Radical Political Transformation in World History: Concepts, Cases, and Patterns

This paper develops a framework for understanding the phenomenon of radical political transformation in modern world history. We define radical political transformation as the rapid and fundamental change of government identity, regime institutions, and state structures within a sovereign country. We identify 67 cases of radical political transformation. Using novel concepts and typologies as well as a case-based measurement strategy, we code cases according to their dominant mode of power acquisition, dominant ideology, type of regime transition, and type of state transformation. We identify world-historical patterns across each of these domains. We summarize three overarching pathways of radical political transformation in world history: liberalizing transformations across two waves, conservative backlash transformations over three phases, and two types of egalitarian transformations during the twentieth century. We encourage new research focused on broad ranging questions about radical political transformation.