Revolutions and Statebuilding: Transforming Political and Social Institutions

Session Submission Type: Virtual Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Under what conditions are political and social institutions transformed, and under what conditions do such changes endure? Panelists present a variety of innovative arguments tested using new quantitative and qualitative data to address this question. Koehler-Derrick and Lee use the historical example of Algeria as an overseas department of France to explain why bellicist theories for the construction and transformation of state political institutions fail to account for non-Western European cases. They use archival documents to construct a new dataset to test their argument that the degree to which citizens are able to hold the state accountable determines patterns of political institutional formation and change. Berman, Clarke and Majed explore the challenges to transforming nominally democratic institutions despite widespread, revolutionary popular mobilization. Using original data from Iraq and Lebanon, they argue that the fragmentation of political power in some democracies may insulate rulers from popular accountability and robust challenges to the regime. Meng and Paine explore why some political institutions are more likely to endure. They locate their explanation in the processes through which political regimes are made: when rebel groups are successful in ousting the previous leaders, rebels transform political institutions to make them more resilient to coups or violent counter-mobilization. Meng and Paine test their arguments using original data from African regimes from 1960 to 2017. Finally, Stewart and Kitchens explore the micro-level foundations for revolutionary socio-political transformation. They argue that social transformation on the level of revolution is best understood as the routinization of new patterns of social interaction and they endure through cross-generational teaching and informal, local institutions. Stewart and Kitchens present new quantitative data and archival sources about “contraband” encampments that formed during the U.S. Civil War to test their arguments. Together, all authors’ works use new quantitative and qualitative data to expand our understanding of revolution, statebuilding, and regime durability.

Sub Unit

• Division 11: Comparative Politics

Individual Presentations

• State Building and War in the French Colonial Empire - Melissa M. Lee, Princeton University; Gabriel Koehler-Derrick, Brown University

• Revolution in Flawed Democracies: The Lebanese Thawra & Iraq’s Tishreen Uprising - Chantal Berman, Georgetown University; Killian Clarke, Georgetown University; Rima Majed, American University of Beirut

• Rebel Regimes and Military Powersharing - Jack Paine, University of Rochester; Anne Meng, University of Virginia

• Legacies of Social Transformation in U.S. "Contraband" Camps - Megan A. Stewart, University of Michigan; Karin Kitchens, Virginia Tech

Chair

• Jack A. Goldstone George Mason University

Discussants

• Steven Levitsky Harvard University

• Andrea Ruggeri University of Oxford