The FT’s Gideon Rachman has a useful check-list for democratic revolutions, drawing on the work of The Economist’s Andrew Miller who drew on the color revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan to identify some of the factors that can help a revolution to succeed :
- “Critical mass”: small demonstrations of 5,000 people can be ignored or suppressed. But half a million people in the streets is another matter
- Weak or divided security services
- Some independent media
- Money
- Serious corruption – “generally the main mass motivator”
- Opposition leaders who have served in government
- A history of rebellion from which lessons can be learnt
- Strong support in the capital
- A rigged election that provides a spark for the revolt
Rachman adds 2 more elements to the list:
- A divided ruling elite
- A sense of revolutionary momentum from events overseas; Europe in 1989 and 1848 show that revolution can be catching
- External help
- The use of violence by the authorities, which can either make or break a revolution
He concludes:
Every element on these two lists is now present to some degree in Iran – with the possible exceptions of division within the security forces and significant external assistance. Killing demonstrators, however, has stripped the Iranian government of its claims to legitimacy. It may secure the regime’s survival in the short term. In the long term, it surely dooms it.
I’ve heard a lot of people comparing the Iranian unrest to some of the world’s great revolutions — like the creation of the Second French Republic and the fall of the Soviet Union in this post — but I’m not convinced. There are powerful, well-entrenched interests on the side of the Iranian opposition today and, while that increases their chances of success, it also diminishes the possibility that the ensuing change will be truly “revolutionary.” More apt comparisons may be to the electoral victory of the “Cedar Revolution” in Lebanon in the ‘05 Parliamentary election, or the palace coups that characterized Syrian politics in the ’60s. Both brought substantive changes to their country’s political scene, but neither should really be described in the same sentence with the events of 1848.
I want to look at Revolution on the point of view of massive corruption with any system of Government in the world. When the Elite within the ruling party embark on massive corruption, cating away the resources of the nation meant for the people but yet taken away by those in power to satisfy their insatiable desires; then and only that a revolution will be successful.
In the case of Iran, it is only foreign manupilation that is taking place there to destablised the stable economy of Iran.