5 - Revolutionary Polities

Summary

Revolutions are traumatic experiences for individuals, their communities, and the larger society of which they are a part. This chapter focuses on society, analyzing those trends and dynamics within post-revolutionary societies that give the entire polity – not just the state but non-state actors as well – thepeculiar characteristics that they acquire after revolutions. The chapter examines the changing nature of state–society relations in the aftermath of revolutions. In specific, the chapter focuses on how the emerging leaders of the new state impose their own vision of the revolution on social actors, not all of whom may share the same vision. New state leaders often suppress or altogether eliminate nonconformists while at the same time continuing to keep the momentum of revolutionary mass mobilization going. This has consequences for the emerging political culture, which is often polarized, revolves around zero-sum assumptions, and is therefore anti-democratic. The ingredients for political opposition are abundant and often extremist, though the prospects of yet another revolution are dim.