States, parties and socialist revolutions

Abstract

The structure/agency dilemma remains one of the most contentious issues in modem sociology. This thesis examines the relationship between these concepts in the light of theories of revolutions. The types of revolution analysed are socialist revolutions, defined as Marxistinspired regime transformations accompanied by widespread revolt from below. The argument advanced is that the origins and development of socialist movements to the position of state power is more complex than the dominant structuralist paradigm assumes. No model of socialist revolutions can be adequate without combining long-term structuralist considerations of social process with short-to-medium purposive factors such as political mobilisation, organisation and ideology. This thesis adopts a comparative historical analysis to support this claim. Using two apparently dissimilar cases, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua, it is argued that despite spatial and temporal differences a generalisable set of factors can be advanced which explain the occurrence of socialist revolutions.