Why Revolutions Happen

No single cause explains revolution, but recurring ingredients appear across centuries: fiscal crisis, elite fracture, humiliating defeat in war, and a surge of popular expectation that the existing order cannot meet. Historians from Crane Brinton to Theda Skocpol disagree on details, yet agree that regimes fall when they lose the belief of their own defenders.

Rising misery alone rarely suffices; it is rising hope turned to betrayal that fills squares. States that co-opt opposition, rotate elites, and keep soldiers paid tend to survive.

Revolutions are less spontaneous combustions than slow failures of nerve, lit by a spark nobody predicted..