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Response to Howard and Walters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2014

Eva Bellin
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Abstract

Surprise is an intrinsic fact of political life and its elimination, especially with regard to extraordinary moments of protest and revolution, is a vain endeavor. Prediction and explanation are fundamentally different enterprises. While scholars may be well-positioned to trace, retrospectively, the motivation, networks, leadership, and other contextual factors that fueled the events of 2011 and 1989, such analysis will never bestow the sort of predictive power that will eliminate the surprise of mass uprisings. Verstehen-esque studies of mobilization, while crucially enlightening, have limited capacity to augment our powers of foresight due to the fundamental gulf between agency and intention as well as the causal disconnect between precedent and prediction.

Type
Reflections Symposium
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , June 2014 , pp. 409 - 412
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2014 

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