Christopher Newman Midwest Political Science Association 2004
Elgin Community College Dark Tobacco Patch War—Revolution Analysis
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The definition of the term “revolution” is difficult. There is general agreement that the
aftermath of an event called “revolutionary” must have some important difference from
the state of affairs before the event.
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In the current context, the important difference
should reflect a significant change of a political nature, attempted or accomplished.
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Some writers require success as a criterion of revolution
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, reserving other term such as
“rebellion” for unsuccessful attempts.
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Others require that a revolution result in an
October, 1994, 42, 47. The principle of local action is applied to societies generally in
artificial life models. "…fundamental social structures and group behaviors emerge from
the interaction of individual agents operating on artificial environments that place only
bounded demands on each agent's information and computational capacity." [emphasis
in original] Joshua M. Epstein and Robert Axtell. Growing Artificial Societies: Social
Science From the Bottom Up. (Washington, D. C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1996)
[hereinafter "Growing Artificial Societies"] 6.
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Richard T. Pascale, “Surfing the Edge of Chaos”. Sloan Management Review. Vol. 40,
No. 3 , Spring, 1999, 84. "Introducing a new object into such systems is, therefore,
equivalent to the introduction of a variety of new relations. The newly created object
interacts with other objects that are present and spawns further interactions involving its
products." Walter Fontana, "Algorithmic Chemistry." In Artificial Life II. Christopher G.
Langton, Charles Taylor, J. Doyne Farmer, and Steen Rasmussen, eds. Santa Fe Institute
Studies in the Sciences of Complexity, Proceedings Volume X, (Redwood City, CA:
Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1991) 160.
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John Dunn, Modern Revolutions: An Introduction to the Analysis of a Political
Phenomenon, (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1972) [hereinafter
“Modern Revolutions”] 231.
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Welch characterizes rebellion (and, by extension, revolution—his distinction between
the two being the success or failure of the attempt at overthrow of those originally in
power) as “…an attempt to change governmental personnel and/or policies through
coordinated challenge to the incumbents’ legitimacy and control the means of
coercion….” Claude E.Welch, Jr. Anatomy of Rebellion. Albany, NY: State University
Press of New York (1980) [hereinafter “Anatomy of Rebellion”] 127. Salvemini
distinguishes between political revolutions specifically and revolutions generally
(characterized as “…any great change brought about in a preexisting condition….”) by
requiring in the former “…the forcible overthrow of an established social or political
order.” Gaetano Salvemini, The French Revolution 1788- 1792. (I.M. Rawson, trans.)
New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1954) ii.
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Modern Revolutions 12.
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Anatomy of Rebellion ix. The appropriateness of using success or failure to define
whether or not an event was a revolution is open to question. The term “Monday morning
quarterbacking” was coined to recognize the fact that factors beyond the control of the
Convention