Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Also, Real Things

Apparently Twitter is good for something. Powerful stuff.

While it may not mean much, the protesters in Iran have my deepest sympathy and admiration.

2 comments:

Alex said...

so based on your political model--the one that included apathy, revolution, etc. where are the citizens of Iran falling right now?

Pat said...

Well, protesting generally falls under gradualism: it's an appeal to those already in power. It's also a demonstration of the popular will.

When the regime replies to protests with violence, however, th situation is changed. It suggests the state regards the protesters a threat -- as revolutionary. If state violence doesn't cause the protesters to back down, further protests could be characterized as non-violent revolution. If, for example, the police refuse to turn on their own people, this can destroy government authority.

Reciprocal violence is also revolutionary in character, although it may be in self-defense. My earlier post assumed a static situation. When a government responds to peaceful calls for change with violence, it is effectively de-legitimizing itself, which complicates things. There's a sliding scale of gradualism and revolution in such cases.

I don't want to claim extensive knowledge of the situation, but it seems like the Iranians entered the election with hopes of gradualism and have gotten something a bit closer to revolution.