No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945–1991 (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics)
Cambridge University Press, 6/18/2001
EAN 9780521620697, ISBN10: 0521620694
Hardcover, 428 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.7 cm
Language: English
No Other Way Out provides a powerful explanation for the emergence of popular revolutionary movements, and the occurrence of actual revolutions, during the Cold War era. This sweeping study ranges from Southeast Asia in the 1940s and 1950s to Central America in the 1970s and 1980s and Eastern Europe in 1989. Following in the 'state-centered' tradition of Theda Skocpol's States and Social Revolutions and Jack Goldstone's Revolutions and Rebellion in the Early Modern World, Goodwin demonstrates how the actions of specific types of authoritarian regimes unwittingly channeled popular resistance into radical and often violent directions. Revolution became the 'only way out', to use Trotsky's formulation, for the opponents of these intransigent regimes. By comparing the historical trajectories of more than a dozen countries, Goodwin also shows how revolutionaries were sometimes able to create, and not simply exploit, opportunities for seizing state power.
Figures, tables and maps
Abbreviations and acronyms
Preface and acknowledgments
Part I. Introduction
1. Comparing revolutionary movements
2. The state-centered perspective on revolutions
strengths and limitations
Part II. Southeast Asia
Chronology for Southeast Asia
3. The formation of revolutionary movements in Southeast Asia
4. The only domino
the Vietnamese revolution in comparative perspective
Part III. Central America
Chronology for Central America
5. The formation of revolutionary movements in Central America
6. Not-so-inevitable revolutions
the political trajectory of revolutionary movements in Central America
Part IV. Further Comparisons and Theoretical Elaborations
7. Between success and failure
persistent insurgencies
Chronology for Eastern Europe
8. 'Refolution' and rebellion in Eastern Europe, 1989
9. Conclusion
generalizations and prognostication
Annotated bibliography
Index.