Structural Reform As a Destabilizing Force Writ

Writing in the 19th century about the causes of the French Revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville proposed a generalization that can apply equally well to today's repressive regimes. Tocqueville's central concern was to explain how and why revolutions occur:

Revolution does not always come when things are going from bad to worse. It occurs most often when a nation that has accepted, and indeed, has given no sigh of even noticed the most crushing laws, rejects them at the very moment when their weight is being lightened. The regime that is destroyed by a revolution is almost always better than the one preceding it, and experience teaches us that the most dangerous time for a bad government is when it attempts to reform itself.

The proposition of this paper, which is derived from Tocqueville's theory of revolution, holds that political instability is likely to rise when an illegitimate regime initiates reform. The greater the illegitimacy and the more radical the reforms, the higher the level of instability. Illegitimacy and reform are the independent variables in this proposition. Political instability is the dependent variable. Reform provides the immediate occasion for the rise in unrest, while illegitimacy provides the underlying reason. In other words, illegitimacy is the precondition and reform is the accelerator of instability. Since a whole series of antecedent and intervening variables can exert a significant influence on this relationship, this proposit

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fine the concept of political instability exactly, so that indicators may be found and the proposition examined. Instability will be seen as a challenge to the authority of the political system. Authority will be defined as the recognition of a right. In this case, it is the right of the regime to rule. More significant challenges to the regime's authority will bring about higher levels of instability. In this paper, the following indicators will be used to measure instability: strikes, violent anti-government demonstrations, inter-ethnic violence, and nationalist movements for self-determination and independence. This paper will not attempt to count the extent of the occurrence of these indicators. Instead, only the significant ones that pose a threat to the authority of a regime--and that relate to illegitimacy and reform--will be examined. Before analyzing the case of the Soviet Union in light of the above concept, it is first essential to note the logic behind their relationship to one another. Accoording to one expert, "Tocqueville believed that most, athough not all, of the causes of major events are accessible to rational analysis." Accordingly, he held that the causes for the rise in political instability shou

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