Regarding Tilly by Funes María J.;

Author:Funes, María J.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: University Press of America, Incorporated
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusions

Charles Tilly’s contributions to our understanding and analysis of revolutionary phenomena have been widely recognized and used by scholars in the field. The dispute between Tilly and Theda Skocpol that began in the late1970s helped shape the debate on the question. For Tilly the analysis of revolutions should focus on the study of human action, whereas for Skocpol, it is the structural perspective that explained the phenomenon. Where Tilly spoke of political conflict, Skocpol found historical regularities; if for Tilly the main factors were the appearance of different contenders with aspirations to control state power, the popular support for these aspirations and the resistance of governments to them, for Skocpol what took precedence were national and international structures, as well as the organization of the state.

Tilly’s concept of revolution, established in constant dialogue with other social researchers, includes three main elements: the incompatibility of the contenders leading to a situation of multiple sovereignty, the support of a significant sector of the population and lastly, the transfer of power by force. Based on this, many authors such as Goldstone, Wickham-Crowley and Foran have contributed to the debate, turning to (or objecting to) Tilly’s categories. Similarly, together with McAdam and Tarrow, Tilly himself broadened the field of study coining the term, political contention, and explaining the conditions and processes required for the appearance of contenders for state power, and for their appearance to lead to a revolution. Likewise, the work of Thompson, who defined democratic revolutions as spontaneous popular uprisings that are able to overthrow a dictatorship, the work of Beissinger, who used this concept in his study of the color revolutions, and that of Bunce and Wolchik, who proposed the concept of electoral revolutions, were all developed on foundations laid by Tilly.

Tilly’s concept of revolution is especially relevant for the study of the so-called color revolutions (the Rose Revolution in Georgia in November of 2003; the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in November and December of 2004 and the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan in March of 2005). His extensive definition—emphasizing the political dimension of the concept –, its relationship to collective action, the description of the stages of the revolutionary process, from initial protests to the transfer of power, and in short, his epistemological and ontological contributions, are very useful tools for analyzing this phenomenon; that is, post-electoral protests, which after a phase of contention, manage to bring about a transfer of power through non-institutional channels.

Thus, following Tilly’s classic definition of revolution, we can tentatively consider a conceptualization of these processes as post-electoral revolutions, stressing three of their main elements, while making the appropriate clarifications: the incompatibility of the contenders and the opening up of a situation of multiple sovereignty, the support of a significant sector of the population and, lastly, the transfer of power by force, elements that have all been found in what took place in Georgia in 2003, Ukraine in 2004 and Kyrgyzstan in 2005.

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