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 turnovers involving defections from incumbent leaders by their own allies due to the failure of these regimes to consolidate themselves (67n3). Moreover, according to Way, these events should not be thought of as an interrelated wave, as each would have occurred even if the other cases in the neighborhood had not materialized and even without the influence of transnational linkages. Rather, they were merely a collection of individual and separate cases. To place Way’s argument in its proper context, I should note that those like myself who study these revolutions as an interrelated wave also acknowledge the significance of structural factors in determining their outcomes. My own work, for instance, notes many of the same structural conditions identified by Way (as he recognizes in an endnote)—among them, a regime’s weak control over its coercive apparatus, the absence of oil wealth, and strong transnational ties to the West. So what really differentiates Way’s interpretation from those of scholars who approach these events as an interconnected wave? The key difference is that, for Way, the failure of authoritarian consolidation is causally sufficient, and he sees little need to explain opposition mobilization against the state and its role in the collapse of these regimes. Even ties with the United States and Western Europe are viewed by Way in large part as factors affecting the resources available to authoritarian