The Coming Revolution

As I have mentioned before, I seriously studied modern revolutions in college, so much so that I actually considered an offered sponsorship to do graduate work in the area. The topic has always fascinated me. Just to review, a revolution is a fundamental, usually rapid change in who holds power and how a society is governed, typically driven from below by mass mobilization rather than by elections or normal politics. There are political revolutions when the regime itself is replaced, not just the leader (Armenia in 2018 is an example). And there are social revolutions where the political change also transforms class structure, property and social order (classic examples are France in 1789, Russia in 1917 and China in 1949). It helps to distinguish revolutions from related events like a coup, which is a small group, usually the military, which seizes power from the top without mass participation. Then there are revolts or uprisings where mass resistance that may fail or never aim at full regime change occur (Iran in 2022 and 2026 and Belarus in 2020 fit here). And then there are protest movements that bring pressure for specific policies within the existing system, like France’s current school protests.

The past decade saw a wave of uprisings, but toppling a leader proved far easier than building something new. Often the military or old elites filled the vacuum. Leaders toppled by popular uprisings include Armenia (2018), where the peaceful “Velvet Revolution” brought protest leader Nikol Pashinyan to power. It is one of the cleaner democratic transitions of the decade. In Sudan and Algeria (2019) mass protests ousted Omar al-Bashir and Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Sudan’s civilian transition collapsed into a 2021 coup and then a devastating civil war from 2023. Sri Lanka (2022), during an economic collapse, had youth-driven protests that forced President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee. In Bangladesh (2024), weeks of protests against a quota system for government jobs turned into a broad uprising that forced the prime minister to flee the country and resign. Syria (2024) was an armed rather than street-driven uprising. A rebel offensive ended Assad family rule in December, closing out a war that began with the 2011 uprising. Nepal (2025) has protests that were sparked by a brief social media ban but driven by deeper frustration over economic hardship and corruption. 76 people died and parliament was torched. Madagascar (2025) has had numerous youth protests over water and power cuts that ended with a military power grab that sent President Andry Rajoelina fleeing. Colonel Michael Randrianirina now leads, and presidential elections are due in late 2027.

Uprisings that were crushed or stalled were even more extensive with Hong Kong (2019–20) and Belarus (2020), where both mass movements were suppressed. Myanmar (2021) had a military coup that triggered an armed resistance and is still ongoing. Chile, which has been largely peaceful for 50 years, had in 2019 huge protests that led to a constitutional rewrite (but so far voters rejected two draft constitutions). Iran, which seems always on the cusp, had its “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests in 2022 crushed. A larger wave in late 2025 and early 2026 largely subsided after violent repression on January 8–9, the most lethal state violence against protesters in Iran’s modern history. A US-Israeli war then followed in which Ali Khamenei was killed. The regime survived, and his son Mojtaba Khamenei is now Supreme Leader. This year in Bolivia more than fifty days of protests paralyzed much of the country, yet produced nothing like the sweeping changes of the early 2000s. In the Sahel “coup belt” (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Guinea, and Gabon) we saw militaries seize power between 2020 and 2023, often with some popular support but no popular mandate. The common threads of many of these revolutions are young, social-media-organized protesters, economic triggers (prices, blackouts, jobs), and anti-corruption anger. Regimes that kept their security forces loyal, as in Iran, Belarus, and Hong Kong, generally survived.

France this week is seeing large and sometimes violent unrest, but it’s a protest movement, not a revolution. The demands are about schools, not overthrowing the government. For about two weeks, high school and university students have been protesting conditions in public schools. On Tuesday, more than a quarter million students, parents and teachers marched to demand more school funding, and police met them with tear gas and water cannons. The Justice Ministry says over 6,000 people have been arrested since the protests began, and nearly 900 schools have been shut. The clashes, fires and tear gas have spread beyond Paris to Lyon, Strasbourg (we were just there and saw none of this), Rennes and other cities. The government response so far has been a mix of concession and policing. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has told ministers to address student demands, including repairs to aging buildings, longer lunch breaks and a review of the 8 a.m. start time (distilled down to those demands makes it seem pretty petty compared to starving people in the Sahel or slaughter in the Middle East). But what makes it serious is that this is happening in France…which is a lovely place we like to go for vacation, right? I’m not sure that says nice things about us since hardship in other places should trouble us as much or more.

More mass uprisings are happening than at almost any time on record, but fewer of them are succeeding. So it’s a protest boom more than a revolution boom and the success at quelling them seems more about the strong hand of authoritarianism than not. Researchers who track mass anti-government campaigns have found that the 2010s had more of them than any decade since 1900, and the 2020s have kept that pace. The 2024–26 “Gen Z” wave (Bangladesh, Kenya, Nepal, Madagascar, Peru, Morocco and others) is one of the more striking clusters, with young people organizing online around corruption and economic pain. As far as I know from that research, nonviolent campaigns succeeded roughly two-thirds of the time in the 1990s but only about a third of the time in the 2010s, and lower since. Several reasons are commonly given including that these uprisings are easy to start but harder to sustain. Social media makes protests quick to mobilize, but they often lack the organization, leadership and staying power to win. This is all against better-prepared regimes, governments that have learned from past uprisings and now use surveillance, internet shutdowns, and close control of security forces (all from the authoritarian playbook). It will be interesting to see if the new easy-to-source drone warfare will change all that. In addition, we have lost our international “police” force…there is almost no outside pressure. Major powers like the U.S. now put less pressure on governments to restrain crackdowns. The UN is about as toothless as they’ve ever been.

The real revolutionary peaks in modern history were 1848, the end of World War I, decolonization, 1989–91, when communism collapsed across Eastern Europe, and the 2011 Arab Spring. 1989–91 stands out because many regimes actually fell and have stayed fallen. Today looks more like 2011 with lots of eruptions and a few toppled leaders, but the aftermath often brings military rule, as in Madagascar and Sudan, or a return to the old order, as in Egypt after 2013.

What does this all tell us about the state of the world? Well, if you ranked the US, China, EU, UK, Russia, Brazil and Mexico on a revolutionary index for risk of major instability rather than revolution, Russia and Brazil would rise and the US would move up a bit. The consolidated democracies would still sit near the bottom. Using the strict definition of revolution, regime overthrow by mass mobilization, the risk is low everywhere on that list over roughly the next five years. In the United States its very low despite the polarization, political violence, and fights over executive power and institutions that are showing real strains. Our regular elections, enduring federalism, remaining court structure and a still more-or-less nonpartisan military give anger legal outlets. The realistic risk is a constitutional crisis or gradual institutional erosion, which observers on different sides define differently… but not a revolution. In the United Kingdom the party system is fragmenting, with Reform’s rise and Labour’s slump, and there are flashes of street unrest. Discontent is flowing into elections rather than into the streets. The European Union risk is very low overall with France as the most protest-prone member, while Hungary and Slovakia face concerns about democratic backsliding. The EU-level risk is populist parties winning power through elections, not an uprising. Russia has the highest tail risk on the list. Repression and the Ukraine war has hollowed out civil society, so mass revolt is unlikely. Russian regimes historically fall through elite splits after military strain (1917, 1991), and the 2023 Prigozhin mutiny showed how sudden that can be. Putin’s eventual succession is the biggest uncertainty. In China, the surveillance state and party control are formidable. Slowing growth and youth unemployment create pressure, and the 2022 zero-COVID protests did force a policy reversal, but any rupture would more likely start inside the party elite rather than in the streets. Mexico has other problems with cartel violence showing that the state lacks control of some regions, and critics worry that Morena’s dominance and the judicial overhaul are weakening checks and balances. Still, elections are competitive and broadly accepted. The problem is weak state control in places, not a revolutionary movement. And then there’s Brazil with lots of near-term stress. The January 2023 riots and the coup-plot case against Jair Bolsonaro showed real strain, but institutions held. Polls ahead of the October 4 first round showed a Lula vs. Flávio Bolsonaro runoff statistically tied at 42% each, so the October 25 runoff is the pressure point. Bolsonaro looks disappointingly strong. A disputed result would be the scenario to watch.

Despite all this rationalization, my mind will continue to dwell on the coming revolution, which I think a world of 9 billion ultimately faces.