A dense survey of 20th century revolutions, yet Levitsky and Way still compose an interesting thesis of regime change sweetspots. ( )

I have read many books in social and political theory which make a mockery of theoretical explanation. They use abstract terminology without explaining what their terms mean or how they are interrelated. They present arguments as perfect certainties, but the content of their arguments is so vague that it can only be challenged with equally vague verbiage. And the weakness of the underlying thought is disguised with hundreds of unnecessary pages which only add weight in the literal sense.

I liked this book because it's the precise opposite of bad social theory. The theoretical framework fits into a small figure (page 202) and can be easily understood from the text. The argument is sensible and the authors themselves evaluate it critically by analyzing case studies which conform to their theory, and also ones that don't! Finally, they say what they have to say and close shop without unnecessary loitering and repetition.

The argument of this book is that authoritarian political systems can become very durable if (1) they originate in a social revolution, (2) the revolutionaries pursue a radical political agenda which (3) leads to a strong counterrevolutionary reaction from somewhere, and if (4) the revolutionaries successfully unite as a cohesive elite group which overcomes the counterrevolution by eliminating alternative power centers and building a united military. Not all revolutionary systems pass through all stages, but the ones that do seem to have the tools to continue autocratic rulership for a long time.

As I already mentioned, the authors illustrate this argument with a number of case studies. The book also includes a list of all authoritarian regimes that ruled any nation in the world in the time period between 1900 and 2015, with a brief explanation why they were or were not included in this study. This degree of clarity and transparency is very admirable. After reading this book, the only question I had is this: the list of regimes that were not discussed in this book includes some that were durable, while others were not. How can these additional cases of durable authoritarianism be explained? If they can be cracked as clearly and elegantly as the ones studied in this book, I very much look forward to reading the sequel.