Review, Comparisons

and
Evaluations of 5 Books

Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture and Structure by Mark

Irving Lichbach and Alan S. Zuckerman
Coercion, Capital and European States by Charles Tilly
States and Social Revolutions by Theda Skocpol
Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson
The Politics of Collective Violence by Charles Tilly

Bünyamin Dağ
İstanbul Medeniyet University
PHD Student
 Review, Comparisons and Evaluations of 5 Books
When I review and evaluate the five books which in Advanced Readings in Comparative
Politics lesson, I see that there is a deep analysis of governing and shaping the states mostly
from the perspectives of history. At the beginning of this large review, I want to introduce
briefly the five books. First, I have reviewed the book from Mark Irving Lichbach and Alan S.
Zuckerman’ Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture and Structure. Secondly distinguished
Professor of his area Charles Tilly’ Coercion, Capital and European States. Thirdly the book
from Theda Skocpol which name is States and Social Revolutions. Fourth, well known
economists Daron Acemoğlu and James A. Robinson’ Why Nations Fail. And lastly again
Professor Charles Tilly’s The Politics of Collective Violence.
At the end of this review, I have added the table (Table 1. Comparisons of Five Books
Review) which makes easy to understand the general picture of five books content and some
information.

COMPARATIVE POLITICS
RATIONALITY, CULTURE, AND STRUCTURE
Mark Irving Lichbach and Alan S. Zuckerman
Comparative Politics Rationality, Culture, And Structure is edited by Mark Lichbach and Alan
Zuckerman, it’s almost 400 pages and 15 chapters. When we divide this book two-section,
the first section contains 8 chapters and 7 authors.
In the book Comparative Politics, there is deep analysis of the last decade and last century
from the point of paradigm. Because of time and page limitations, we will not going to enter
these arguments and we will try to summarize issues generally.
Mark Irving Lichbach and Alan Zuckerman’s first chapter “Paradigms and Pragmatism”
actually summarize and define the entire book. In the book, there are more than 15 authors
explaining and defining their analysis of comparative politics from the point of view of
paradigm and pragmatism.
In the first chapter of the book, there is a term “messy center of comparative politics” that
attracts attention and the author wants to show to convey a multimethod approach that draws
from many theories.
Mark Lichbach’s chapter; “Thinking and Working in the Midst of Things: Discovery,
Explanation, and Evidence in Comparative Politics” argues contemporary comparative
politics from a different perspective and states that: While overt paradigm wars have been
dampened, paradigm-driven teaching and thinking persists.
Lichbach is beginning his chapter from Tocqueville “I am never precisely sure where I am
going or whether I will ever arrive…” and shows the nature of social sciences ambiguity and
vagueness. He defines comparison as “always helps”. And also in his chapter, he deals with
comparative politics as alternative ways of thinking and working in comparative politics,
evaluates two competing claims about the current state of our field.
Lichbach formulates some terms: Discovery = big problems = thorny puzzles = core difficulty,
Explanation = big concepts = mechanisms = intuitions = middle range causal arguments,
Evidence = stylized facts = design for establishing causality = analytic narratives Social
Mechanisms.
Alan S. Zuckerman argues for explanations with social mechanisms in his chapter
“Advancing Explanation in Comparative Politics”. The chapter opens with prescriptions for
explanations in comparative politics. In the next section, he argues that such explanations
require social mechanisms. Later he explores new ideas for social mechanisms, drawing on
theory and findings from across the social sciences, and then he applies some of these
innovations to research partisanship, voting, and political violence. The following portion
explores the general principles of empirical research and relates them to explanatory
research in comparative politics.
He expresses that: In comparative politics, explanations should join social mechanisms and
empirical analysis. The more reason to accept the explanatory value of the social
mechanisms and the greater the validity of the empirical work presented, the more reason
there is to accept the explanation. In conclusion, he returns to the theme of successful
explanations in comparative politics.
Ira Katznelson, writing on structuralist analyses in his chapter “Strong Theory, Complex
History”. He states that: there is not the only way forward. And it is not without pitfalls. It risks
seeming too Western, even too American, and not sufficiently comparative. Its focus on a
type of regime may appear synonymous with satisfaction.
He expresses the general paradigm with his words that: No single subject can suffice, and no
mode of analysis ever can be entirely self-sufficient.
Margaret Levi on rational choice theory in her chapter; “Reconsiderations of Rational Choice
in Comparative and Historical Analysis”. She advocates a “multiplicity of methods as well as
approaches” that “blurs the lines among approaches” and is “methodologically pluralistic.” As
Levi puts it “not everyone does everything, but everyone seems to do several things.”
Marc Ross on culturalist analyses, assess developments in the field's research schools in his
chapter “Culture in Comparative Political Analysis”
His chapter argues that culture is important to the study of politics because it provides a
framework for organizing people’s daily worlds, locating the self and others in them, making
sense of the actions and interpreting the motives of others, for grounding an analysis of
interests, for linking identities to political action, and for predisposing people and groups
toward some actions and away from others. Culture does these things by organizing
meanings and meaning-making, defining social and political identity, structuring collective
actions, and imposing a normative order on politics and social life.
Joel Migdal examines the state in his chapter “Researching the State” and explores the
relationship between the paradigms and current research. He places the “comparative
politics of the state” at the field’s center. He suggests that comparison has relied heavily on a
universal template or image of what the state is and does.
Mark Blyth adds culturalist themes to work on political economy in his chapter; “An Approach
to Comparative Analysis or a Subfield within a Subfield? Political Economy” He attempts to
define the field of economy, he offers another respectful critique of the mainstream. His
chapter can be summarized by; “hard-won empirical research showed that the economy was
inseparable from politics.
Second part of the book starts with Mark Blyth’s chapter; ‘An Approach to Comparative
Analysis or a Subfield within a Subfield?’ Blyth focusing on political economy rather than
rationality, culture and structure in this chapter. According to author Political economy
contains everything from individuals’ personal choices, living standards, understanding of the
world to international agreements etc.. That’s why he is focusing on the issue.
Blyth discussing what political economy is and how its modern form came about in this
chapter and trying to explain with several scholars citations.
According to author; after 70’s and 80’s recession years, hard-won empirical research
showed that the economy was inseparable from politics. A variety of perspectives invites a
plurality of methodological stances. Rather than the one “true” version of political economy or
suggest that a single approach actually covers all the bases.
If a researcher does not reduce political economy to a singular approach, it appears as a
diverse and thriving area of study. This diversification is generally regarded as a prudent
strategy – not just to protect us from the “all the eggs in one basket” problem, but to position
us to take advantage of the unexpected events that often destroy singular theories.
Etel Solingen’s “The Global Context of Comparative Politics” explains that the relations
between comparative politics and international relations, and clearly shows that comparative
politics have never been wholly autonomous from international influences.
The relationship between domestic and international politics entails two kinds of linkages
(see Figure 9.1 in the book). The first are known as “second-image reversed” effects,
referring to the impact of international forces on domestic politics, from the outside-in. The
second kind – “second-image” effects, link domestic structures and institutions to
international politics from the inside-out. These two types of effects intersect in the domestic
realm, where a process of conversion takes place. And also both types of effects also
intersect in the international realm, where another process of conversion takes place.
This domestic-international linkages causing internationalization and globalization, and this
situation increases and strengthen the interactivity between domestic and international.
This chapter dwells largely on “second image reversed effects” and domestic conversion.
This Second-image reversed” effects are, fundamentally, mechanisms of global diffusion.
The context of comparative politics is now more global than ever before. And The realities of
internationalization and globalization – and challenges to them – have transformed earlier
literatures on the international sources and consequences of states, revolutions, civil and
interstate war, economic and political reform, terrorism and other violence, social
movements, political parties, military organizations, and politicians’ incentives and choice
constraints.
“Comparative Perspectives on Contentious Politics” from Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and
Charles Tilly is a history of last 50 years of contentious political perspective.
Contentious Politics are revolutions, social movements, nationalized mobilizations, civil wars,
democratizations etc…
According to authors; the field of Contentious Politics is still fragmented, disconnected, and
contentious, but they see some windows of clarity in what was an obscure wall of teaching,
research, and controversy a decade ago.
Authors are trying to encourage the researchers and readers to crossing of the various
boundaries – disciplinary, historical, geographic, and between different forms of contention –
that divide the field of contentious politics, and to persuade the readers that different forms of
contention – like social movements and civil wars – suitable with different types of regime.
There are six topics of this chapter: “Common Properties of Contentious Politics,” lays out
authors’ general perspective on contentious politics. The second part, “The Evolution of the
Field,” offers an updated sketch of how the field has evolved from the 1960s through the
1990s. The third part, “Mechanisms and Processes of Contention,” presents some of the
mechanisms and processes that we have found central to the dynamics of contention. The
fourth part, “Two Distinctive Forms of Contentious Politics,” focuses on some distinctive
features of two very different forms of contention – social movements and civil wars – and
their relationship to different types of regime. The fifth part, “Contentious Politics and
Comparative Politics,” illustrates ways in which integrated approaches to contentious politics
by a number of other scholars are contributing to comparative politics.
Robert Huckfeldt in his chapter “Citizenship in Democratic Politics” is discussing the
implications of interdependence among individuals for the ways we understand citizenship
and politics and also the patterns of interdependence have fundamentally important
consequences for cultural, structural, and rational choice theories of politics – for the ways
that we understand both groups and individuals in the political process.
Author addressing the interdependence and levels of analysis in the study of comparative
politics before addressing the relationship between ecological and individualistic fallacies in
political analysis. Comparative politics provides a general case of multilevel analysis, and the
data requirements for such a comparative framework are addressed. The argument turns to
social networks as a key device, both for producing patterns of interdependence and for
generating contextually dependent patterns of political behavior. Finally, attention turns to the
implications for comparative analysis, for understanding the political capacity of individuals
and aggregates, and for the various paradigmatic approaches to the study of comparative
politics such as cultural theories, structural theories and rational actor theories.
Christopher J. Anderson’s “Nested Citizens, Macropolitics and Microbehavior in Comparative
Politics” focusing in the behavioral study of politics is on individuals. As a subfield of political
science, it examines actions (voting, protests etc..) as well as cognitions (perceptions,
attitudes, and beliefs); and as a subfield of comparative politics, it examines them in one,
several, or many different countries. It encompasses the study of both cognition and action,
in large part because we have long believed that attitudes and beliefs explain action, but also
because we are convinced that, in addition to formal institutions or processes, cognitive
elements of politics such as legitimacy, values, or grievances are important indicators of the
quality and nature of democratic and political life.
This chapter reviews the foundations of the behavioral study of politics, and it does so with
an eye to its evolution as a subfield of comparative politics. It also discusses the field’s
closeness with different theoretical traditions in political science and comparative politics.
Author discuss both the past and present of how we study comparative mass politics and
describe how it has been transformed because of changes in technology and intellectual
trends and in reaction to real world events. He argue that, as a result of these changes, the
study of mass politics has become more central to the study of comparative politics through
its global relations with different theoretical traditions in the social sciences and comparative
politics.
He is trying to attract attention to the individuals as political actors: Comparative politics has
long been dominated by macro and micro approaches. While countries and their cultures,
structures, and institutions are obviously important and legitimate scholarly concerns,
relatively few comparativists have focused on understanding the behavior of individuals as
political actors.
Jonathan Rodden is focusing on electoral rules in his chapter and identified a pattern that
characterizes institutional research more generally. Over several decades, researchers have
established some interesting conditional correlations using cross-country data. In addition to
the relationship explored in his chapter, some highlights include electoral rules and the
number of parties, federalism and welfare expenditures, and democracy and economic
development.
Isabela Mares in her chapter “The Comparative Political Economy of the Welfare State”
surveys the main traditions of research examining the determinants of social programs
enacted to ameliorate poverty or provide insurance in moments of unexpected drops in
income.
Mares has two objectives. One is to explore how different studies have reconciled the
relative importance of structural, institutional, and ideational variables in accounting for the
evolution and change in social policy. The other is to evaluate whether existing explanations
developed in the context of advanced industrialized economies are robust and can account
for the variation in the structure of social programs and levels of social spending in a much
larger universe of cases.
Peter Lindert once noted the “Robin Hood paradox” of social spending: “Redistribution from
the rich to the poor is least present when and where it seems most needed” according to
author that we have begun to confront the Robin Hood paradox of the literature on social
spending, we are still a long distance away from resolving it.
Kanchan Chandra in her chapter “Making Causal Claims about the Effect of “Ethnicity”
places causal theorizing about ethnic identity on a conceptual foundation. She proposes a
definition of ethnic identity that captures the classification of ethnic identities to which our
causal claims refer and eliminates definitions that do not. She uses this definition to identify
properties that can reasonably be associated with ethnic identity and those that cannot. She
argues, by evaluating previous causal claims against this conceptual foundation, that most
are not reasonable even when evaluated on their own terms. And finally, She proposes new
conceptually driven criteria that might serve as the basis of more reasonable causal claims.
According to author; ethnic identities are an arbitrary subset of categories in which descent-
based attributes are necessary for membership.
Virtually all social science definitions of ethnic identity emphasize the role of descent.
General characteristics of ethnicity: a common ancestry, a common place of origin and a
“group” descent rule necessary for membership. Additional defining characteristics: a
common culture a common language, a common history and a common territory.
In short, author tries to explain exactly; what ethnicity is.

Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1990

CHARLES TILLY
Cities and States in World History
Some 3,800 years ago, the ruler of a small Mesopotamian city-state conquered all the
region's other city-states, and made them subject to Marduk, his own city's god. First empires
formed there from that point on, the coexistence of substantial states and numerous cities
has marked the great civilizations, from Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China to Europe.
In Anatolia, Catal Höyük's remains include rich houses, shrines, and works of art dating to
well before 6000 BC. Full-fledged cities and recognizable states, then, appeared at roughly
the same point in world history, a moment of great expansion in human capacity for creativity
and for destruction.
China, with nearly three thousand years' experience of successive national states.
Samuel Huntington is a little more generous; considering Europe and the United States
together, he distinguishes three patterns of modernization in governmental institutions; a
Continental rationalization of authority and differentiation of structures within a unified
sovereign body under the crown, a British centralization of power in a representative
assembly, and an American fragmentation of sovereignty.
Uneven economic grow, according to Kennedy, causes the world's leading states to acquire
and lose advantages relative to other states.
The hundreds of state once flourished but then disappeared - Moravia, Bohemia, Burgundy,
Aragon, Milan, Savoy, and many more. For systematic explanations, we must look beyond
the statist literature.
James Rosenau distinguishes four patterns of national adaptation to international politics:
acquiescent, intransigent, promotive and presentative. The intransigent state, for example,
"can seek to render its environment consistent with its present structures" while the
promotive state "can attempt to shape the demands of its present structures and its present
environment to each other". Each of these patterns, according to Rosenau, has distinctive
consequences for the character of the executive, the caracter of the party system, the role of
the legislature, the role of the military, and much more.
The most powerful rulers in any particular region set the terms of war for all; smaller rulers
faced a choice between accommodating themselves to the demands of powerful neighbors
and putting exceptional efforts into preparations for war.
Prussia, Great Britain, and France struggles between monarch a major classes over the
means of war, and felt the consequent creation of durable state structure. In the nature of the
case, national states always appear in competition with each other, and gain their identities
by contrast with rival states.
The class structure of the population that fell under the jurisdiction of a particular state
significantly affected the organization of that state, and variations in class structure from one
part of Europe to another produced systematic geographic differences in the character of
states.
The transformation of states by war, in its turn, altered the stakes of war.
France and England eventually followed the capitalized coercion mode which produced full-
fledged national states earlier than the coercion intensive and capital-intensive modes did.
Arrangements at the level of household, village, or region clearly affected the viability of
different kinds of taxation, conscription, and surveillance.
2 European Cities and States
Europe remained a land of intensely fragmented sovereignty in the year 1490. Europe's 80
million people divided into something like 500 states, would-be states, statelets, and state
like organizations.
By 1990, another five centuries later, Europeans had greatly extended the work of
consolidation. Six hundred million people now lived within the continent's perimeter. No
Muslim state remained on the continent, although a powerful Islamic world thrived
contentiously to the south and southeast of Europe and impressive residues of Muslim
culture survived in Spain, the Balkans, and Turkey. States, on the other hand, diminished in
number and increased in area.
Venice, Antwerp, Genoa, Amsterdam, London, and New York successively toppled the
European system of cities from the fourteenth century to the twentieth.
Opportunities for taxation, the power of landlords and the supply of troops deeply affected
how states took shape.
Cities shape the destinies of states chiefly by serving as containers and distribution points for
capital. By means of capital, urban ruling classes extend their influence through the urban
hinterland and across far-flung trading networks.
States themselves operate chiefly as containers and deployers of coercive means, especially
armed force.
Coercive means obviously played a part in warmaking (attacking external rivals), state
making (attacking internal rivals), and protection (attacking the enemies of the state's clients).
Coercive means also came into play in a state's exercise of extraction (drawing the means of
state activity from its subject population) and adjudication (settling disputes among members
of that population).
Kings generally sought to limit the independent armed force at the disposition of townsmen
for the very good reason that townsmen were quite likely to use force in their own interest,
including resistance to royal demands.
By the nineteenth century, states had succeeded in arming themselves impressively and in
almost disarming their civilian populations.
The increasing scale of war and the knitting together of the European state system through
commercial, military, and diplomatic interaction eventually gave the warmaking advantage to
those states that could held great standing armies; sates having access to a combination of
large rural populations, capitalists, and relatively commercialized economics won out. They
set the terms of war, and their form of state became the predominant one in Europe.
Eventually European states converged on that form: national state.
States such as Prussia, France, and Britain often considered models of effective state
formation - combined the co-optation of landlords and merchants, built standing armies and
navies in the time of mass-army tactics from the Thirty Years’ War to the Napoleonic Wars,
and as a consequence created substantial central bureaucracies.
3 How War Made States, and Vice Versa
Why did wars occur at all? The central, tragic fact is simple: coercion works; those who apply
substantial force to their fellows get compliance, and from that compliance draw the multiple
advantages of money, goods, deference, access to pleasures denied to less powerful
people. Europeans followed standard war provoking logic: everyone who controlled
substantial coercive means tried to maintain a secure area within which he could enjoy the
returns from coercion, plus a fortified buffer zone, possibly run at a loss, to protect the secure
area.
War wove the European network of national states and preparation for war created the
internal structures of the states within it.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially, armies expanded. They become
big business.
4 States and their Citizens
Over the last thousand years, European states have undergone a peculiar evolution: from
wasps to locomotives. Long they concentrated on war, leaving most activities to other
organizations, just so long as those organizations yielded tribute at appropriate intervals.
A state's essential minimum activities form a trio: statemaking: attacking and checking
competitors and challengers within the territory claimed by the state; warmaking: attacking
rivals outside the territory already claimed by the state; protection: attacking and checking
rivals of the rulers' principal allies, whether inside or outside the state's claimed territory.
5 Lineages of the National State
In the top-down system, we find the spatial logic of coercion. In the bottom-up system, the
spatial logic of capital. We-have' seen two similar hierarchies at work repeatedly in the
unequal encounter between European states and cities.
Capital-intensive state formation differed from coercion-intensive and capitalized-coercion
paths of change in three fundamental regards. 1. The influence of commercial oligarchies
promoted the development of states organized around the protection and expansion of
commercial enterprise especially, in European experience, maritime enterprise. 2. The
institutions created by the bourgeoisie for the defense of their own interests actually became
sometime instruments of state administration; Venice, Genoa, and the Dutch Republic
achieved a remarkable fusion of municipal and national government. 3. The availability of
capital and capitalists permitted these states to borrow tax, purchase, and wage war
effectively without creating bulky durable national administrations.
Why didn't Venice or Russia become England? The question is not absurd; it follows from the
recognition that European states in general moved toward greater concentrations of capital
and coercion, converging on the national state.
6 The European State System
States form a system to the extent that they interact with each other regularly, and to the
degree that their interaction affects the behavior of each state. In AD 990, nothing like a
European state system existed. By AD 1990, a system that once was primarily European had
exploded to include almost the entire earth. In between, Europe passed through a few
centuries during which most European states maintained fairly strong connections -hostile,
friendly, neutral or, more likely, mixed and variable -with most other European states but with
few others outside the continent. In their collective power and connectedness those states
stood out from the rest of the world. The dominant political fact of the last thousand years is
the formation and extension of a European state system consisting largely of national states
rather than empires, city-states, or other variants of coercive power.
A number of great powers that relied primarily on armies rather than navies.
European states started in very different positions as a function of the distribution of
concentrated capital and coercion. They changed as the intersections of capital and coercion
altered. But military competition eventually drove them all in the same general direction. It
underlay both the creation and the ultimate predominance of the national state. In the
process, Europeans created a state system that dominated the entire world. We live within
that state system today. Yet the world outside of Europe resembles Europe no more than
superficially. Something has changed in the extension of the European state system to the
rest of the earth -including the relationship between military activity and state formation.
Knowledge of the European experience helps identify some worrisome peculiarities of the
contemporary world.
7 Soldiers and States in I990
What distinguishes state formation in the contemporary world from its counterparts in the
past? Although twentieth-century war takes a deadlier toll than ever, war has changed
significantly in character. Large-scale civil wars, often aided and abetted by great powers,
have become much more common in the world since 1945 than they were in European
experience.
World War II transformed the state system and the states within it. As citizens of belligerent
states, as inhabitants of battle zones, or both, most of the world's people felt the war's
impact. The war broke all records for killing, for destruction of property, and for displacement
of populations.

States and Social Revolutions

A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China
Theda Skocpol
Theda Skocpol’s this book is published in 1979 by Cambridge University Press, and explains
the causes of revolutions from the aspects of comparative historical analysis of the French
Revolution of 1789 and effects of subsequent centuries, the Russian Revolution of 1917 and
the results of next decades, and the Chinese Revolution of 1911 through the 1960s.
Skocpol argues that these three different revolutions spread almost two centuries, and all
three were social revolutions similarly.
She asserts that social revolutions are generally rapid and basic changing of a society's
structures. Skocpol separates this from rebellions, which involving lower classes of society.
This type of revolution can create changes in state structures but not in social structures.
The author argues that the basic changes in social structure and political structure occur in a
mutually reinforcing fashion and these changes occur through intense sociopolitical conflict.
According to Skocpol before social revolutions, generally the administrative and military
power of a state has to break down. She means that if the administrative and military power
breaks down, that’s the closest point of the revolution in a country. From this point of view
pre-revolutionary France, Russia and China had well-prepared states that all governing and
military power was paralyzed. When we look at the three-country, all of them presented itself
with a significant factor of power conducted with social, political, and economic conflicts. In
China, France, and Russia the centralized administrative and military machinery were
disintegrated, and this situation made class relations vulnerable to assaults from below.
Chapter 1: Explaining Social Revolution: Alternatives to Existing Theories
Chapter one of States and Social Revolutions shows us that not just the rarity of social
revolutions, but also their momentous occurrences in the history of the world. These
revolutions have changed the lives of every citizen of the country; they completely changed
the organization of the state, including their class structures.
The rise of the new regimes in France, China and Russia have completely altered the
previous state and social establishments. These revolutions not only altered the state of the
nation in question, but also impressed the world as a whole, generally these countries
(especially France, Russia, and China) have gone on to become Great Powers.
These countries were seen as examples of what needs to and should happen in nations all
around the world. Revolutionized countries gave others the hope that perhaps one day if they
fought for it, they could also possess a strong military, a solid economy, and rights that every
human being deserves.
There is an important conclusion about revolution’s results: France became suddenly a
conquering power in Continental Europe, and the Russian Revolution generated an industrial
and military superpower, and the revolutionary process long underway has reunited and
transformed China. And there is another result that impressed all around the World: French
revolutionary ideals of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" fired imaginations in quest of social
and national liberation.
Author stress that I agree with her: Social revolutions are unique from all other
transformations because they alone have the ability to change both social and political
organization rapidly. Two occurrences are key in order for such revolutions to occur, first
there must be class-based upheavals that cause societal-structural change, and secondly,
there must be a coincidence of political with social change. These two changes, social and
political structure, occur simultaneously and go hand-in-hand due to sociopolitical conflicts.
Chapter one clarifies the four social-scientific theories of revolutions. First, there is Marx's
approach to revolutions is interpreting them as a class-based movement that stems from
structural contradictions occurring in conflict-ridden communities. Second is the Aggregate-
Psychological Theory, by Ted Gurr. Which explains revolutions by psychological motivation
for taking part in political violence. Third, the Political-Conflict Theory of Charles Tilly, which
states that a conflict between a government and an organized group occurs when the two
contend for power.
Skocpol also discusses the role of the international community in social revolutions. It is
assumed that each nation learns from the example of others.
Chapter 2: Old Regime States in Crisis
Skocpol in this chapter highlights the old regimes in crisis, such as France, China, and
Russia. These states set the precedent for old regimes in crisis and help to outline pre-
revolutionary conditions and the leading causes. She states that (today what happening in
the contemporary world - and probably this is the universal rule of living species)
revolutionary crises are created when the old regimes fail to modernize with the evolving
international situation.
France is one of Skocpol's primary definitions of an old-world revolution. The two themes
demonstrated in France's revolution are the rise of the bourgeoisie and the emergence of the
enlightenment ideology which is the characteristics that define a revolution.
The second state discussed in chapter two is China in the 19th century. This civilization was
in a tension-filled state filled with pressures on the government to provide for the state and
conflicts between gaining status in the international arena and the domestic conflicts within
the state.
The last old-world regime in crisis was Russia; they were the last underdeveloped great
powers that were bombarded by state change as well as the loss of status in the international
arena. The Russian imperial state was in crisis due to their multiple defeats in previous wars.
Chapter 3: Agrarian Structures and Peasant Insurrections
Skocpol analyzes the situation of the peasantry and its contribution to the great Revolutions
in Chapter 3. She pays attention to the conditions for and against peasant insurrections. She
states that societal political crises alone were not sufficient enough to produce social-
revolutionary situations in France, Russia, and China. Urbanites and peasantry were
dependent on each other.
Peasant revolts have been crucial in almost all successful revolutions to date, especially in
the French, Russian, and Chinese Revolutions. This is not surprising since social revolutions
have usually occurred in agrarian countries where peasants made up the major producing
class.
Theda Skocpol is making deep analyses of the effect of Social Revolutions on the States and
social structures. Her comparative analysis of France, Russia, and China clearly shows that:
today's contemporary world’s countries and their social structures formed after
socioeconomic, administrative and military crises.
When we look at the book from the beginning: First Part of the book analyzing the causes of
societal crises, Second Part proceeding to show what changed in the French, Chinese, and
Russian Revolutions and why those changes emerged from these social revolutionary
situations. The second part of the book is titled Outcomes of Social Revolutions in France,
Russia, and China and explains shared patterns across all three Revolutions as well as
important variations among the Revolutions. The second part of the book is divided into four
chapters. Chapter 4 is the first chapter within the second part of the book. This chapter
analyzing the processes and outcomes of the Revolutions by focusing on the struggles
surrounding the creation of new state organizations within the social revolutionary contexts.
Chapter 4: What Changed and How: A Focus on State Building
According to Theda Skocpol in chapter 4: Social revolutions are affecting the structure and
functions of the states and state building within the social revolutionary contexts determined
revolutionary outcomes. And revolutions only fully achieved when new state organizations
were created.
She is evaluating the similar patterns of change between Chinese, French and Russian
Revolutions: Revolutionary ideologies were key to the nature of all revolutionary outcomes,
peasant revolts, landed upper classes lost control of peasants, state-building leaderships,
new state infrastructure is more centralized and rationalized, greater popular incorporation
into state-run affairs, more effective in society and more powerful against international
competitors.
And she is also defining differences between outcomes of Revolutions France and Russia:
Professionalized and hierarchical state, France is defining as professional-bureaucratic state,
national markets and capitalist private property.
Russia and China: Rise to party-led state organizations, development-oriented party-states,
control over national economy, and China: Highly centralized and bureaucratic, party or army
organizations asserted control over all society and state administration.

Chapter 5: The Birth of a “Modern State Edifice” in France

According to Theda Skocpol in chapter 5: The French Revolution was formed by the
outcome of the revolutionary crisis where the individual's independence and liberties seemed
unfeasible and after the masses mobilized together their goal was centralize the state. This
chapter highlights the French Revolution and the developments that occurred to create
modern-day France.
The author criticizes Marxist “social interpretation” which held that the revolution was led by
the upper-middle class (bourgeoisie) to replace feudalism and gentry with capitalism instead.
Marxist highlights the bourgeoisie creating a transition from the feudal hierarchy towards
capitalist mode of production to rid the system that prevents the individuals within it to move
up on the hierarchy.
The last section of the chapter 5; post-revolutionary France's new regime. There were
several changes implemented on the state and organizations within France such as: the
army, the civil state, and the state in society. The army became professionalized and the
emergence of the national army and the army was originally 90 percent noble before 1789
but after an influx of men could join without being noble. Napoleon Bonaparte helped to
organize the army and helped to give soldiers rank based on experience and education
rather than class. The civil state changed due to the French Revolution, it became less
monarchical and authoritative. They became a more democratic government with
bureaucratic administrative qualities providing citizens with equal opportunities in the running
of the state. The state in society had a stronger grip on functions and organizations within the
state, such as education, settlements within the church etc.
According to her, The French Revolution created a new existing society that was centralized
and professional-bureaucratic state with a society dominated by small, medium, and large
owners of private property. This was done to maintain social order and provide more
autonomous opportunities. The French Revolution swept away the monarchical dictatorship
that only provided opportunities to the rich and modernizing France was given equal
opportunities to all with a democratic government with bureaucratic organization.
Chapter 6: The Emergence of a Dictatorial Party-State Russia
She is discussing the Russia in chapter 6. According to her the Russian revolution is known
to be the most complete or thoroughgoing of the modern social revolutions. In the matter of a
few months’ industrial workers, peasants, and soldiers came together in revolts, undermined
the capitalist classes and sealed the fate of the tsarist regime. The leaders of this revolution
were devoted to socialisms ideas of equality and proletarian democracy. However, these
ideas ended up creating a centralized bureaucratic party-state that later came to push hasty
national industrialization through terror tactics. When the Russian Revolution finally broke
out, it was when the tsarist state had already been destroyed by the seemingly never-ending
involvement and defeats of World War I.
She is evaluating the Russian Revolution from the beginning of the 20th century, from 1917
Bolsheviks Revolution to the Stalin. All the revolts, revolution and all disturbances was
because of economic welfare distribution disorders, and actually same problems was
experienced in 1989 revolution.
Chapter 7: The Rise of a Mass-Mobilizing Party-State in China
Chapter analyzes developments in China from the aftermath of 1911 through 1949 to the
1960s. The Chapter is discussing four issue about China. The first one is The Social
Revolutionary Situation After 1911. China's warlord context and the survival of the local
gentry are discussed in this section. The second one is The Rise and Decline of the Urban-
Based Kuomintang. Its alliance and break with the communists and its failure to consolidate
national control are further discussed in this section. The third is The Communists and the
Peasants. The peasant-based red army, the second united front and its cadre recruitment
and administrative control, and the Party's mass mobilization for production, war, and land
revolution are examined in this particular section. The fourth and final issue is The New
Regime and examines a strengthened state bureaucracy, a Communist China and Soviet
Russia, a balanced strategy for national development, and political coordination, mass
mobilization, and egalitarianism. Reasons for China's distinctive outcomes are also examined
in the section.
According to her similar to the French and Russian Revolutions, the Chinese Revolution was
initiated by the breakdown of an autocratic and semi-bureaucratic Old Regime. A New
Regime more centralized, mass-incorporating, and more rationalized and bureaucratic than
the previous Old Regime was produced.
Theda Skocpol explains the social structural reasoning behind why and how revolutions
occur. Her book is extremely influential and enlightening, and gives an understanding of the
similarities and differences between the structures of prerevolutionary and postrevolutionary
societies in each of the revolutions she looks at. Skocpol also shows the connections these
states had with the international realm and how these affected the internal structures as well
as the public and the revolutionary changes.
She especially focusing on the importance of structural conditions within a state over the
ideological motives behind a revolution. She focusing too much on big picture of revolutions
but she does not looking individuals life.
Although published over forty years ago, Skocpol’s evaluations still continuing to be valid and
fresh. Skocpol presented a new point of view to look at social revolutions and analyze then
through a structural and state centered perspective.

WHY NATIONS FAIL

The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty
DARON ACEMOGLU & JAMES A. ROBINSON
Why are some nations more prosperous than others? Daron ACEMOGLU and James
ROBINSON searching for answer this question in their book “Why Nations Fail”. And briefly
explaining that it is not down to climate, geography, culture or the ignorance of political
leaders. These explanations or excuses are either insufficient or defective explanation. They
are giving answer shortly; because of institutional deficiencies. While saying institutional
deficiencies, they are loading the burden to the societies, in this point I’m totally agree with
them. They are giving examples from ancient Rome through to the modern-day China. They
mix economics, politics, history and current affairs to provide a new, powerful and persuasive
way of understanding wealth and poverty.
The book especially gives importance to the institutional economics and tries to explain why
nations develop differently and how gather power and prosperity and others failing, via a
wide range of historical case studies.
The central thesis of this book is that economic growth and prosperity are associated with
inclusive economic and political institutions, while extractive institutions typically lead to
stagnation and poverty. Authors support their thesis by comparing country case studies.
They identify countries that are similar, but because of different political and institutional
choices become more or less prosperous. They are giving examples of divided North Korea
and South Korea. Both countries’ economies have differentiated completely, with South
Korea becoming one of the richest countries in the World while North Korea remains the
poorest. And other striking examples are the border cities Nogales (Sonora, Mexico) and
Nogales (Arizona, USA). By referencing this border cities, the authors analyze the impact of
the institutional environment on the prosperity of people from the same geographical area,
same culture and the same climate conditions.
They discuss that a democratic and pluralistic state guarantees the rule of law, and also
argue that inclusive institutions promote economic prosperity because they provide an
incentive structure that allows talents and creative ideas to be rewarded. In contrast,
"extractive" institutions are permitting the elite to rule over and exploit others, extracting
wealth from those who are not in the elite. According to them nations with a history of
extractive institutions have not prospered, because entrepreneurs and citizens have less
incentive to invest and innovate. One exception is that ruling elites are afraid of creative
destruction the ongoing process of destruction of old and bad institutions while generating
new and good ones. Creative destruction would create new groups which compete for power
against ruling elites, who would lose their exclusive access to a country's economic and
financial resources.
The authors giving the example of the emergence of democratic pluralism in Great Britain
after the Revolution in 1688 as being critical for the Industrial Revolution. They also try to
explain the recent economic boom in China.
According to authors framework, economic growth will change the economic resource
distribution and this affect political institutions, despite the current rapid growth, if China
doesn't improve its political inclusiveness, China is expected to collapse like the Soviet Union
did in 1990’s.
The book is explaining two things clearly with examples around the world; the first one
explains the drivers of democratic and dictatorial regimes, the second one how democratic
regimes promote economic growth while dictatorial regimes prevent it.
According to Acemoglu and Robinson: Society is simply divided between a small rich class
and a large poor class. They assume that regimes must be either democratic or
nondemocratic; there is nothing in between. People's preferences in society are defined only
by monetary redistribution from the rich ruling class. The more monetary benefits they get,
the more they prefer the ruling class. People care not only about redistribution today but also
redistribution in the future. Therefore, people would not only want more redistribution today
but also they want to see a guarantee for more or stable redistribution in the future. The
economic output of a country fluctuates year by year, which means revolution is less costly
for the ruling class during economic downturn. Each individual in the society tries to
maximize their own utility.
Authors assert that a country starts as a nondemocratic society in which a small rich group
controls most of the wealth and rules the poor majority. As the ruling class, the rich receive
taxation from the economy's output and they decide on the taxation rate as the only means of
extraction. The poor majority can either take what is offered to them by the rich after they tax
the output ( the economy's output after tax divided by the population size ), or they can
choose to revolutionize against the ruling class, which comes with a certain cost. In a
revolution, the poor's ultimate payoff is the benefit of the revolution. Under that circumstance,
the payoff of the rich ruling class is split between, when the poor revolutionizes, the
punishment for the ruling class and when the poor acquiesces, the taxation income.
According to Acemoglu and Robinson that the case of democratization of Europe, especially
in England before the Glorious Revolution, political institutions were dominated by the
monarch. However, profits from increasing international trade extended de facto political
power beyond the monarch to commercially engaged nobles and a new rising merchant
class. Because these nobles and the merchant class contributed to a significant portion of
the economic output as well as the tax income for the monarch, the interaction of the two
political powers gave rise to political institutions that increasingly favored the merchant class,
plus economic institutions that protected the interests of the merchant class. This cycle
gradually empowered the merchant class until it was powerful enough to take down the
monarchy system in England and guarantee efficient economic institutions.
Acemoglu and Robinson are looking the nations failure or success from their point of view
(mostly the American point of view) and they cannot assert alternative perspective of the
nation’s today and future situations. They are evaluating nations from one dimension, for
example they define China as an extractive, that maybe true but they are not explaining
clearly why China succeed economically with their exclusive economic policy. And also
American Continent is the same situation, mostly south of America colonized by Spaniards
and North by British, and they are not clearly explaining the USA success and other nations
failure in economics.
Acemoglu and Robinson start with the second part of the book printing machine example on
the Ottoman Empire. Like England in 1600’s year's knitting machine hindrance, in Ottoman’s
printing press machine was not permitted until 1727. This actually makes me remind that
today's underdeveloped countries Internet, Google, Twitter, Wikipedia bans. Probably the
next generations are going to discuss that “because of technological bans, underdeveloped
countries were not developed because of technological bans”. But the authors extractive
polity hypothesis does not apply to the case of modern China, as China has one of the most
extractive institutions in the world (even Google is not permitted in China today, peoples
entering Google via VPN for the sake of punishment) but still flourishes economically.
According to authors; similar in absolutist regimes – for example, in Austria-Hungary, Russia,
the Ottoman Empire, and China, though in these cases the rulers, because of fear of creative
destruction, not only neglected to encourage economic progress but also took explicit steps
to block the industry and the introduction of new technologies that would bring
industrialization.
Authors assert that England exported their convicted criminals to the American Continent
and Australia, and imported the millions of slaves from Africa Continent. And also they assert
that America and Australia applied inclusive policies and become rich and improved, and
less developed countries like African countries applied absolutist polities and become poor
and underdeveloped. Actually we may infer from this scene that, America and Australia
supported by British population and become strong naturally, but Africa lost most of their
population by slavery and massacre and it was not possible to develop administratively
(criticizes of lack of central government, because there were no people left to govern and
study on sth. ), technologically etc…in this respect South Africa is developing country and
has dual economy, because South Africa supported by British population, even today
millions of British origin people living there.
World inequality today exists because during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries some
nations were able to take advantage of the industrial revolution and the technologies and
methods of organization that it brought while others were unable to do so. Technological
change is only one of the engines of prosperity, but it is perhaps the most critical one. The
countries that did not take advantage of new technologies did not benefit from the other
engines of prosperity, either. As authors have shown in this and the previous chapters, this
failure was due to their extractive intuitions.
According to authors today rich nations rich largely because they managed to develop
inclusive institutions at some point during the past three hundred years. These institutions
have persisted through a process of virtuous circles.
Acemoglu and Robinson explain the logic of mechanism of being poor or rich in a clear way:
extracted political intuitions create few constraints on the exercise of power, so there are
essentially no institutions to restrain the use and abuse of power by those overthrowing
previous dictators and assuming control of the state; and extractive economic intuitions imply
that there are great profits and wealth to be made merely by controlling power expropriating
the assets of others and setting up monopolies.
They shortly answer the question, why nations fail today: because they have extractive
institutions. And according to them: nations fail today because their extractive economic
institutions do not create the incentives needed for people to save, invest, and innovate.
When I look back to the whole book, according to me, it’s not possible to explain the nation's
failure with two words “extractive vs. inclusive”, because the issue is so deep and there are
lots of dynamics and these dynamics changing all the time. Today’s rich nations tomorrow
can be poor, poor nations may be prosperous and successful.

The Politics of Collective Violence

Charles Tilly
According to the Author Charles Tilly collective violence resembles weather: complicated,
changing, and unpredictable in some regards, yet resulting from similar causes variously
combined in different times and places. Getting the causes, combinations, and settings right
helps explain collective violence and its many variations. More than anything else, Tilly
organizes around an effort to identify relevant causes, combinations, and settings.
Tilly categories of human violence divide into three camps: idea people, behavior people,
and relation people. The three camps differ in their understanding of fundamental causes in
human affairs. Idea people stress consciousness as the basis of human action. Behavior
people stress the autonomy of motives, impulses, and opportunities. Relation people make
transactions among persons and groups far more central than do idea and behavior people.
According to the Tilly collective violence presents a series of puzzles for which no one has
yet arrived at satisfactory solutions:
1. Why does collective violence (unlike suicides and individual homicides) concentrate in
large waves – often with one violent encounter appearing to trigger the next – then subside
to low levels for substantial periods of time?
2. How and why do people who interact without doing outright damage to each other shift
rapidly into collective violence and then (sometimes just as rapidly) shift back into relatively
peaceful relations?
3. In particular, how and why do people who have lived with their categorical differences
(often cooperating and intermarrying) for years begin devastating attacks on each other’s
persons and property?
4. Why do different kinds of political regimes (e.g., democratic and authoritarian regimes)
host such different levels and forms of collective violence?
5. How and why do peacekeeping specialists such as police and soldiers so regularly and
quickly switch between violent and nonviolent action?
Tilly gives answer the question clearly “Where are we going?”: He pursues three objectives.
First, he maps variations in forms of collective violence to clarify what we must explain.
Second, within each variety of collective violence it searches for recurrent cause-effect links
that operate in similar ways across a wide range of times and places -cause-effect links, for
example, that appear in scattered attacks whenever and wherever they occur. Third, he
identifies causes that work similarly in diverse types of collective violence and thus affect the
likelihood and character of violence at large.
Author identifies the political context for that great variation in the second chapter. After a
brief introduction to regimes, he reviews the constitution of political actors, the special place
of political entrepreneurs as connectors and organizers of collective violence, and the
significance of specialists in violence such as police and bandits. He then turns to
comparisons of broad types of regime, characterizes broad patterns of political interaction in
different sorts of regime, and looks more closely at variation in kinds and intensities of
collective violence in different types of regime. His review of political contexts makes easier
to understand how the organization of political life in general shapes the character of
collective violence as well as how closely violent and nonviolent forms of political life interact.
According to Tilly: Contentious politics consists of that (large) subset of public politics in
which the claims are collective and would, if realized, affect their objects’ interests.
Contentious politics therefore excludes routine tax collection, reporting for military service,
voting, and application for pensions.
His “regime” explanation is: interactions among governmental agents, polity members,
challengers, and subjects. More precisely, it clumps myriad transactions among people into
those categories and then abstracts mightily from them.
Regimes vary in two ways that significantly affect the character and intensity of collective
violence within them: in terms of governmental capacity and democracy. Governmental
capacity means the extent to which governmental agents control resources, activities, and
populations within the government’s territory.
Democracy means the extent to which members of the population under a government’s
jurisdiction maintain broad and equal relations with governmental agents, exercise collective
control over governmental personnel and resources, and enjoy protection from arbitrary
action by governmental agents.
And also Tilly categories and gives examples clearly with a few sentences the types of
governments according to the capacity:
High-capacity undemocratic – China, Iran;
Low-capacity undemocratic – Somalia, Congo (Kinshasa, formerly Zaïre);
High-capacity democratic – Germany, Japan;
Low-capacity democratic – Belgium, Jamaica.
He asserts that: As governments gain capacity, they typically impose greater controls over
collective private vengeance by either suppressing disputes or drawing them into
government-backed judicial institutions. But even high-capacity undemocratic regimes often
leave space for special violent rituals such as the duel, blood sports, and public executions.
His idea about violent rituals that: it consists of damage-dealing interactions involving public
scripts, known scorecards, fixed and finite stakes, defined perimeters, stylized enactment of
us-them boundaries, clear delineation of proper participants and targets, and sharp
distinctions between those participants and either monitors or spectators.
In coordinated destruction issue; struggles over exploitation and opportunity hoarding come
doubly into play: (i) in control of the government; and (ii) in use of political power to establish,
maintain, seize, alter, or destroy inequality-generating systems of social relations outside of
government.
Opportunism is another important topic of his book: occupies the center right section of our
coordination-salience space: medium to low on coordination, but relatively high on salience.
The mechanisms generating opportunism concentrate on activating previously available
boundaries, stories, and social relations more than on incorporating multiple social sites into
coordinated actions. Most opportunistic collective violence occurs when, as a consequence
of shielding from routine surveillance and repression, individuals or clusters of individuals use
immediately damaging means to pursue ends that would be unavailable or forbidden to them
under other circumstances.
Broken negotiations matter because a significant share of public violence actually occurs in
the course of organized social processes that are not in themselves intrinsically violent. That
is notably the case in collective political struggle. Political regimes differ dramatically in the
scope they allow for nonviolent collective making of claims – for example by petitioning,
shaming, marching, voting, boycotting, striking, forming special-interest associations, and
issuing public messages.
Among the types of collective violence Charles Tilly has surveyed, Human Rights Watch
rarely chronicles ritual violence, brawls, or scattered attacks. His book’s pages’ overflow with
opportunism, broken negotiations, and coordinated destruction. With striking historical scope
and command of the literature of many disciplines, Charles Tilly’s this book seeks the
common cause of these events in collective violence. In collective violence, social interaction
immediately inflicts physical damage, involves at least two perpetrators of damage, and
results in part from coordination among the persons who perform the damaging acts. Tilly
argues that collective violence is complicated, changeable, and unpredictable in some
regards – yet that it also results from similar causes variously combined in different times and
places. Pinpointing the causes, combinations, and settings helps to explain collective
violence and its variations and also helps to identify the best ways to mitigate violence and
create democracies with a minimum of damage to persons and property.
 Table 1. Comparisons of Five Books Review
L BOOKS PRINTING &
AUTHOR ISSUES & EXPLANATIONS
N NAME YEAR
1 Comparative Mark Irving Cambridge Paradigms and pragmatism: comparative Politics during the past
Politics: Lichbach University decade
Rationality, and Alan S. Press, 2009 Thinking and working in the midst of Things: discovery,
Culture and Zuckerman explanation, and Evidence in comparative politics
Structure Advancing explanation in comparative Politics: social mechanisms,
endogenous Processes, and empirical rigor.
Strong theory, complex history: Structure and configuration in
Comparative politics revisited.
Reconsiderations of rational choice in comparative and historical
analysis
Culture in comparative political analysis.
Researching The State.
An approach to comparative analysis or a subfield within a
subfield?
The global context of comparative Politics.
Comparative perspectives on Contentious politics.
Citizenship in democratic politics: Density dependence and the
Micro–macro divide
Nested citizens: macro politics and Micro behavior in comparative
politics.
2 Coercion, Charles Tilly Cambridge: Cities and States in World History
Capital and 1992 European Cities and States
European How War Made States, and Vice Versa
States States and their Citizens
Lineages of the National State
The European State System
Soldiers and States in 1990
3 States and Theda Cambridge Explaining Social Revolutions: Alternatives to Existing Theories
Social Skocpol University Causes of Social Revolutions in France, Russia, and China
Revolutions Press, 1979 Old-Regime States in Crisis
Agrarian Structures and Peasant Insurrections
Outcomes of Social Revolutions in France, Russia, and China
What Changed and How: A Focus on State Building
The Birth of a "Modem State Edifice" in France
The Emergence of a Dictatorial Party-State in Russia
The Rise of a Mass-Mobilizing Party-State in China
4 Why Nations Daron Crown Nogales region example, Why is one rich and one poor?
Fail Acemoğlu Business, Theories that don’t work, why countries rich or poor?
and James 2012 The making of prosperity and poverty
A. Robinson Small differences and critical junctures: The weight of history.
Growth under extractive institutions.
How institutions evolve over time, often slowly drifting apart.
How a political revolution in 1688 changed institutions in England?
Barriers to development.
Reversing development.
The diffusion of prosperity.
The virtuous circle.
The vicious circle.
Why nations fail today?
Ho a few countries changed their economic trajectory?
Understanding the prosperity and poverty.
5 The Politics Charles Tilly Cambridge Varieties of violence
of Collective University Violence as politics
Violence Press, 2003. Trends, variations, and explanations
Violent rituals
Coordinated destruction
Opportunism
Brawls
Scattered attacks
Broken negotiations