Taking Power: On the Origins of Third World Revolutions

by John Foran

Analyzing the causes behind thirty six revolutions in the Third World between 1910 and the present, this text attempts to explain why so few revolutions have succeeded, while so many have failed. The book is divided into chapters that treat particular sets of revolutions including the great social revolutions of Mexico (1910), China (1949), Cuba (1959), Iran (1979)and Nicaragua (1979), the anticolonial revolutions in Algeria, Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe from the 1940s to the 1970s, and the failed revolutionary attempts in El Salvador, Peru, and elsewhere.

Genres: History, Social Movements, Nonfiction

410 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

John Foran (born 1955) is an American sociologist with research interests in global climate justice; radical social movements, revolutions, and radical social change; Third World cultural studies; and Latin American and Middle Eastern studies. He has a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley and is a professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Selected publications

On the Edges of Development: Cultural Interventions (coeditor, Routledge, 2009)

Revolution in the Making of the Modern World: Social Identities, Globalization, and Modernity (coeditor, Routledge, 2008)

Taking Power: On the Origins of Third World Revolutions (Cambridge University Press, 2005)

Feminist Futures: Re-imagining Women, Culture and Development (coeditor, Zed Press, 2003);

The Future of Revolutions: Re-thinking Radical Change in the Age of Globalization (ed., Zed Press, 2003);

Theorizing Revolutions (ed., Routledge, 1997);

Fragile Resistance: Social Transformation in Iran From 1500 to the Revolution (Westview Press, 1993).

Reviews

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is sociology writing at its best. Foran presents a 5 pronged theory to explain revolutions, reversed revolutions, attempted and non-attempted revolutions. All are explained in terms of the 5 factors: dependent development, economic downturns, exclusionary/personalistic/open regimes, political cultures of opposition, and world systemic openings. I would have liked to see a greater discussion of the Soviet role in revolutions to balance the perspective of the U.S. influence in creating economic conditions and world systemic openings. A particular strength was the breadth of cases and the potential predicting power of this theory.