This piece on Revolutions is very relevant to recent events everywhere even though it is mainly focused on Egypt. It gives a run down of Toqueville's thesis of the revolution
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You say you want a revolution?
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Fitful and semi-effective autocratic reformers whet people's hopes for a better future, but cannot satisfy the expectations they arouse. Their own semi-effective reforms unleash the forces that overthrow them. Then the liberal reform regime is in turn swept away by the true revolutionaries, who do not want a liberal "bourgeois" revolution like the American revolution, but want to revoke both traditional authority and the half-completed modernization in favor of a populist collective.
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