Throughout history, and especially in this century, revolutions have played a central role in human history. Yet, as both the Iranian revolution of 1978-79 and the revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe made clear, revolutions are rarely predictable nor attributable to a single cause.
Debating Revolutions brings together some of our best social and political thinkers to address two central questions of revolution: Can they be predicted? And what are their causes? In the debating style of Contention, the award-winning journal from which the essays are culled, the contributors--among them Charles Tilly, Jack A. Goldstone, Edward Berenson, Said Amir Arjomand, and Daniel Chirot--focus on the Iranian, Eastern European, and French revolutions, and on the theoretical and comparative aspects of revolutionary study. Unlike most anthologies, Debating Revolutions has a format that enables scholars to engage one another in discussion, thus resolving many disputes and addressing dilemmas, rather than merely outlining differences.