POLA01H3 Lecture Notes - Che Guevara, Treatment And Control Groups, Arab Spring
Document Summary
Voluntarist theories of revolution: pure contingency (kurzman) Willingness to revolt hinges on collective expectations about success of protest. Needed a catalyst (spark) for the revolution to happen. In order for revolution to succeed, you need a disciplined revolutionary party essential. Castro foco theory of revolution foco is small group of revolutionaries that create focal point where they mobilize dormant peasantry by raising their consciousness. Worked with castro to launch cuban revolution. Launched a foco in bolivia (same size as cuba) Same person, same strategy- very different result: diffusion (can be positive or negative) Example of revolutionary success in one country inspires opposition in another. Not always possible to do experiments in political science. Observational approaches: quantitative (large # of cases, correlational, correlation between iv (explanation of outcome) and dv (outcome, regression analysis always allows you to control for potential cofounders, qualitative (small # of cases, process tracing, correlation between many variables.
