactions to foreign intervention. They illustrate how past interfer- ence by a powerful outside country can provide revolutionaries with the advantage of laying legitimate claim to protecting national interests ... Both the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions, although twenty years apart, were directed against regimes notorious for subservience to foreign interests, internal corruption, greed, and the toleration of unjust economic conditions'. Similarly, the lack of effective resistance of the nationalist government19 against the Japanese invasion of China in the 1930s and

19 GMD or KMT, depending on one's preferred transcrip- tion.


Erich Weede e& Edward N. Muller REBELLION, VIOLENCE AND REVOLUTION

1940s was occasionally perceived as border- ing on collaboration and certainly undermined the patriotic credentials of the so-called nationalist regime.

On the other hand, great power desertion of a client regime may signal to challengers that they stand a reasonable chance to win and that they therefore should double their efforts. Before Batista fell, the United States stopped arming his troops (DeFronzo, 1991: 170). This undermined the fighting spirit of Batista's army and encouraged Castro's in- surgents. Before the Sandinistas took power in Nicaragua, 'the Carter administration es- sentially ordered Somoza to leave Nicaragua' (DeFronzo, 1991: 203). Moreover, Somoza was pressured by the United States to lift the state of siege in 1977 and thereby facilitated the efforts at resource mobilization of his op- ponents. Similarly, DeFronzo (1991: 269) argues, 'one key factor in the deterioration of the Shah's regime was his relaxation of restrictions on political activities in 1977 in reaction to pressure from the United States...'. Obviously, the recent revolutionary change in Central-East Europe - with the partial exeption of Poland where resistance against Communist rule emerged earliest - has also to be understood in terms of client regimes being deserted by their for- mer master, i.e. the Soviet Union, and thereafter collapsing.20

Although one should not overlook the linkage between international pressure or war involvement and the likelihood of revolution, one should not exaggerate it either. Here, the suggestion of a multiplicative relationship among determinants of revolutions is useful. Thus, the presence of a single background condition of revolution may multiply the probability of revolution and still keep it safely below five percent (as we argued above for military defeat), but 20 For survey data on East Germany after the Soviets began to desert their fellow Communist regime, see Opp, et al. (1993), Opp (1994).

the simultaneous presence of a number of such background conditions together could raise the likelihood of revolution consider- ably. Goldstone (1991a: 49) has recently suggested such an explanatory model with three determinants, where he argues that '[T]he key originating factor is a conjuncture of several conditions: declining state resources relative to expenses and the resources of adversaries, increasing elite alienation and disunity, and growing popular grievances and autonomy'.

Although such a model sounds persuasive and attractive, it is more a sketch of a theory than a finished theory with clearly falsifiable implications, or a theory that may be applied to events which have not yet happened. If one takes 'popular grievances and autonomy' as background conditions of mass rebellion, Goldstone's formula certainly tells us that many, if not most mass rebellions will never succeed in becoming revolutions. This is a falsifiable statement with which we agree. But how can we assess the prospects of some mass rebellion succeeding? In historical research it seems difficult to avoid using information about the success of the rebellion as a cue for judging the balance of state and ad- versary resources and/or the degree of elite alienation and disunity. Although we believe that Goldstone refers us to the right track, we need more details as well as generally ap- plicable information about the conditions that might turn the balance of power from the old regime to its adversaries or which might provoke elite alienation and/or disunity. Plausibly, military defeat is a background condition both of a shifting balance of power between regime and challengers and of elite disunity and alienation.

Mass rebellion presupposes that challengers have somehow and to some degree solved their collective action problem. Whether or not rebels succeed against the ancien regime should depend on the balance of forces that is affected by the military and

55


foreign policy variables just discussed, as well as by the relative success of challengers and government in extracting and mobilizing resources. Inspired by the work of Goldstone (1994), Hechter (1987), Oberschall (1973, 1994) and Granovetter (1978), we empha- size the importance of recruiting existing solidary groups and organizations en bloc into a revolutionary movement. Here, nationalism seems to be a much more useful ideology than class consciousness because of its wider appeal. In a recent comparative study of revolutions De Fronzo (1991: 314) argues that '[T]he Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Iranian revolutions were like the Vietnamese in the sense of being viewed by many of their participants as national liberation movements'. We would be willing to add even the Chinese revolution to this list and then recognize that all of the undisputed revolutions after the Russian revolution (see Table I) have been promoted by nationalism and were at least partly motivated by the desire for national liberation.21

We recognize that we move dangerously close to the assertion that nationalism not only helps to overcome the problem of forging a revolutionary coalition out of pre- existing groups and organizations but also may help to overcome the freeriding problem among the rebels. Because the post- revolutionary order constitutes a public good, it seems rational for each actor to let others shoulder the necessary burdens and withhold his own contribution, unless actors either are altruistic and derive utility from the well-being of others or else are rewarded by selective incentives for their own contributions. The problem with explaining cooperation (among rebels or revolutionaries) 21 The Russian revolution itself is a complicated case. On the one hand, military defeats of the Czarist army served to undermine the legitimacy of Czarist rule and generated anti-German nationalism in Russia. On the other hand, the patriotic credentials of the winner of the Russian revolution, that is, of Lenin and his communist party, look very suspect (see Pipes, 1990).

by altruism is not that such an explanation is necessarily false, but that it is hard to avoid tautological reasoning, i.e. to ascribe altruism where cooperation succeeds and lack of it where it fails. Tautology may be avoided, if one can point to background conditions of altruism whose presence or absence may be assessed independently of its presumed effects. Here, our hunch is that next to religiously mandated altruism, nationalism is likely to be its most potent source. Unfortunately, we lack reliable cross-time and cross-national data about upsurges of nationalism that may contribute to the explanation of where and when revolutionaries succeed in overthwrowing the old regime. We suspect that nationalism frequently is behind phenomena that the previous literature labeled the desertion or division of the elites, discontent of the population at large, and loss of regime legitimacy (DeFronzo, 1991; Gurr & Goldstone, 1991; Zimmer- mann, 1983: 318, 398-405)

The standard way to overcome freeriding in large groups consists of selective incentives and coercion (Olson, 1965). The applicability of coercion itself, and to a lesser degree of selective rewards for contributors, constitutes a kind of public production good.22 The procurement of intermediate and ultimate public goods might depend to a significant degree on zealotry that arises in dense networks of communication (e.g. among professional revolutionaries) where people strongly reward each other for major contributions to the common goal

22 This may be regarded as a special case of Hechter's (1987) theory of group solidarity. According to Hechter, organizations come into existence by first producing goods where resource pooling is essential, but where exclusion from benefits is still possible. Once organizations are firmly established and selective incentives and coercion may be administered, then organizations may begin to produce pure public goods, where exclusion is no longer possible. Applied to rebellious movements, this suggests that dissidents should first focus on organization-building and only thereafter attempt to displace the regime and to procure the public good of a better (more just) society.

volume 35 / number 1 / januay 1998

Erich Weede e& Edward N. Muller REBELLION, VIOLENCE AND REVOLUTION

(Coleman, 1990: 274), for example, of overthrowing the current regime. If these social rewards within some core group of revolutionaries are strong enough, they may com- pensate for the initially low chances of goal achievement that otherwise would dissuade revolutionary activity. Again, we estimate that second only to religious motivation, common nationality is instrumental in making people reward each other (by social approval) for contributions to the 'national interest'.

Even if there is somebody to reward contributions to the procurement of a public good (including the success of a rebellion and a transfer of power) and to punish fail- ures to contribute, there is another problem to be solved, i.e. monitoring contributions to the organizational goal so that appropriate rewards or punishments become possible in the first place. Most organizations find it extremely hard to solve the metering problem even under more benign cicumstances than most rebels face (see Olson, 1987). Again, our hunch is that religion and nationalism provide some motivation to contribute even where monitoring is weak and intrinsic motivation therefore becomes crucial. Although Hardin's (1995) recent work on nationalism, norms and violence is a promising start from a rational choice point of view, much remains to be done before even the equivalent of the crude calculations presented above can shed some light on religious or nationalist identification and their impact on rebellion, violence and revolution.

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ERICH WEEDE, b. 1942, PhD and Venia Legendi in Political Science (University of Mannheim, 1970, 1975); Professor of Sociology, University of Cologne (1978-97) and University of Bonn (1997- ); most recent book in English: Economic Develop- ment, Social Order and World Politics (Lynne Rienner, 1996).

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EDWARD N. MULLER, 1942-95, PhD in Political Science (University of Iowa, 1971); Professor of Political Science, State University of New York at Stony Brook (1970-77) and the University of Arizona, Tucson (1977-95), where he also served as chair of the department at the time of his death; author of Aggressive Political Participation (Princeton University Press, 1979) and nu- merous papers in the American Political Science Review and the American Sociological Review.

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Article Contentsp. 43p. 44p. 45p. 46p. 47p. 48p. 49p. 50p. 51p. 52p. 53p. 54p. 55p. 56p. 57p. 58p. 59

Issue Table of ContentsJournal of Peace Research, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Jan., 1998), pp. 1-143Volume Information [p. 1]Front Matter [pp. 3 - 140]Preface [pp. 5 - 6]Arms Transfer Dependence and Foreign Policy Conflict [pp. 7 - 23]Global Civil Society, Anarchy and Governance: Assessing an Emerging Paradigm [pp. 25 - 42]Rebellion, Violence and Revolution: A Rational Choice Perspective [pp. 43 - 59]The United Nations at 50: Managing Ethnic Crises. Past and Present [pp. 61 - 82]Crisis Magnitude and Interstate Conflict: Changes in the Arab-Israel Dispute [pp. 83 - 109]DebateReconfiguring the Arms Race-War Debate [pp. 111 - 118]Comments on the Articles by Sample and Diehl & Crescenzi [pp. 119 - 121]Furthering the Investigation into the Effects of Arms Buildups [pp. 122 - 126]

Review EssayA Clash of Civilizations. An Ide Fixe? [pp. 127 - 132]

Book Notesuntitled [p. 133]untitled [p. 133]untitled [p. 134]untitled [p. 134]untitled [pp. 134 - 135]untitled [p. 135]untitled [pp. 135 - 136]untitled [p. 136]untitled [p. 136]untitled [pp. 136 - 137]untitled [p. 137]untitled [pp. 137 - 138]untitled [p. 138]untitled [pp. 138 - 139]

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