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Skocpol looked at the processes of revolution in three different historical contexts: the 1789 French Revolution (1786–1800); the 1917 revolutions in Russia (1917–21) and the revolutionary period in China (1911–49). Given the essentially historical questions asked, her main method was the use and careful interpretation of a range of primary and secondary documentary sources. Although there are many differences between the three cases, Skocpol argues that their underlying structural causes are, in fact, similar. She rejects the Marxist idea that revolutions are the intentional product of mass, class-based movements with deep grievances. Instead, she argues that revolutions are not made, they come. That is, social revolutions are largely the result of the unintended consequences of intentional human actions. Before the Russian Revolution, for instance, various political groups were trying to overthrow the existing regime, but none of these – including the Bolsheviks, who eventually came to power – anticipated the revolution that occurred. A series of clashes and confrontations gave rise to a process of social transformation much deeper and more radical than anyone had foreseen.

The so-called Arab Spring, which began in December 2010, saw large-scale protests against numerous regimes in the Middle East and North Africa. In Syria the situation developed into a complex civil war and, by December 2020 – one decade after the start of the original protests in Tunisia – Bashar al-Assad’s regime looked to have clung on to power. Mass social unrest does not always lead to revolution.

Skocpol’s explanation is that all three revolutions occurred in predominantly agrarian societies and were made possible only when the existing state structures (administrative and military) were breaking down as they came under intense competitive pressure from other states. In this context, it was peasant revolts and mass mobilizations that brought about social revolutions in France, China and Russia. Thus Skocpol argued against the widespread notion that peasants were not a ‘revolutionary class’. Some similarities with other revolutions in Vietnam, Cuba, Mexico and Yugoslavia can also be seen. Skocpol’s causal explanation focuses on state structures. As these began to break down, a power vacuum was created and states lost their legitimacy, enabling revolutionary forces to take power.

Skocpol’s research makes use of the ‘logic of scientific experiment’ for comparative studies outlined by John Stuart Mill in the mid-nineteenth century. She adopts Mill’s ‘method of similarity’, taking three similar events (revolutions) in very different national contexts. This allows her to look for key similarities across the three cases which can be identified as independent variables and thus help to explain the causes of political revolutions.