‘Strong’ theistic naturalism is advocated, so that the notion of ‘special’ divine action is rendered redundant while scientism and a ‘God of the gaps’ notion of God’s action are avoided. A version of this kind of naturalism can affirm miraculous events in the way that Augustine of Hippo seems to have envisaged, which may now be interpreted as analogous to the scientist’s notion of regime change. In this context, some of the insights of evolutionary psychology become important, especially in relation to the evolution of human religiosity, which has significant implications for developing religious pluralism.

This introductory chapter explains the central role of psychology in revolutions, as well as the psychological perspective for understanding revolutions. The central puzzles to be solved include the puzzle of why at a deep level so little changes after revolutions, and why so many revolutions against dictatorships result in new dictatorships coming into being. There are potentially thousands of revolutions that could be the focus of this book, and the selection of the French, Russian, Chinese, Cuban, and Iranian revolutions as the focus of this book is explained. The contents of the book are briefly explained: Two chapters focus on psychological theories relevant to revolutions, three chapters on regime change, and (very importantly) three chapters on what happens in the post-revolution period. It is during this post-revolution period that typically moderates get pushed aside and extremists take over. In the final part of the book, one chapter presents a new psychological model of revolution, and another chapter addresses the question: Does human nature doom revolutions? Finally, in the Afterword, revolutions are interpreted as acts of collective creativity.

Examining the history and institutions of the legal systems in Afghanistan, we contend that there is an under-examined set of plural legal systems – those where different legal traditions remain in continual contention. Unlike mixed legal systems, these plural legal systems are not composed of mixed, blended, or accommodated models, but of conflicting legal influences that fail to create a well-functioning legal order, contributing to social and political conflicts. In this chapter, we first discuss the different characteristics of divided legal systems. Next, we explain why Afghanistan has failed to overcome the problem of a divided legal system.

Hybrid warfare is a widely interpreted and highly contested concept and also a label for opponents and targets in conflict or competition in international relations. It is often projected as being something underhand undertaken by the other, however, this chapter examines the conceptual and operational history of Western hybrid warfare. This refers to creating suitable environmental conditions in the information and cognitive domain as a means to subvert a target government and bring about regime change.

The high-medieval demographic and economic growth in which fishers and their customers shared had detectable environmental consequences. Prevailing agricultural practices plus increased human and other wastes damaged river systems and polluted both flowing and still waters. Contemporaries were aware of some such effects; others emerge only in modern scientific archaeology. Rulers and others blamed perceived declines in the quantity and quality of fish on overfishing. Present-day studies of long-running assemblages of fish remains detect local depletion of favoured varieties and shrinking average size of more common species. Some fishes (eel) and some fisheries (for herring) of previously limited importance increased their contribution to European diets. An exotic species, common carp, hitherto present in Europe only in the lower Danube, spread westwards into waters made warmer and siltier by human activities. In large thirteenth-century assemblages (but with regional variations), more accessible herring, eel, codfishes, and small cyprinids become dominant. Not all change had human origin; natural dynamics also played a role. High medieval centuries saw the crest, then decline, of climatic warming, with concomitant regional differences in precipitation, seasonality, riverine and estuarine hydrology, and even shifts in stratification and water chemistry of the Baltic. Changed habitats let heat-tolerant fishes spread west, while a herring-dominated regime in the Baltic peaked and slowly yielded to greater presence of cod. Knowingly or not, humans and animals had to adapt.

Chapter 7 dissects power dynamics among actors involved in immigration policy in Tunisia through the 2011 regime change: democratic state institutions and the administration; CSOs and migrant associations; international organizations, legal actors, and the private sector. I show how democratization affected immigration policy processes in ambiguous ways and explain why the increase in citizens’ political freedoms and civil society activism has not spilled over into more openness towards immigration. After 2011, policy processes became more inclusive, as the role of Tunisia’s parliament and civil society was strengthened. However, democratization also brought inter-actor dynamics to the fore that put a break to immigration reform plans, such as turf wars within the administration or governmental volatility. At the same time, the democratic transition has only partially affected immigration policymaking, as dynamics of international norm adherence and the ambiguous role of employers in Tunisia’s largely informal economy remained relatively unaffected by the regime change. In this context, political elites opted for restrictive policy continuity instead of translating migratory experiences and democratic ideals into liberal immigration reform.

“Loyalty and Suspicion: The Making of the Civil Service after Independence” compares how colonial classifications of identity according to loyalty and suspicion were used by bureaucracies in the new states to define the administrators themselves and to shape the making of the civil services. Purification committees to vet former civil servants of Mandate Palestine, campaigns that designated certain types of corruption as disloyalty, and the explosive fight over representation by ratio in Cyprus were all carried out along the graded axis of suspicion. The chapter follows how political affiliation, mobility, and identity shaped perceptions of loyalty and belonging to the civil service that, in turn, dramatically delineated the boundaries of citizenship through mundane and routine practices of appointment and selection in the transition from colonial rule to independence.

New social forces that emerge as part of the process of development turn structural change into political change. Their struggles for representation and incorporation occupy a prominent place in our understanding of regime change. Even elite-driven democratic transitions necessitate moments of mass mobilization that push liberalization into regime change. Many scholars also contend that an active citizenry leads to democratic stability via more effective government. In contrast, others warn that a mobilized and polarized civil society can undermine democracy – particularly if the demands of social forces outstrip the capacity of institutions to process them. In this chapter, we explore the effects of social organization and mobilization on democracy. Using the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) and Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes (NAVCO) data, we gauge the extent to which organized and mobilized social forces are responsible for levels and changes in democracy. We find that civil society participation and nonviolent protest positively affect democracy and that rightwing anti-system movements constitute the largest threat to democracy.

Which psychological orientations form the cultural foundations of political regimes? To answer this question, I demonstrate as a point of departure that (1) the countries’ membership in culture zones explains some 70% of the global variation in autocracy-vs-democracy and (2) that this culture-bound variation has remained astoundingly constant over time – in spite of all the trending patterns in the global distribution of regime types over the last 120 years. Furthermore, the explanatory power of culture zones over autocracy-vs-democracy roots in the cultures’ differentiation on 'authoritarian-vs-emancipative values'. Against this backdrop, regime change happens as a result of glacially accruing regime-culture misfits – driven by generational value shifts into a predominantly emancipatory direction. Consequently, the backsliding of democracies into authoritarianism is limited to societies in which emancipative values remain underdeveloped. Contrary to the widely cited deconsolidation-thesis, the prevalent generational profile in people’s moral orientations exhibits an almost ubiquitous ascension of emancipative values that will lend more, not less, legitimacy to democracy in the future.

This chapter examines how the first Bush administration built domestic and international coalitions to respond to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. I argue that Bush's plan for the Persian Gulf War was to weaken Saddam as much as possible and then establish a system of containment based on multilateral sanctions, inspections, and military deterrence in the aftermath. The administration hoped Saddam would fall from power as a result of the conflict but did not make this a policy goal to avoid breaking up the international coalition and bogging the United States down in occupying Iraq. Lastly, this chapter examines domestic political debates on Iraq during the Gulf Crisis and explores the conflict between “minimalists,” who wanted to focus on ejecting Saddam from Kuwait, and “maximalists,” who wanted to use the crisis to ensure Saddam's removal.”

This chapter examines containment in crisis during Clinton's second term, in which Iraq repeatedly obstructed UN inspectors, ultimately leading to their permanent exit from Iraq and US retaliatory airstrikes in Operation Desert Fox. The United States in this period became increasingly isolated on Iraq policy as France, Russia, and China refused to support military action and called for the lifting of sanctions. Containment's domestic critics exploited these crisis by building a political coalition to discredit containment and shift US policy toward regime change through the strategy of rollback. This coalition succeeded in passing the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998, which symbolized the entrenchment of the regime change consensus in US politics, leaving defenders of containment isolated in the political sphere. Clinton, however, made little effort to enforce this law and continued to treat containment as the de facto policy.

This chapter discusses the paths of Spanish and Lusophone America from the late colonial period through independence for most of Latin America to 1870. Relative continuity from colony to independent empire in Brazil contrasts sharply with regime change from colonial to republican systems in mainland Spanish America. Late colonial economies expanded significantly. Trading systems were transformed in the later eighteenth century; mining and slavery-based staple exports expanded fast, as did market integration within Latin America. Indicators of living standards show great diversity but paint a relatively positive picture until at least the last quarter of the eighteenth century. War and independence in the early nineteenth century knocked mainland Spanish America off its path of preindustrial expansion, while Brazil continued to expand. Rather than a ‘reversal of fortune’ new Spanish American republics faced the costs of a transition from a corporate political economy to an incipient republican one. It destroyed the fiscal basis of the state, led to increased concentration of landholdings, and dislocated goods and financial markets. Also, weak states failed to replace corporate structures of protections of the weaker social strata with individual access to legal protections. Regime change created opportunities for growth in the long run, but its immediate result was more inequality and falling living standards for significant parts of the population.