The Spanish American Revolutions, 1808-1826

Debating the Color Revolutions

In Lucan Way’s insightful, highly structural account of the color revolutions, they had to happen.1 Each was separately determined by the weakness of the authoritarian regimes. As Way puts it, “regime collapses have resulted more from authoritarian weakness than opposition strength” (62). For Way, it is even misleading to conceptualize these events as revolutions; they were authoritarian turnov...

Technological Revolutions

In skill-biased (de-skilling) technological revolutions learning investments required by new machines are greater (smaller) than those required by preexisting machines. Skill-biased (de-skilling) revolutions trigger reallocations of capital from slow(fast-) to fast(slow-) learning workers, thereby reducing the relative and absolute wages of the former. The model of skill-biased (de-skilling) re...

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

VIII. The Response to Crisis Let us then assume that crises are a necessary precondition for the emergence of novel theories and ask next how scientists respond to their existence. Part of the answer, as obvious as it is important, can be discovered by noting first what scientists never do when confronted by even severe and prolonged anomalies. Though they may begin to lose faith and then to co...

Philosophical Revolutions

john steinbeck: friend of the american common man

in his last years of life americans had almost forgotton steinbeck, and those who had not, occasionally criticized him for supporting and praising the u. s. military intervention in the vietnam war. althought ateinbeck incorporates different themes into his works, each one bears many signs of his concern and sympathy for america and the american common people in particular. steinbecks to a god ...