These two books address the issue of revolution in distinct ways. Alexander Motyl, in a critical tour de force of three major concepts in social science, seeks to bring more conceptual order to a messy literature. His effort is “pre-scientific” in the sense that, according to his argument, we cannot approach explanation and theory before the critical things to be explained are defined logically and consistently. Surveying the relevant literatures, he demonstrates that this has not been the case with the concepts of revolution, nation, and empire. All of them remain contested. “We know far less than we claim to know,” he suggests, because the key concepts are grounded in language that we can never quite pin down. “Thus ...theory is inevitably underdetermined and facts are inevitably overdetermined” (p. 183). Nevertheless, with careful crafting of concepts and avoiding the common fault of including explanations within concepts, progress toward more authoritative knowledge can be made. He insists that contrary to common practice, conceptual clarification and theory construction are different enterprises and cannot be conflated.

In his chapters on concepts of revolution, Motyl offers generic criteria (rapid, comprehensive, and fundamental change) that should help isolate a particular type of political phenomenon. But even such neutral criteria leave room for interpretation. They do not, for example, distinguish between quantitative and qualitative changes in polities, between evolution and revolution, and between rupture and synthesis. There is room for further exploration here. Motyl offers an interesting analysis of postcommunist societies, demonstrating and explaining why they have not undergone genuine revolutions. In doing so, he delves into the area of structural and other constraints on political change.

Motyl offers similar critiques of the conceptual and theoretical treatment of nationalism and empires. Although his focus is on conceptual clarification and logic, he illustrates with interesting historical examples, frequently drawn from his area specialty, the politics of the postcommunist states. He makes a compelling case for the need to clean up concepts before exploring or proposing theories of revolution, nationalism, and empire.

Halliday’s purposes are broader. He explores three main themes: the connection between revolution and international relations—how revolutions affect international relations and how those relationships serve as sources of revolution; the need to integrate revolutions into international relations studies, just as war, conflict, and peace have been the central normative and analytical problems in mainstream international relations studies; and the necessity to recast the field—away from its materialist, realist tradition—into a holistic historical sociology that expands the research agenda to include mass movements and social structures (local and global), all in the context of capitalist modernity.

While Motyl seeks greater rigor in the specialized areas of revolution, nationalism, and empire, Halliday wants an intellectual revolution in the field. For Halliday, conceptual rigor is less important than perspective. His definition of revolution is thus open to criticism. For Halliday, revolution is a “major political and social transformation in the context of a contradictory modernity involving mass participation and the aspiration to establish a radically different society” (p. 21). This definition conflates the thing to be explained (revolution) with a theory of causes (modernity). Motyl warns specifically against this move.

Halliday offers an original and outstanding analysis of the connection between revolution and international relations. The empirical basis for his analysis is the American, French, 1848, Bolshevik, Cuban, Vietnamese, Nicaraguan, and Iranian revolutions. This is a reasonably comprehensive foundation for inferring patterns, contradictions, paradoxes, and generalizations. His reasons for omitting the Nazi revolution as part of his empirical base are not entirely convincing (pp. 48–49).

Halliday begins with ideas about revolution. What did the dreamers and actors think of it, and how did their ideas change through history? He includes an interesting chapter on the theory of “exporting” revolution, based on the idea common to revolutionaries throughout history that a genuine revolution must be universal and would be incomplete if confined to a single society. Real revolutionaries are not ethnocentric; they are convinced that what is good for their own society is good for the world generally. Halliday emphasizes the contradictions that arise in pursuing the globalization of revolution, on one hand, and establishing and maintaining the revolutionary regime in power at home on the other.

He then goes on to explore the interplay (I hesitate to say cause–effect relationships) between revolution and international relations, demonstrating how international factors help foment revolutions and how the international system influences postrevolutionary states. Then Halliday examines the impact of revolutions on the international system. This includes a discussion of the role of revolutionary activities on the development and erosion of international norms and institutions and of the inevitable counterrevolutionary actions of those who perceive threats. The underlying syndrome of counterrevolution was outlined succinctly first by Edmund Burke and updated more recently by some of Ronald Reagan’s pronouncements on the “evil empire.” Halliday nicely locates commonalities of analysis and action that transcend time and location.

Halliday insists that the many interconnections and contradictions between international relations and revolution cannot be understood adequately by adhering to state-centric approaches. International relations is constituted not only by the activities and interactions of states, but also by “broader civil society—economic, social, ideological, cultural factors” (p. 163). The external sources of revolution, for example, lie more in the economic, social, and ideological fields than in diplomacy and strategic calculation. A second major implication of his analysis is that ideas and ideology have to be taken seriously. We can neither explain nor understand revolutions without them.

Halliday’s chapter on war and revolution should help convince the most skeptical reader that international relations scholars have made a serious error in overlooking revolution as a major source of international history and system dynamics. The connections between war and revolution are striking, but the standard IR conceptual equipment and research programs ignore them. For example, major research projects on war and enduring rivalries employ all sorts of system, spatial, and interaction variables (balances or imbalances of power, alliances, contiguity, power concentration in the system, and the like) but omit revolutions. In neorealist lore, unit-level events such as revolutions fail to find any conceptual or theoretical niche. It is not easy to locate them in more recent constructivist analyses either. Halliday is justified in his assertion that “revolutions, as historical events, challenge our view of both (IR) theory and of history” (p. 308).

What is Halliday’s solution to this major intellectual deficiency in the theoretical understanding of international relations and revolutions? It is in itself intellectually revolutionary. It involves three moves: linking the analysis of the state with that of socioeconomic context and of ideology and culture; reconceptualizing the state, away from a territorial-legal entity to an instrument of administration, control, and coercion; and incorporating social movements and classes, particularly those that challenge the state, in the study of international relations.

All of these moves must be made in an overall effort to examine the context of capitalist modernity. We cannot understand revolution and its connections to international relations without an appreciation of the world capitalist structure, which simultaneously constrains human imagination and action but also contains the seeds of fundamental change.

This is a tall order and not one likely to appeal to those with a more formally scientific bent. A world systems approach in which everything is connected vastly reduces the possibility of any type of rigorous causal analysis. Halliday, because he is suspicious of scientific formalism, offers insights, imaginative comparisons, and suggestive connections. Many are brilliant. He is also sensitive to contradictions, to ironies, and to paradoxes, something that is not often welcome in formally scientific enterprises.

Like all holistic effort—and we can usefully compare Halliday to Morgenthau and Waltz here—too much may be left out. It helps explain some critical things about very big questions, but as we have seen in the many criticisms of some versions of realism, people are also interested in answers to smaller questions. Using Halliday’s own metaphor of volcanoes, some might want to know not only when a general geological formation is conducive to eruptions in a probabilistic sense, but also when and where the next blowup is going to be. A context as vague as “capitalist modernity” could be almost impossible to link to a phenomenon like revolution, which occurs so infrequently and in such disparate locations. So Halliday can offer general interpretive perspectives because he, like Motyl, doubts that there can ever be a general theory of something like revolutions. He is satisfied with the more modest aim of providing “a perspective, itself backed by comparative and theoretical reflection, with which the better to explain individual cases” (p. 185). As we move along the trajectory from formal explanation of a limited range of phenomena to more holistic statements, suggestive comparisons, and contestable generalizations, precision gives way to insight. It is almost a question of aesthetics.

Halliday’s study looks backward. He explores in the context of modernity the connections between revolution and international relations. But what of the future? Are major revolutions, like major wars, becoming obsolete? If past revolutions took place in the context of “capitalist modernity,” what will be their fate if we enter or are already entering a world of postcapitalism, postmodernity, or whatever? Is the model of the Bolshevik Revolution relevant today? Are the future “major political and social transformations” involving “mass participation and a radically different society” going to resemble those of the past? Would the recent events in Indonesia and Yugoslavia suggest other models? What if there are no more, or only insignificant, changes, none of which meet Halliday’s criteria of a revolution?

Both books succeed in sensitizing readers. They are convincing, useful, well written, and welcome additions to the literature. Halliday’s book is substantively richer, but Motyl’s criticism of social science practices contains an important warning: do not take concepts for granted; use them carefully; apply logic; and separate theory from concepts. Although Motyl and Halliday doubt the possibilities of a general theory of anything that is so laden by cultural baggage as the concepts of revolution, nation, and empire, they argue convincingly that existing theories of these phenomena are inadequate. And they show how to escape this situation. Both books are strong candidates for the “must read” list.