Jack A Goldstone
Biographic Data
| ID | 138585 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jack A Goldstone |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jack A |
| FAMILY NAME | Goldstone |
| SIGNATURE | GOLDSTONE J A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Northwestern University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 105 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 767 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 101 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Peter Turchin’s The Great Holocene Transformation: A Review Symposium
Demographic and Economic Implications of Alternative U.S. Immigration Policies
Due to the United States’ decades-long stalemate in federal immigration policy-making, major institutional forecasts of the U.S. population have not included assumptions about changes in immigration policy. However, the 2016 election of President Donald Trump and the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated just how much policy shifts can affect immigration flows, with substantial implications for the country’s demographic future. We created national-level…
Revolutions: A Very Short Introduction
In the 20th and 21st century revolutions have become more urban, often less violent, but also more frequent and more transformative of the international order. Whether it is the revolutions against Communism in Eastern Europe and the USSR; the “color revolutions” across Asia, Europe and North Africa; or the religious revolutions in Iran, Afghanistan, and Syria; today’s revolutions are quite different from those of the past. Modern theories of rev…
Building the Population Bomb by Emily Klancher Merchant
This book seems to be about population, but it is really about justice. Merchant’s argument is that population growth is not a barrier to economic and environmental progress. Rather, population growth has been used as a scapegoat for a variety of global ills, thus distracting attention from the distributional injustices rising from the rich world fouling the air and water and using the majority of the earth’s resources despite having a minority o…
International Handbook of Population Policies
Handbook of Revolutions in the 21st Century: The New Waves of Revolutions, and the Causes and Effects of Disruptive Political Change
International Handbook of Population Policies
The paradox of victory: Social Movement Fields, Adverse Outcomes, and Social Movement Success
Recent work on social movement fields has expanded our view of the dynamics of social movements; it should also expand our thinking about social movement success. Such a broader view reveals a paradox: social movements often snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by narrowly targeting authorities with their actions instead of targeting the broader social movement field. Negative impacts from the wider social movement field can then reverse or ove…
Urbanization, Citizenship, and Economic Growth in the Long Run
Maarten Prak argues that urban citizen associations remained vigorous in the West from the Middle Ages through the Industrial Revolution, and that their support for commercial activity helped bring about that Revolution. That is half correct. During the two thousand years from 300 BC to 1750 AD, numerous societies had similar peaks of urbanization, commercial activity, and per capita income (often approaching, but never exceeding, a “peak pre-ind…
Capitalist Origins , the Advent of Modernity, and Coherent Explanation: A Response to Joseph M. Bryant
For many decades, there has been a of rise of West. At some point after 1000 AD--whether it was with medieval commercial expansion; or early Renaissance rediscovery of ancient Greek thought; or continental trade expansion based on Hanseatic league, Champagne fairs, Bruges cloth trade, and Italian banking and Mediterranean trade; or seafaring ventures of Portuguese and Spanish; or Reformation--not much later than 1500, the developed a new dynamic …
Revolutions of the Late Twentieth Century
Revolutionary conflict theory in an evolutionary perspective, Farrokh Moshiri an analytical framework, J.A. Goldstone Vietnam - revolution of post-colonial consolidation, H.John LeVan Nicaragua - a new model for popular revolution in Latin America, Devora Grynspan Iran - Islamic revolution against westernization, F. Moshiri Poland - non-violent revolution in a socialist state, Jaroslaw Piekalkiewicz state breakdown in Afghanistan, Anwar-ul-Haq Ah…
A Truly Ancient "Great Divergence"--A New History of the Chinese State
Zhao provides a new view of why China remained politically united, but unable to achieve industrialization. He traces the roots of both conditions back to the Warring States period, when Chinese leaders developed authoritarian-bureaucratic governance and combined it with Confucian moral ideas and statecraft as a legitimating ideology. This Confucian-legalist state structure proved resilient enough to hold China together despite changes of dynasty…
Neither Late Imperial nor Early Modern: Efflorescences and the Qing Formation in World History
States + War + Movements = Repression
Sidney Tarrow has written a rich, insightful, and depressing book. In tracing the interplay between war, state-making, and popular movements across European and American history, he shows how states have generally emerged ever stronger and more controlling over time. Tarrow’s latest work is inspired by his long relationship with Charles Tilly, as co-author and joint researcher. Tarrow noted a major gap in Tilly’s work: while Tilly had developed a…
Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World: Population Change and State Breakdown in England, France, Turkey and China,1600-1850, 25th Anniversary Edition
Revolutions in the ancient world
Color revolutions: The Philippines, Eastern Europe and the USSR, and Ukraine
‘Color revolutions: The Philippines, Eastern Europe and the USSR, and Ukraine’ shows that several factors have improved the prospects for nonviolent resistance to overturn regimes: global norms have moved strongly in the direction of requiring elections for regimes to claim legitimacy; new mass media have made it easier for the opposition to acquire and disseminate evidence of regime abuses; the rise of an international network of activists to pr…
Revolutions: A Very Short Introduction
This volume places recent events in Iraq and Afghanistan to Tunisia and Egypt in historical context. It provides a history of revolutions and insurgencies, an introduction to the way social scientists think about the causes and outcomes of revolutions, and an explanation of their significance in historical and political change. Jack A. Goldstone begins with a brief history of revolutions and insurgencies, from the revolutions that brought democra…
War, Capital, and Wages: A New Economic Theory of “The Great Divergence”
Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, a distinguished economic historian, and R. Bin Wong, an eminent world historian and specialist on imperial China, have collaborated in this effort to shed light on the causes of the eighteenth-century economic divergence of China and Europe. This book has many of the virtues one would expect from such a collaboration – keen insights into comparative history, explicit models of economic relationships, and novel ideas regard…
Is Islam Bad for Business
In this beautifully crafted book, Timur Kuran provides a remarkably rich analysis of how Islamic law impeded economic progress in the Middle East and North Africa. Kuran's views are fresh and powerful, and they are subtle. He does not claim that Islamic law was generally bad for economic activity. He does not claim that prohibitions on interest denied credit to merchants or entrepreneurs. Nor does he claim that predation by absolutist states bloc…
Putting Values and Institutions Back into the Theory of Strategic Action Fields
Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam have presented a new theory of how collective action creates the structure and dynamics of societies. At issue is the behavior of social movements, organizations, states, political parties, and interest groups. They argue that all of these phenomena are produced by social actors (which may be individuals or groups) involved in strategic action. This allows Fligstein and McAdam to advance a unified theory of 'strateg…
Representational Models and Democratic Transitions in Fragile and Post-Conflict States
Proposes that poor pre-industrial countries, including those just recovering from or even struggling with violent conflicts, should be encouraged and aided in quickly setting up democratic institutions.Following the fall of the Soviet Union, building democracy in war-torn and corrupt states has offered hope for addressing key problems such as corruption and ineffectiveness.For practical purposes, democracy assistance has generally taken a two-par…
Prudence and Pressure—Everywhere
Cross‐class Coalitions and the Making of the Arab Revolts of 2011
Theorists of social movements and revolutions have given great attention to the factors creating vulnerability for the state – including elite divisions, loss of foreign support, and economic problems. Substantial attention has also been given to factors facilitating the mobilization of protest actors, including framing, prior network ties, social and public media, and political openings. Somewhat less evident has been the role of cross-class coa…
Joel KotkinThe Next Hundred Million: America in 2050
Toward a Fourth Generation of Revolutionary Theory
Third-generation theories of revolution pointed to the structural vulnerabilities of regimes as the basic causes of revolutions. In the last decade, critics of structural theories have argued for the need to incorporate leadership, ideology, and processes of identification with revolutionary movements as key elements in the production of revolution. Analyses of revolutions in developing countries and in communist regimes have further argued for i…
A Global Model for Forecasting Political Instability
Examining onsets of political instability in countries worldwide from 1955 to 2003, we develop a model that distinguishes countries that experienced instability from those that remained stable with a two‐year lead time and over 80% accuracy. Intriguingly, the model uses few variables and a simple specification. The model is accurate in forecasting the onsets of both violent civil wars and nonviolent democratic reversals, suggesting common factors…
More social movements or fewer? Beyond political opportunity structures to relational fields
Initial Conditions, General Laws, Path Dependence, and Explanation in Historical Sociology
Much of the training of the modern economist tends to weaken the trainee's natural, intuitive understanding of historical causation, so that some remedial work is required in addressing an audience, some of whose members' advanced education will have left them incapacitated in this particular way. (Paul A. David)
The Weakness of Organization: A New Look at Gamson's The Strategy of Social Protest
In The Strategy of Social Protest William Gamson asserted that the organization and tactics of a social protest group strongly influence the group's chances for successes. This assertion was based on an analysis of the rates of success of 53 social protest groups arising in America between 1800 and 1945. This article shows frist that Gamson's results are based on a series of very weak assumptions and on frequently spurious zero-order correlations…
The Comparative and Historical Study of Revolutions
Thus ended the Old Kingdom in Egypt, with Pepi II, last Pharoah of the 6th dynasty, overthrown by widespread popular uprisings (Klasens 1968). Written observations on revolution thus stretch back more than 4000 years, extending through Plato and Aristotle to Machiavelli, de Tocqueville, and Marx. This essay details the work of our own century. I begin by examining some of the basic problems that arise in understanding why revolutions occur. Next …
Is Revolution Individually Rational: Groups and Individuals in Revolutionary Collective Action
An examination of the free rider problem in revolutionary action suggests that this problem can be, and historically has been, overcome by drawing on norms of solidarity developed in preexisting groups, which gain individuals' commitment by providing commonly needed public goods. A simple model of rational action by groups, based on considerations of individual solidarity and cross-group interactions, then predicts many of the well-known macrofea…
Prison Riots as Microrevolutions: An Extension of State-Centered Theories of Revolution
Prisons have long been used as a testing ground for social theory. This article explores the applicability of state‐centered theories of revolution to the phenomena of prison riots. Prison riots are found to have numerous features in common with revolutions, including prior administrative crises, elite (guard) alienation and divisions, and a widespread popular (prisoner) sense of injustice and grievances regarding (prison) administration actions …
Cross‐class Coalitions and the Making of the Arab Revolts of 2011
Theorists of social movements and revolutions have given great attention to the factors creating vulnerability for the state – including elite divisions, loss of foreign support, and economic problems. Substantial attention has also been given to factors facilitating the mobilization of protest actors, including framing, prior network ties, social and public media, and political openings. Somewhat less evident has been the role of cross-class coa…
The Coming Chinese Collapse
Putting Values and Institutions Back into the Theory of Strategic Action Fields
Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam have presented a new theory of how collective action creates the structure and dynamics of societies. At issue is the behavior of social movements, organizations, states, political parties, and interest groups. They argue that all of these phenomena are produced by social actors (which may be individuals or groups) involved in strategic action. This allows Fligstein and McAdam to advance a unified theory of 'strateg…
East and West in the Seventeenth Century: Political Crises in Stuart England, Ottoman Turkey, and Ming China
For nearly forty years scholars have wrestled with the seventeenth-century 'general crisis.' Certain facts are not in dispute. The first half of the seven- teenth century saw a widespread slowing and eventual halt to the steady increases in population and prices that had begun around 1500. In addition, rebellions and revolutions shook regimes from England to China. What is contested is the root cause, the connections, and the significance of thes…
Forging Social Order and Its Breakdown: Riot and Reform in U.S. Prisons
Two cases of prison reform in the 1990s had widely divergent results. New Mexico privatized several prisons and these prisons were quickly beset by multiple riots. New York's publicly run Rikers Island prison, by contrast, adopted reforms that ended many years of riots and violence. Prevailing theories of prison riots cannot account for these divergent outcomes. A state-centered theory of social order explains both cases, showing how prison admin…
The Ballot and the Badge: Democratic Policing
The most visible arm of government for ordinary citizens is the police. In authoritarian regimes, the police mission is to intimidate and suppress opposition and to protect the regime. In democratic societies, the police mission is to protect and serve the citizenry, building safe communities by responding to both crime and official corruption and abuse. Efforts to build stable democratic regimes in postconflict and fragile states thus require a …
The Rise of the West-or Not? A Revision to Socio-economic History
The debate over the 'Rise of the West' has generally been over which factor or factors-cultural, geoographic, or material-in European history led Europe to diverge from the World's pre-industrial civilizations. This article aims to shift the terms of the debate by arguing that there were no causal factors that made Europe's industrialization inevitable or even likely. Rather, most of Europe would not and could not move toward industrialization an…
State Breakdown in the English Revolution: A New Synthesis
This essay develops and tests a formal time-series model of the pressures leading to state breakdown in England in 1640-42. The model has several novel features: it applies a quantitative analysis to the logic of structural-historical studies of revolution that generally proceed in a qualitative fashion; it yields a strong prediction of political crisis in mid-17th-century England and of relative stability in the preceding and succeeding centurie…
The paradox of victory: Social Movement Fields, Adverse Outcomes, and Social Movement Success
Recent work on social movement fields has expanded our view of the dynamics of social movements; it should also expand our thinking about social movement success. Such a broader view reveals a paradox: social movements often snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by narrowly targeting authorities with their actions instead of targeting the broader social movement field. Negative impacts from the wider social movement field can then reverse or ove…
Ideology, cultural frameworks, and the process of revolution
Cultural Orthodoxy, Risk, and Innovation: The Divergence of East and West in the Early Modern World
What separated the East from the West, in the sense that we speak of the rise of the West? Although one may wish to answer capitalism, or the rationalization of institutions and economic life, both answers would be mistaken. As we shall see, Eastern empires, particularly China, could boast specialized production for distant markets with wage labor, highly efficient and increasingly rational allocation of labor and capital, uniform laws to smooth …
Urbanization and Inflation: Lessons from the English Price Revolution of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
The English price revolution (the 500% rise in prices from 1500 to 1650) has been attributed by some to an excess of money, due to bullion imports from the New World, and by others to an excess of people, due to population growth. This essay shows both accounts to be severely flawed. A simple model of the impact of urban networks on monetary circulation is developed; it argues that taking account of the effects of urganization and occupational sp…
Capitalist Origins, the Advent of Modernity, and Coherent Explanation: A Response to Joseph M. Bryant
How to construct stable democracies
Why are some states politically stable and others not? An extensive study by a dozen experts analyzing political instability during the last 50 years suggests two critical ingredients to succeed (and how to fail) in building stable democracies around the world
Capitalist origins of the English Revolution: Chasing a chimera
States, Parties, and Social Movements
Studies of social movements and of political parties have usually treated them as separate and distinct. In fact they are deeply intertwined. Social movements often shape electoral competition and party policies; they can even give rise to new parties. At the same time, political parties and campaigns shape the opportunities, personnel, and outcomes of social movements. In many countries, electoral democracy itself is the outcome of social moveme…
Structure and Change in Economic History
Subcommittee Chairmanships in the House of Representatives
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Mobilization and Organization: Reply to Foley and Steedly and to Gamson
The Weakness of Organization: A New Look at Gamson's The Strategy of Social Protest
In The Strategy of Social Protest William Gamson asserted that the organization and tactics of a social protest group strongly influence the group's chances for successes. This assertion was based on an analysis of the rates of success of 53 social protest groups arising in America between 1800 and 1945. This article shows frist that Gamson's results are based on a series of very weak assumptions and on frequently spurious zero-order correlations…
Structure and Change in Economic History
The Comparative and Historical Study of Revolutions
Thus ended the Old Kingdom in Egypt, with Pepi II, last Pharoah of the 6th dynasty, overthrown by widespread popular uprisings (Klasens 1968). Written observations on revolution thus stretch back more than 4000 years, extending through Plato and Aristotle to Machiavelli, de Tocqueville, and Marx. This essay details the work of our own century. I begin by examining some of the basic problems that arise in understanding why revolutions occur. Next …
A New Historical Materialism
Capitalist origins of the English Revolution: Chasing a chimera
Urbanization and Inflation: Lessons from the English Price Revolution of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
The English price revolution (the 500% rise in prices from 1500 to 1650) has been attributed by some to an excess of money, due to bullion imports from the New World, and by others to an excess of people, due to population growth. This essay shows both accounts to be severely flawed. A simple model of the impact of urban networks on monetary circulation is developed; it argues that taking account of the effects of urganization and occupational sp…
Reinterpreting the French Revolution
The Puritan Moment: The Coming of Revolution in an English County
World Revolutionary Leaders
The Origins of the English Revolution: A Demographic Approach
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
How to Study History: The View from Sociology
Proletarianization and Family History
State Breakdown in the English Revolution: A New Synthesis
This essay develops and tests a formal time-series model of the pressures leading to state breakdown in England in 1640-42. The model has several novel features: it applies a quantitative analysis to the logic of structural-historical studies of revolution that generally proceed in a qualitative fashion; it yields a strong prediction of political crisis in mid-17th-century England and of relative stability in the preceding and succeeding centurie…
Reluctant Rebels: Comparative Studies of Revolution and Underdevelopment.John Walton
Revolutions: Theoretical, Comparative, and Historical Studies
Empires. Michael W. Doyle
Cultural Orthodoxy, Risk, and Innovation: The Divergence of East and West in the Early Modern World
What separated the East from the West, in the sense that we speak of the rise of the West? Although one may wish to answer capitalism, or the rationalization of institutions and economic life, both answers would be mistaken. As we shall see, Eastern empires, particularly China, could boast specialized production for distant markets with wage labor, highly efficient and increasingly rational allocation of labor and capital, uniform laws to smooth …
Powers and Fallacies
Did Absolutism Block Capitalism
Regional Ecology and Agrarian Development in England and France
East and West in the Seventeenth Century: Political Crises in Stuart England, Ottoman Turkey, and Ming China
For nearly forty years scholars have wrestled with the seventeenth-century 'general crisis.' Certain facts are not in dispute. The first half of the seven- teenth century saw a widespread slowing and eventual halt to the steady increases in population and prices that had begun around 1500. In addition, rebellions and revolutions shook regimes from England to China. What is contested is the root cause, the connections, and the significance of thes…
The Rationality of Revolution: A Comment on Lindenberg
Révolutions dans l'histoire et histoire de la révolution
Goldstone Jack, Aulagne Françoise. Révolutions dans l'histoire et histoire de la révolution. In: Revue française de sociologie, 1989, 30-3-4. Sociologie de la révolution. Etudes réunies et introduites par François Gresle et François Chazel., sous la direction de François Gresle et François Chazel. pp. 405-429
Political science (74 works) · Sociology (63 works) · Law (51 works) · Politics (37 works) · History (35 works) · Economics (34 works) · Historical Economic and Social Studies (22 works) · Epistemology (21 works) · Philosophy (21 works) · Political economy (20 works)