Political revolution and repression: An economic approach

In his "The Logic of Collective Action" Olson [21] develops the broad outlines of what might be called a private interest theory of public action. It is pointed out that since the benefit to an individual from the consumption of an extra unit of a collective (or public) good is small relative to his cost of producing it, "selective incentives" are required to explain participation in production. A "selective incentive" is a non-collective benefit contingent upon the individual's participation in the production of a collective good. More recently, Tullock [31] has imaginatively formalized and applied this type of economic theory to the question of the sources of revolutionary activity. Here Tullock's analysis is used as a point of departure in grouping historical political revolutions into meaningful types and in considering who is most likely to become a revolutionary. First, however, I offer a working definition of revolution and briefly review Tullock's formal model.