Impact of the Split of Elites on the Success of Unarmed Revolutionary Episodes of the Early 21st Century

Existing data on elite splits suggest their significance for revolutionary success, as well as the significance of the defection of primarily security elites to the side of the revolutionary opposition for the success of a revolutionary uprising. The authors, relying on modern political science concepts and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), tested the corresponding hypotheses. The following variables were used: diversity of protesters by socio-demographic characteristics; diversity of protesters by political characteristics; diversity of protesters by ethnoreligious characteristics; external support for the regime; external support for protesters; splits in civilian elites; splits in security elites; the number of participants in the revolutionary episode at the peak of the event. The cases selected were revolutionary episodes that occurred between 2000 and 2013 for which there is sufficient information for analysis. The QCA results show that simultaneous splits in both types of elites is a significant predictor of success for the majority of unarmed revolutionary episodes included in the sample; however, this is a sufficient but not a necessary condition for revolutionary success. Moreover, if only one type of elite is split, then an unarmed revolutionary uprising can only succeed if there is a diversity of protesters along political lines (which is an indicator of the presence of a broad revolutionary coalition). Overall, a broad revolutionary coalition has proven to be a very powerful factor in the success of an unarmed revolutionary uprising, similar in strength to the factor of elite splits. Another significant predictor of revolutionary success turns out to be the combination of external support for the participants in the unarmed revolutionary uprising and the absence of external support for the regime.

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