Abstract
People who are in the business of making revolutions have long known that there is nothing inevitable in their unfoldings. On the eve of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky reflected with profit on what had happened in Austria in 1848: "When the population of Vienna took de facto possession of the city, when the monarchy by this time was on the run, had lost all meaning, when under the people's pressure the last troops were removed from the city, when it seemed that Austrian state power could be had for the asking, no political force was available to take over, . . . the workers were courageous enough to smash the reaction, but not organized enough to become the successors" (Trotsky [1909] 1971, pp. 71-72). The Bolsheviks learned the lesson well. For a long while, their leaders lashed out at those who would settle comfortably into the arms of historical necessity. When their opportunity came in those fateful days of 1917, they made sure that the power vacuum would not go unoccupied. Political sociologists have long been fascinated by these dramatic events. Unlike historians, who have been generally content with chronicling the conditions and deeds leading to revolutions, sociologists have sought to isolate the deep constants that precede these episodes and account for their emergence. In the process, they have produced persuasive retrospectives. Their record at prospectively anticipating new explosions, however, has been much less encouraging. The articles that form the core of this symposium take quite different positions with regard to the possibility of prediction of macropolitical events. Kuran argues that we will continue to be surprised by them and offers a rationale based on concealment of private preferences. Collins believes that prediction is possible if you have the right theory and accurate data and offers, as an example, his own prediction of the demise of the Soviet Union. Tilly argues, on the contrary, that the business of
