Abstract
Extant theoretical insights—mostly derived from studies of prominent revolutions in large countries—are less useful when applied to the unfolding of revolutions in small states. To understand why revolutions happened in the latter, a framework is needed that takes into account geography. For small states, geography is more than dotted lines on maps. It is the source of intervention and vulnerability. Deeply mired in history and memory, states’ geographies shape their distinctive identities and have great impacts on national political trajectories, including revolutions. Thus, to provide understanding of revolutions in these countries, no analysis could be complete without taking into account their places, understood in physical, ideational, and historical terms, within their regions and the world. The case of Laos is used to suggest a geographical analysis of revolutions that provides overlooked insights into the origins, processes, and outcomes of revolutions in small, vulnerable states.
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Notes
This article’s general definition of social revolutions adapts from those of the leading scholars of revolutions: Theda Skocpol, Jeff Goodwin, John Foran, and Timothy Wickham-Crowley. According to them, revolutions are more or less fundamental social, economic, or cultural change during or soon after a struggle for state power and carried out by mass mobilization from below. See Skocpol 1979, 4–5; Goodwin 2005, 405; Foran 2005, 7; and Wickham-Crowley 1994, 543–544.
Burke (2005, 352). Emphasis added.
Goldstone (1980). The grouping of revolutionary theorizing into generations, though largely accepted, is not without controversy. For example, where would one place one of the foremost revolutionary theorists of all—Karl Marx, who wrote about the stages of history, the aggrieved mass of proletariats, as well as the structure of class conflicts?
Both Davies and Gurr expand on the “misery breeds revolt” thesis: people will accept their fate in life if they think that it is the natural state of things. They will not accept it, as modernization sets in for instance, if they expect better things. The experience of relative deprivation will lead to frustration, which will in turn tend to lead to aggression, rebellion, and revolution. For reviews, see Goldstone, “Theories of Revolution,” 425–453, and Goldstone (1982). See also (Davies 1962; Gurr 1970; and Festinger 1967).
Smelser and Johnson are concerned with social institutions and sub-systems of society (economy, political system, and education system). They find that when these sub-systems grow in an imbalance manner, for instance when the equilibrium between demand and resource flows is disturbed, they breed discontent. Triggers for rebellion and revolution that might bring the government down include war, famine, and government bankruptcy. For reviews, see Goldstone, “Theories of Revolution,” 425–453, and “The Comparative and Historical Study of Revolutions,” 187–207. See also (Smelser 1962; and Johnson 1966).
In a sense, Huntington synthesizes and combines the top two approaches in his classic 1968 study. He states that modernization generally leads to institutional imbalances (system-disequilibria), which tend to lead to deprivations and frustrations. Tilly, on the other hand, asserts that feelings of discontent are normal part of politics; whether they lead to revolution will depend on the resource (territory, arms, population) mobilization and organization of the discontented parties. For political scientists, revolution is the ultimate political conflict between competing interest groups who cannot compromise through the existing mechanisms and political process. See Huntington (1968); and Tilly (1978).
Goldstone, “Theories of Revolutions,” 430–434.
A recent fairly comprehensive survey of revolution theories identifies the structuralist state-centered perspective as the current reigning paradigm. See Sanderson (2005).
According to Skocpol’s original causal model, revolutions can only happen when three characteristics converge: a state weakened by economic or military crises; elites, who have certain institutional leverage against the state and seek to preserve their privileges, clash with the state; and peasants who can be mobilized, either through the structures of the traditional communal village or the party, against the landlords. This same conjunctural model, however, could not be applied to many revolutions of the 1970s and 1980s. For instance, the Iranian revolution occurred despite the fact that Iran was not a peasant society and the US-backed state of the Shah was quite strong militarily.
See Skocpol (1994, chapters 4, 8, 10, and 11).
See Goldstone (1991). Here, Goldstone notes the destabilizing effect of population growth on state breakdowns, elite disunities, and popular uprisings.
Goldstone, “An Analytical Framework,” 49–51. Revolutions will break out when these conditions are met: a state in crisis, elites alienated from the state and in conflict with one another, and the aggrieved masses significantly mobilized.
Wickham-Crawley (1992, 3–18, 60–91, 302–326). The conditions are: active guerrilla movement, wide support from peasants or workers, considerable military strength independent of outside aid/influence, existence of an exclusive and corrupt “patrimonial” regime that has lost popular support and international (superpower) backing.
See (Cammack 1989; Knight 1986; Taylor 1988; Burawoy 1989; Nichols 1986; Sewell 1985; Hunt 1984; Colburn 1994; Selbin 1993, 1997). For a recent work that combines structural analysis (socioeconomic deprivation, political opportunity structure, ineffective state) with rational choice, see Mason (2004).
Selbin, “Revolution in the Real World,” 126.
Colburn, The Vogue of Revolution, 5 and 99. Goldstone, especially in his later works, also notes that structural conditions are crucial in explaining origins of revolutions, while culture and ideologies are important in accounting for their divergent processes and outcomes. See Goldstone (1991, 2003).
See Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions, 113–115, 170–171, and endnote 23 on 329–330.
Goodwin (2001); and Jeff Goodwin, “Revolutions and Revolutionary Movements,” 404–422. The features of a state that Goodwin focuses on are the following: (1) type of political regime (exclusive/repressive or liberal/inclusive), (2) type of state organization (patrimonial/clientelistic or bureaucratic/rational) and (3) degree of state’s infrastructural power or the ability to police its territory (strong or weak). He claims that a revolutionary movement tends to occur in an exclusive/repressive regime, and will not in an inclusive/liberal one. Revolution will likely succeed in either exclusive/repressive and patrimonial/clientelistic state with infrastructurally weak power spread, but will fail in a state that is bureaucratic/rational or has strong infrastructural power.
Ibid., 80–81.
Ibid., 81–89.
Ibid., 123–125.
Ibid., 108.
Other thoughts on what the fourth generation of revolutionary theorizing should emphasize, see Goldstone (2001). Seeking a theory as broad and general as possible, Goldstone calls for a fourth generation to “reverse all of Skocpol’s key stipulations” and “treat stability as problematic, see a wide range of factors and conditions as producing departures from stability, and recognize that the processes and outcomes of revolutions are mediated by group identification, networks, and coalitions; leadership and competing ideologies; and the interplay among rulers, elites, and popular groups, and foreign powers in response to ongoing conflicts” (172).
Selbin, “Revolution in the Real World,” 124.
Foran builds his model in some measure from a synthesis of these works: John Walton (the roles of uneven development, the state, cultural nationalism, and economic downturn), Jeff Goodwin (the nature and type of state), Farideh Farhi (the roles of state, social structure, and Gramscian conceptualization of ideology), Misagh Parsa (the degree of state intervention in the economy, the ideology of state challengers, and the political vulnerabilities of repressive regimes), Eric Selbin (the role of revolutionaries in making ideological appeals to the population), Tim Wickham-Crawley (the social structure and orientations of revolutionaries), Walter Goldfrank (the roles of permissive world context, severe political crisis that incapacitates the state, widespread rural rebellion, and dissident elite political movements), and James DeFronzo (the roles of mass frustration, dissident elites, unifying motivations, a crisis of the state, and world context). See (Walton 1984; Goodwin 2001; Farhi 1990; Parsa 2000); Selbin, Modern Latin American Revolutions; Wickham-Crawley, Guerillas and Revolution in Latin America; (Goldfrank 1979; and DeFronzo 1991).
For example, these openings result from: distraction in the core economies by world war or depression, rivalries between one or more core powers, or divided foreign policy and mixed messages relayed by core powers.
Cited in Evans, A Short History of Laos, 97.
In the early 1930s, secretive activities by the Vietnamese-run Indochinese Communist Party in Laos made the French Secret Police (Sureté) to increase its presence and “repressive” tactics—but this targeted the Vietnamese population in Laos and did not greatly affect the Lao themselves. See Stuart-Fox, A History of Laos, 52–53.
Stuart-Fox, A History of Laos, 159.
Newman, “From ‘Moribund Backwater’ to ‘Thriving into the Next Century,’” 12–13.
See the special issue of Political Geography 18 (8) (1999), “Forging a Cross-boundary Discourse: Political Geography and Political Science”) and the special issue of Mobilization: An International Quarterly 8 (2) (2003), “Space, Place, and Contentious Politics.”
Newman, “From ‘Moribund Backwater’ to ‘Thriving into the Next Century,’” 13. Examples of thoughtful works that examine the interdependent relationship between politics and space abound: on symbolic and metaphysical notions of territory (Newman); on the role of territory in the formation of national and regional identities (Anssi Paasi); on the multi-dimensional nature of boundaries and borders as demarcators of exclusion or inclusion (David Sibley; Newman and Paasi); on the role of territory as a local agent of control in national conflicts (Oren Yiftachel); and on the “evasions of territorial absolutism” (P.J. Taylor). See Newman (1998), Paasi (1996), Sibley (1996), Newman and Paasi (1997), Yiftachel (1996), and Taylor (1996).
There is a collected volume on geography and revolution, but it is more an attempt to understand the geographies of revolutions in science, technology, and art and less an effort to explain the coming and unfolding of political and social revolutions through a geographical framework. See Livingstone and Withers (2005).
Sewell, “Space and Contentious Politics,” 52. Sewell cites, as one of these rare exceptions, Tilly (1964).
Agnew (2002); and Agnew, Mitchell, and Toal, eds., A Companion to Political Geography.
John Agnew, Katharyne Mitchell, and Gerard Toal, “Introduction,” in Agnew, Mitchell, and Toal, eds., A Companion to Political Geography, 4.
Ibid., 145.
Staeheli, “Place,” 159.
Martin and Byron Miller, “Space and Contentious Politics,” 148.
Murphy, “‘Living Together Separately.’”
Cohen, Geography and Politics in a World Divided, 24
Newman, “Comments on Daniel Elazar, Political Geography and Political Science,” 13.
Ibid.
Elazar, “Political Science, Geography, and the Spatial Dimension of Politics,” 879.
Colburn and Cruz, Varieties of Liberalism in Central America, 16.
Jones, Jones, and Woods, An Introduction to Political Geography, 101.
Elazar, “Political Science, Geography, and the Spatial Dimension of Politics,” 879.
For a history of Laos, see Stuart-Fox, A History of Laos. For a history of Thailand, see Wyatt (2003).
Ngaosyvathn and Ngaosyvathn (1998), 55–56. The Emerald Buddha, known in Thai and Lao as “Pha Keo,” was estimated in the early nineteenth century to be worth one million francs or the price of 200 kg of gold.
Ibid., 56.
Ibid., 60.
While the French had territorially reconstructed Laos, they never considered it as a viable political entity in its own right. French interest in Laos was always “in relation to somewhere else.” The geographical logic of colonial expeditions was finding a “river road” to China—i.e., the Mekong River and the resource-rich territories on both its banks. See Stuart-Fox, A History of Laos, 20.
Winichakul, Siam Mapped, 141.
Ibid., 146. As is well-known, Thailand is the only country in Southeast Asia not to be officially colonized by the West.
Ibid., 147. To Winichakul: “Geographically speaking, a geo-body of a nation occupies a certain portion of the earth’s surface which is objectively identifiable. It appears to be concrete to the eyes as if its existence does not depend on any act of imagining. That, of course, is not the case. The geo-body of a nation is merely an effect of modern geographical discourse whose prime technology is a map” (Siam Mapped, 17).
Winichakul, Siam Mapped, 147.
Katay Don Sasorith, cited in Christie (2001), 113.
Stuart-Fox, Laos, 435.
Ngaosyvathn and Ngaosyvathn, Paths to Conflagration, 30.
It is a matter of fact that there has been more ethnic Lao living in Thailand, especially in the northeastern or “Isan” area, than in Laos itself.
See Stuart-Fox, Buddhist Kingdom, Marxist State, 2–8; and Wolters (1982), 16–17.
Ibid., 8.
Ibid.
Cohen, Geography and Politics in a World Divided, 83.
Ibid., 259.
Sirikrai 1979, 8
Kirk, Wider War, 263–265.
Ibid., 263–265. By 1970, however, 80% of the Vietnamese communists’ war material was from the Soviets. Due to the impacts of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1968), the Chinese reduced their aid but continued to provide crucial overland supply routes, rice, and wheat.
Historical details are adapted from Evans, A Short History of Laos, 39–92; Stuart-Fox, A History of Laos, 20–98; Stuart-Fox and Kooyman (1992), xxxii–xxxiv; and Brown and Zasloff, Apprentice Revolutionaries. Interpretations, except where indicated, are the author’s.
Stuart-Fox, A History of Laos, 20.
Brown and Zasloff, Apprentice Revolutionaries, 16.
Luang Prabang was previously ruled as a protectorate, while the rest of Laos was under direct French colonial rule.
In 1939, Siam changed its name to “Thailand,” supposedly the land of all the peoples of the “Tai” race, including the Lao. See Ngaosyvathn, “Thai–Lao Relations,” 1254–1256.
The Pathet Lao (or “Lao Nation”) communist revolutionary movement consisted of: the clandestine Lao Peoples’ Revolutionary Party (LPRP), the central decision maker; the Lao Patriotic Front (LPF) or its Lao name, Neo Lao Hak Sad (NLHS), its political wing; and the Lao People’s Liberation Army (LPLA), its military wing. The LPRP had its origins in Ho Chi Minh’s Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), first as an ICP Committee for Laos or Lao Section that was created in 1936. In the 1940s, the ICP attracted more Lao members to the communist cause (Kaysone, Nouhak, and other leading members joined in the mid to late 1940s). In 1951, the ICP dissolved itself to create three separate communist parties for the three countries of Indochina; but it was not until 1955 that the Lao People’s Party was formally created and then changed its name to the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party in 1972. In 1956, the communists created the LPF as a political front to deal with the royal government. Earlier in 1949, they formed the LPLA to arm a fledging revolutionary movement to bring down that government.
Brown and Zasloff, Apprentice Revolutionaries, 27.
A. B. Woodside, cited in Whitmore, “The Thai-Vietnamese Struggle for Laos in the Nineteenth Century,” 66.
Ibid.
The average cost of maintaining a Lao soldier was approximately $1,000 per year, at the time the highest in Asia; and from 1955 to 1963, US foreign assistance amounted to $192.30 per capita, the highest in Southeast Asia, including South Vietnam. See Stuart-Fox, A History of Laos, 91.
Cohen, Geography and Politics in a World Divided, 27.
Brown and Zasloff, Apprentice Revolutionaries, 55.
Evans, A Short History of Laos, 111.
Ibid, 114.
Stuart-Fox, A History of Laos, 135.
Ibid., 139.
Evans, A Short History of Laos, 103.
Clive J. Christie, “Nationalism and the Pathet Lao,” in Martin Stuart-Fox, ed., Contemporary Laos: Studies in the Politics and Society of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (New York: St. Martin’s Press), 67.
Ibid., 68.
Stuart Fox, A History of Laos, 92.
Stuart-Fox, A History of Laos, 150.
Evans, A Short History of Laos, 111.
Stuart-Fox, A History of Laos, 79. Prominent ethnic minority leaders included Sithon Kommadam and Faidang Lobliayao.
Cited in Evans, A Short History of Laos, 170. The journalist worked for the respected Far Eastern Economic Review.
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Acknowledgments
I thank Vince Boudreau and Irving Leonard Markovitz for valuable conversations and comments on an earlier draft. For inspiration and feedback, I am indebted to Forrest Colburn. I also thank John Foran and the Editors and reviewers of Theory and Society for pushing me to clarify the theory and case study. Aditta Kittikhoun provided crucial research assistance with the Laotian revolution. Finally, I am grateful to Ammala Sipraseuth—for the support as well as the toughest critiques. Any error of fact or interpretation is mine.
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Kittikhoun, A. Small state, big revolution: geography and the revolution in Laos. Theor Soc 38, 25–55 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-008-9073-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-008-9073-1