Rebellion

A rebellion is an organized uprising against a government. It occurs when people resist an existing authority through collective action. A rebel is an individual who takes part in these movements. Rebel groups are often coordinated to gain political control over a state or a specific region. These uprisings usually stem from political, religious, or social grievances. These grievances often arise from perceived inequality or marginalization. In Lockian philosophy, rebellion refers to the duty of people to overthrow an unjust government.

There are several specific terms used to classify different types of uprisings. An insurrection is an armed revolt meant to change a government or its policies by force. If a government does not recognize rebels as official belligerents, it calls them insurgents. When a conflict involves rebels who are recognized as belligerents, it may become a civil war. A coup d'état or a putsch is an attempt by a small, elite group to install themselves in power. If the entire social system and its structure are changed, the event is called a revolution.

Many scholars use different frameworks to explain why these conflicts happen. Karl Marx viewed revolutions through the lens of class-based relations of power. He analyzed the mode of production, which is how a society organizes labor and technology. Marx argued that conflict arises when producers are dispossessed of the means of production. This creates a struggle between those who own the conditions of production and those who do the work. He called revolutions the "locomotives of history" because they drive societal progress. This process replaces an old system with a new political economy better suited to the current ruling class.

Ted Gurr focused on the psychological roots of political violence in his book, "Why Men Rebel." He argued that violence often stems from anger caused by relative deprivation. This is the perceived gap between what people expect to have and what they actually have. Gurr identified three specific types of this deprivation. Decremental deprivation occurs when a person's capacities decrease while expectations stay high. Aspirational deprivation happens when expectations rise but a person's actual capacities stay the same. Progressive deprivation occurs when both expectations and capabilities increase, but expectations grow faster.

Charles Tilly provided a different perspective by focusing on collective action and power competition. He argued that political violence is a normal result of groups competing for power. Tilly used the polity model to study how governments and challenger groups interact. He also used the mobilization model to describe the behavior of a single group. This model looks at a group's internal dynamics and its external relations with others. According to Tilly, anger alone is not enough to cause a rebellion. A group must have the capacity to organize and form coalitions to be successful. The revolutionary moment occurs during "multiple sovereignty," when people must choose between the government and an alternative body.

Chalmers Johnson looked at rebellions as symptoms of problems within a society's structure. He believed a healthy society is a "value-coordinated social system" that can adapt to change. A rebellion happens when a system becomes rigid and cannot integrate new societal values. This creates a state of de-synchronization between the government and the people. When a political order becomes illegitimate because it ignores these values, it often uses coercion to stay in power. In this view, a revolution is a strategy of violence used to re-align the political order with new social values.

Theda Skocpol distinguished between political revolutions and social revolutions. A political revolution aims to change the government or the polity. A social revolution causes rapid, basic transformations in a society's class and state structures. Social revolutions are often grassroots movements that start from below. They do not just change who is in power; they transform the fundamental social fabric. Skocpol studied the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions to identify these patterns. She noted that these massive changes often involve the collapse of the old-regime state due to specific structural conditions.