Passive revolution: a contested concept and a research agenda

• In Event: Passive Revolution in the Postcolony

Abstract

The concept passive revolution is analytically fruitful due to its unique power to capture cases where revolution and restoration are thoroughly entangled. Recent works on Mexico, South Africa, and Trinidad Tobago study passive revolution as a path distinct from revolution and counter-revolution. They diverge on several topics, ranging from the role of popular initiative, civil society, and the state in passive revolutions to the hegemonic character of the regimes that result from them. Rather than a sign of confusion, I take these disagreements as a solid indicator of the concept’s productivity. I also resort to recent criticisms of the concept to further underline the strength of the paradigm.
Nevertheless, these studies and debates highlight unresolved issues. First, analyses of passive revolution have been mostly national, whereas the core dynamics of passive revolutions are transnational and global too. The article calls for the integration of Arrighi, Fanon, and CLR James for more reflexivity on the unit of analysis and the centrality of nation and race in the world system. Second, even though studies of the concept that treat it as a modality or heuristic are also insightful, the empirically most generative studies of passive revolutions have handled it as a path. This necessitates not an elimination of alternative uses, but more rigor in specifying how each text uses the concept. Finally, as well as more comparative discussion of what causes a case to follow a passive revolutionary rather than another path, future studies need to also more carefully analyze the determinants of the weight of popular initiative, civil society and the state, and the wars of position and movement in each passive revolution. It is still an open question which combination of these factors produces relatively more hegemonic ruling blocs.

Author

• Cihan Ziya Tugal, University of California-Berkeley