THE THIRD MAN; OR, AGENCY IN HISTORY; OR,RATIONALITY IN REVOLUTION

ROD AYA

And the third man? Who was he?—Graham GreeneMan by nature chooseth the lesser evill.—Thomas Hobbes

Encouraged by hope, men hazard themselves.—Thucydides

ABSTRACT

Theories of revolution invoke human agency to commit the violence that revolutionentails, yet theorists of revolution often denounce the general theory of human agencycalled rational choice because (they say) it does not explain macrosocial facts like revo-lution and also leaves out culture. Actually, however, rational choice is the major premiseof any cogent explanation of revolution, and it includes culture as a factual premise.Rational-choice theory applied to explaining revolution dates back to Thucydides, whosemethod of explanation is sound and whose theory of revolution is true. Thucydidesexplains the macrosocial fact of revolution by way of models whose elements are peopledoing what they hope will succeed, that is, acting on opinion alias culture. Theorists ofrevolution who make sense of it all rehearse Thucydides: they analyze the narrative his-tory into strategic actions and reactions, explain these actions and reactions by rationalchoice, and document the explanation with direct and circumstantial evidence for hope ofsuccess, though they seldom own up on theory and method or preach what they practice.

The problem of social structure, historical event, and human agency is two prob-lems in one—the micro-macro problem of sociology and the covering-law prob-lem of history.1 The micro-macro problem of sociology is how to explain socialphenomena when all we observe is individual action.2 The covering-law problemof history is how to explain narrative sequences when causal explanationrequires covering laws to link causes and effects, but history has no such laws.3

History and Theory, Theme Issue 40 (December 2001), 143-152 © Wesleyan University 2001 ISSN: 0018-2656

1. The conference on “Ereignis und Struktur: Definitionen–Methoden–Darstellungsweisen,”Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung, Universität Bielefeld, 16–17 October 1998, heard a roughdraft of this essay, which Andreas Suter persuaded me to undertake, develop, footnote, and finish. Iam much in his debt. I owe thanks as well to Brian Fay and David Gary Shaw, who urged a strategicrevision; to Noam Chomsky, who made the need for it crystal clear; and to Yue Tao, who policed itfor cogency.

2. The canonical formulation is now James S. Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), 1–23.

3. The canonical formulation is still Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 5th ed., 2vols. (London: Routledge, 1966), 2:259–280, 361–367.

The micro-macro problem and the covering-law problem are both method-ological problems of argument, that is, problems of connecting explanation withevidence or theory with fact.4 These two problems still befuddle theorists of rev-olution even though the solution has been in plain sight ever since Thucydides,whose method of explanation is sound and whose theory of revolution is true—so this essay argues.

I. THE THIRD MAN

Consider (as a polemical foil to start the argument) the leading latter-day theoryof “social” revolution. To explain why “social” revolutions occur—why elitessubvert governments and subalterns rebel, letting radicals seize power and reor-ganize both state and society—the theory cites “structural conditions” and “cul-tural idioms.” The “structural conditions” are “state weakness” and the “solidar-ity and autonomy” of subaltern communities; the “cultural idioms” are a “world-view” and “social practices” that encourage “challenges to authority.”5

This theory ostensibly explains the events by structure (with an assist fromculture) and explains change of structure by the events. But it brings humanagency back in to do the rough stuff. As the explanation unfolds, structure (withan assist from culture) constrains agency to make the events—by violence; andthe events constrain agency to change the structure—again by violence. Agencyis the Third Man between structure and event who does the killing and coercing.He makes the action happen.

There is a general theory of human agency called rational choice. But latter-day theorists of revolution ritually denounce it. Some object that rational choiceis a microsocial theory of individual action, which they say does nothing toexplain macrosocial facts like revolution. Others object that it assumes instru-mental rationality, which they say leaves out culture.6

They are right that rational choice is a microsocial theory. But they are wrongthat it does nothing to explain macrosocial facts and that it leaves out culture. Onthe contrary, rational choice is the major premise of any testable, noncircularexplanation of macrosocial facts; and far from leaving out culture, it takes it asit comes. Any coherent explanation of revolution needs the Third Man to do thedirty work, and rational choice is the only theory that explains what he does with-out begging the question.7

Rational-choice theory is nothing new, nor is using it to explain revolution. Bothdate back to Thucydides, who applies rational-choice theory with matchless bril-

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4. Method means logically matching theory with fact. Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and SocialStructure, 3d ed. (New York: Free Press, 1968), 73.

5. Theda Skocpol, Social Revolutions in the Modern World (Cambridge, Eng.: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1994), 5, 15, 17, 250.

6. Ibid., 321–326; Jeff Goodwin, “Toward a New Sociology of Revolutions,” Theory and Society23 (1994), 731–766, at 736–740.

7. On failures to explain revolutionary violence otherwise, see Rod Aya, Rethinking Revolutionsand Collective Violence: Studies on Concept, Theory, and Method (Amsterdam: Spinhuis, 1990),which affords an excuse not to argue the point further here.

liance. Testable, noncircular explanations of revolution are footnotes to Thucydides,the “most politic historiographer that ever writ.”8

Revolution mostly fails, according to Thucydides, but insurgents attempt itbecause they have hope of success. The leading latter-day theory of “social” rev-olution inadvertently agrees. It cites “structural conditions” that seem to giveinsurgents hope of success, and invokes “culture and ideology” when “structur-al conditions” seem to give little hope yet insurgents gang up on the governmentanyway.9 The leading latter-day theory of social movements uses different jar-gon. Its keywords are “mobilizing structures,” “political opportunity structures,”and “cultural frames,” but it says the same thing.10 It too echoes Thucydides’ ideathat “encouraged by hope, men hazard themselves,” and that hope is known tobe mere hope only when it is dashed.11

There are two arguments here. One argument is methodological. It concernshow rational-choice theory explains macrosocial facts like revolution. The otherargument is theoretical. It concerns why people commit revolutionary violence.Both arguments depend on what rational-choice theory says. Restating rational-choice theory clearly and simply makes plain that any cogent sociological or his-torical explanation needs it as the major premise and that revolutionary violenceis explicable as rational action where the Third Man has hope of success.

II. AGENCY IN HISTORY

Start with Hobbes, who sums up rational-choice theory and the method of expla-nation now called situational logic in two sentences: “man by nature chooseth thelesser evill,” and “mens actions are derived from the opinions they have of theGood, or Evill, which from those actions redound unto themselves.”12 These twosentences on explanatory theory and theoretical method need unpacking.

The first sentence from Hobbes sums up rational-choice theory. Translated intomodern terms, it says that when people decide what to do in any situation involv-ing alternative actions with expected consequences, they choose the actionwhose consequences they prefer to those of other actions they see open to themat the time—in a word, they “maximize.” Since people can maximize only if theyknow all actions open to them so they can choose the best, whereas they knowjust a few and so choose one that is good enough—better than any known alter-native—Simon says they do not maximize but “satisfice.”13 Either way, the the-

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8. Thomas Hobbes, “To the Readers,” in Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War: The CompleteHobbes Translation, ed. David Grene (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), xxii.

9. Skocpol, Social Revolutions, 17–18, 243, 245, 247, 249. 10. Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, 2d ed.

(Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Comparative Perspectives on SocialMovements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings, ed. DougMcAdam, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press,1996).

11. Thucydides, 3.45, 5.103.12. Hobbes, Leviathan 1.14, 3.42.13. People satisfice because they lack the knowledge to maximize. Herbert A. Simon, “A

Behavioral Model of Rational Choice,” in Models of Thought (New Haven: Yale University Press,1979), 7–19.

ory holds that people do what they think they have to do to get what they want—they do what they expect will have the consequences they prefer—they do whatthey hope will succeed.

Lest loaded words cause confusion: to say action is rational means the actorshope it will succeed, that is, get what they want—have the consequences theyprefer; and to say it is a choice means they forgo other actions by taking it.Rational-choice theory connects hope of success with choice of action—whatpeople hope will succeed, the theory predicts they will do. That is all. The theo-ry does not predict, much less prescribe, what people hope will succeed—whatthey think they have to do to get what they want is a fact for discovery, not stip-ulation. The theory explains action, not motivation, which it takes as given.Whether motivation is instrumental (pragmatic) or expressive (symbolic) or bothis a always question of fact for research case by case.14

The second sentence from Hobbes sums up situational logic. Translated intomodern terms, it says that to explain social action by rational-choice theory is todeduce it as a logical conclusion from two premises—the theoretical premise thatif people hope a certain action will succeed, then they will take that action; andthe factual premise that, for the action to be explained, the actors have hope ofsuccess. Explaining social action by deducing it from decision premises—thetheoretical premise of rational choice and the factual premise of hope of suc-cess—is situational logic.15

Thus expounded, rational-choice theory and situational logic are the com-monest of common sense. Indeed, they are the indispensable though inarticulateexplanatory theory and theoretical method of sociology and history.Disagreement about explanation is not about rational choice, the theoreticalpremise of situational logic. Nor is it about situational logic, the simplest causalinference. It is about hope of success, the factual premise of situational logic—about whether people in fact think that by taking the action to be explained theywill get what they want. Hope of success, which makes choice of action rationalfrom the “native point of view,” is the testable hypothesis that gets the credit forexplanation or else takes the blame for refutation.16

Hope of success has various names in the literature on theoretical method insociology and history: Weber says “Sinnzusammenhang” or “Beziehung vom

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14. Confounding rational choice with cold blood—confusing theoretical principle with empiricalparticulars—is a fountainhead of befuddlement, as Goodwin, “New Sociology of Revolutions,”739–740, illustrates.

15. Karl R. Popper, “Models, Instruments, and Truth: The Status of the Rationality Principle in theSocial Sciences,” in The Myth of the Framework: In Defence of Science and Rationality, ed. M. A.Notturno (London: Routledge, 1994), 154–184, at 166–170; Herbert A. Simon, AdministrativeBehavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organization, 3d ed. (New York:Free Press, 1976), 67–68, 73–77, 80–84. Situational logic is usually enthymematic; rational choice isthe mostly unstated major premise or first-order enthymeme. Another (perhaps better) name for situ-ational logic is “vicarious problem solving.” Thomas C. Schelling, Micromotives and Macrobehavior(New York: Norton, 1978), 18.

16. Popper, “Models,” 169–170, 171, 177–178. The term “native point of view” is from BronislawMalinowski, The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia: An Ethnographic Account ofCourtship, Marriage, and Family Life among the Natives of the Trobriand Islands, British NewGuinea, 4th ed. (Boston: Beacon, 1987), 156, 201.

Mittel und Zweck”; Hayek says “motivating opinions”; Popper says “aims andknowledge of the means for realizing these aims”; Stinchcombe says “what peo-ple want and what they think they have to do to get it”; Elster says “desires andbeliefs”; and Boudon (like Davidson) says “reasons.”17

The names do not matter—they are synonyms.18 What matters is that hope ofsuccess, which again makes action rational from the “native point of view,” isemic opinion. The bounds of what Simon calls “bounded rationality” are whatHobbes calls “opinions,” namely, ideas about causal connections between meansand ends that (whether true or false) motivate choice of action. “Though men bemuch governed by interest,” Hume says, “yet even interest itself, and all humanaffairs, are entirely governed by opinion.”19 People act rationally in light of opin-ion—rationality of action is relative to cognitive frame of reference. Ideas moti-vate choice of action, but motivating ideas can be absurd. Anthropology nowreveres as culture ideas that philosophy once dismissed as superstition.20

How does situational logic (with rational-choice theory as its major premise)solve the problem of structure, event, and agency alias the micro-macro problemof sociology and the covering-law problem of history?

The answer is ancient, and to state it is to codify how Thucydides explainsGreek city-state revolutions during the Peloponnesian War.21 His account ofthese revolutions—especially at Mytilene 428–427 BCE, Corcyra 427 BCE, andAthens 411 BCE—is too complex to abstract here.22 But his method of explana-tion is simple, and it solves the problem of structure, event, and agency—themicro-macro problem of sociology and the covering-law problem of history—implicitly yet cogently as follows.

Take the covering-law problem first. Thucydides analyzes the history of revo-lution into strategic actions and reactions on which the outcome depended; he

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17. Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie, ed. JohannesWinckelmann, 2 vols. (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1964), 1:4–9; F. A. Hayek, “Scientism andthe Study of Society,” in The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason, 2d ed.(Indianapolis: Liberty, 1979), 17–182, at 64; Popper, “Models,” 167–169; Arthur L. Stinchcombe,Theoretical Methods in Social History (New York: Academic, 1978), 119; Jon Elster, Strong Feelings:Emotion, Addiction, and Human Behavior (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999), 142–143; DonaldDavidson, Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 3–19, 83–84, 233;Raymond Boudon, The Analysis of Ideology, transl. Malcolm Slater (Cambridge, Eng.: Polity, 1989),13, 207–208.

18. As this definition shows: “‘Motiv’ heißt ein Sinnzusammenhang, welcher . . . als sinnhafter‘Grund’ eines Verhaltens erscheint.” Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 1:8.

19. David Hume, Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis:Liberty, 1985), 51. Hume anticipates Keynes, who says “it is ideas, not vested interests, which aredangerous for good or evil,” and “indeed the world is ruled by little else.” John Maynard Keynes, TheGeneral Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, 2d ed. (London: Macmillan, 1973), 384, 383.

20. Ernest Gellner, Reason and Culture: The Historic Role of Reason and Rationalism (Oxford:Blackwell, 1992), 3, 18, 55, 77. The best illustration of the argument that rationality of action is rel-ative to cognitive frame of reference is still E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magicamong the Azande (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937), one of the great books of social anthro-pology.

21. Codification is the “identification and organization” of theory and method “implicit in work ofthe past.” Merton, Social Theory, 69.

22. Thucydides 3.2–19, 3.25–28, 3.35–50; 3.70–81, 3.85, 4.46–48; 8.47–97.

explains these actions and reactions by rational choice, arguing that the con-tenders did what they hoped would succeed; and he documents situational logicwith direct and circumstantial evidence. The conclusion of each round of situa-tional logic enters into the factual premise of the next, so the narrative is a cumu-lative causal sequence or “intrigue” in which previous choices constrain subse-quent choices like moves in a game and one contingency leads to another.23

There is no general theory that explains the history of revolution in toto—nosingle theory explains any history in toto.24 But there is a general theory thatexplains each action and reaction along the way, and that theory is rationalchoice—the theory that people faced with a choice of action do what they hopewill succeed. The causal mechanism that moves the history along is peopledeciding what to do about the strategic predicaments they face over time—it isrational choice plus hope of success, though hope can be false.25 The MelianDialogue—in which the Melians explain that they will resist the Atheniansbecause they hope the Spartans will save them—is one of many places whereThucydides points out that false hope is seen to be such only when the fatal mis-take is already made.26

There is no predictive theory of history, then, only a predictive theory of socialaction that serves as the major premise of situational logic. Choice of action ispredictable (and retrodictable) given hope of success, but history is contingent:hope of success is unpredictable—opinion cannot be inferred from data—andactions have unintended consequences.27

Now take the micro-macro problem. Macrosocial facts—namely, social struc-tures like oligarchy and democracy, and historical events like conspiracy andsedition—enter the explanatory argument as constraints on choice and as aggre-gate actions to be explained. On the one hand, structures and events constrain

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23. On cumulative causation, see Stinchcombe, Theoretical Methods, 61–63; on intrigue, see PaulVeyne, Comment on écrit l’histoire, 2d ed. (Paris: Seuil, 1978), 51–53; on moves in a game or l’échangedes coups, see Michel Dobry, Sociologie des crises politiques: La dynamique des mobilisations multi-sectorielles (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1986), 175–210.

24. No concrete sequence of three or more causally connected events proceeds according to anysingle causal law. Karl R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, 2d ed. (London: Routledge, 1960), 117.

25. Andreas Suter, “Histoire sociale et événements historiques: Pour une nouvelle approche,”Annales: Histoire, sciences sociales (1997), no. 3: 543–567, at 554–561. What he calls “slow-motionreplay” first appears in Thucydides’ account of political decision-making. “Mechanism” is a buzz-word in sociology despite lack of consensus on what it means. See Social Mechanisms: An AnalyticalApproach to Social Theory, ed. Peter Hedström and Richard Swedberg (Cambridge, Eng.: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1998), for a state-of-the-art symposium.

26. Thucydides 5.103. Cf. idem 4.108, 5.113, 8.2, 8.24.27. Hope of success—the expectation of preferred ends consequent on certain means that moti-

vates choice of these means—is an opinion, and if a predictive theory of opinion exists, it is a well-kept secret. Normative theories of what to conclude from evidence exist: they are philosophy of sci-ence alias methodology, and if they agree on anything it is the underdetermination of theory by evi-dence. As for unintended consequences, see Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests:Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977),131, as well as Robert K. Merton, “The Unanticipated Consequences of Social Action,” inSociological Ambivalence and Other Essays (New York: Free Press, 1976), 145–155.

choices; on the other, actions constitute structures and events—repetitive actionsmake up structures, nonrepetitive actions make up events.28

Macrosocial facts are not directly observable facts, however. They are theo-retical working models—synchronic models of social structures and diachronicmodels of historical events—the elements of which are people acting in waysthat they hope will succeed.29 When Thucydides describes macrosocial facts asconstraints on choice and explains these facts as the emergent consequence ofmany people’s actions, he constructs theoretical models in which the causalmechanism is rational choice plus hope of success for the constituent actions. Byexplaining macrosocial facts as the emergent consequence of many people’sactions and explaining these actions by rational choice—also constrained bymacrosocial facts—he is the pioneer of methodological individualism.30

Most macrosocial facts involve group solidarity, which raises the “free-rider”problem of why people cooperate in the group interest when each person knowsthat one’s own effort makes no difference to the group’s success, which one willenjoy regardless of whether one helps attain it. Thucydides solves the problem intheory by pointing out how the Greeks solved it in practice—through surveil-lance and “selective incentives,” that is, individual rewards and punishmentswhereby each person is better off cooperating than defecting.31

In sum, the theoretical case histories of revolution in Thucydides are cumula-tive causal sequences in which structure and event constrain agency, agency con-stitutes structure and event, and rational choice explains agency. Thucydides’ the-ory of revolution, which explains revolutionary violence during these “intrigues,”

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28. “The macro-to-micro and micro-to-macro transitions arise through the effects of variousactors’ actions on other actors’ actions.” Coleman, Foundations, 500. A transparent example isThucydides’ explanation of why when two armies clash, the right flank of each army envelops theenemy’s left: each soldier tries to cover his unprotected right side with the shield of the man next tohim. Thucydides 5.71. As this example illustrates, the same social actions constitute a structure orevent depending on the observer’s theoretical interest.

29. “Most of the objects of social science . . . are abstract objects; they are . . . the result of con-structing certain models . . . in order to explain certain experiences—a familiar theoretical method inthe natural sciences.” Popper, Poverty, 135. “What we call ‘social facts’ are . . . mental models con-structed by us from elements which we find in our own minds. . . . What we call historical facts . . .are of precisely the same character as the more abstract or general models which the theoretical sci-ences of society construct.” F. A. Hayek, “The Facts of the Social Sciences,” in Individualism andEconomic Order (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), 57–76, at 69, 71.

30. Understood in Weber’s sense: “Handeln . . . gibt es für uns stets nur als Verhalten von eineroder mehreren einzelnen Personen. . . . Für die verstehende Deutung des Handelns durch dieSoziologie sind . . . [soziale] Gebilde lediglich Abläufe und Zusammenhänge spezifischen Handelnseinzelner Menschen, da diese allein für uns verständliche Träger von sinnhaft orientiertem Handelnsind. . . . Auch eine sozialistische Wirtschaft müßte soziologisch genau so ‘individualistisch,’ . . . ausdem Handeln der Einzelnen, . . . deutend verstanden werden.” Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft,1:9,10, 13. Cf. Popper, Open Society, 2:91, 324; Boudon, Analysis of Ideology, 7, 199.

31. The free-rider problem is a Leitmotiv in Thucydides: “Everyone supposeth that his own neglectof the common estate can do little hurt and that it will be the care of somebody else to look to that forhis own good, not observing how by these thoughts of everyone in several the common business isjointly ruined.” Thucydides 1.141. Cf. Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goodsand the Theory of Groups, 2d ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971); MichaelHechter, Principles of Group Solidarity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); Mark I.Lichbach, The Rebel’s Dilemma (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995).

is a special case of rational-choice theory, namely, rational choice plus hope ofsuccess for revolutionary violence. Theoretical generalization about historicalcausation here is generalization about hope of success and revolutionary violence,not generalization about “structural causes” and “revolutions as wholes.”32

III. RATIONALITY IN REVOLUTION

Since to explain revolutionary violence by rational choice is to argue that the per-petrators hope it will succeed, the next question is what independent evidenceexists that they have hope of success—evidence other than the violence to beexplained. Without independent evidence for hope of success, situational logic isa circular “if I were a horse” explanation. This old methodological joke in socialanthropology comes from Radcliffe-Brown and alludes to the apocryphal farmerwho to find a stray horse stepped into the corral, chewed on some grass, andasked himself, “Now if I were a horse, where would I go?”33

In explanations of revolutionary violence, the “if I were a horse” fallacy takestwo forms. One form it takes is imputing a motivation for violence without cit-ing evidence that the perpetrators have this motivation, so that situational logicproceeds not from fact but from gratuitous assumption—usually some sociolog-ical cliché—and the only evidence for the explanation is the violence to beexplained.

Consider, for example, one historian’s explanation of the Bogotá political riotof 9 April 1948 in which perhaps 2,500 people perished. A lone assassin shotLiberal party chief Gaitán, whose supporters (abetted by Liberal police) burnedand looted downtown Bogotá until the army repressed them. The riotersdestroyed “symbols of power, inequality, and exclusion,” the historian argues,because they were “bent on turning society upside down.” By the historian’s ownaccount, however, the rioters attacked Conservative targets and spared bipartisanhigh society and gringo establishments. What evidence shows that theydestroyed symbols of Schließung in order to turn society upside down? Nothingbut the say-so of Canetti on crowd behavior and the hearsay of two nonpartici-pant observers debriefed in 1979.34

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32. Thucydides 3.45, 3.82–83. Thucydides sustains Stinchcombe, Theoretical Methods, 14, 119,against Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia,and China (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 295, 5, in this Methodenstreit. Cf.Rod Aya, “The Anatomy of ‘Social’ Revolution; or, The Comparative Method as a Confidence Game,”International Review of Social History 37 (1992), 91–98; William H. Sewell, Jr., “ThreeTemporalities: Toward an Eventful Sociology,” in The Historic Turn in the Human Sciences, ed.Terrence J. McDonald (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 245–280.

33. Max Gluckman, Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965), 2, 34;E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Theories of Primitive Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 24,43, 108. Far from dying out, the “if I were a horse” fallacy is rampant in anthropology today. Cf. RodAya, “Geertz Hurts,” in Miniature etnografiche, ed. Henk Driessen and Huub de Jonge (Nijmegen:Sun, 2000), 140–144.

34. Herbert Braun, The Assassination of Gaitán: Public Life and Urban Violence in Colombia(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 158–159, 168–169, 242.

The other form the “if I were a horse” fallacy takes is claiming that certainsocial conditions cause revolutionary violence without citing evidence that theseconditions motivate people to gang up and kill—no evidence that people commitrevolutionary violence in order to remedy or protest the conditions in question.

Consider, for example, one sociologist’s theory of revolution. The root causeof “state breakdown and revolution,” the sociologist argues, is “political stress,”which is the combined result of “state fiscal distress,” “elite mobility and com-petition,” and “mass mobilization potential,” which owe to “population pres-sure.” Rapid population growth not only causes price inflation—straining gov-ernment budgets and reducing real wages—but also intensifies job competitionamong power elites and enlarges towns, filling them with young people, so thatpolitical institutions get stressed, and revolutionary violence erupts. Too manyrats competing for too little cheese devour each other.35

This theory of revolution is an “if I were a horse” explanation. The facts citedto support it (the impressive aggregate data on social conditions that allegedlycause revolutionary violence) include no evidence that the perpetrators seek tochange or protest these conditions through violence—no evidence that they fightand kill their political enemies in order to get jobs or boost wages. The theory isa monument of causal inference based on an obvious fallacy.

Again, to explain revolutionary violence by rational choice is to argue that theperpetrators hope it will succeed, but the explanation is circular unless there isindependent evidence for hope of success—evidence other than the violenceitself. How can situational logic avoid circularity when direct independent evi-dence for hope of success only sporadically turns up in historical sources?

This problem did not trouble Thucydides, who not only had more intensivefieldwork than Malinowski and knew the “native point of view” inside out, butalso pioneered the use of circumstantial evidence.36 Since facts are clues only inrelation to a theory—a point curiously missed in a celebrated methodologicalmanifesto for the Geisteswissenschaften—the question is how to register clues forthe explanation, that is, circumstantial evidence for hope of success.37

Lawyers and detectives solve the problem by equating hope of success withmeans and opportunity to satisfy motive. That way, evidence of motive, means,and opportunity is circumstantial evidence for hope of success. Thanks to thismethodological expedient, the situational logic of law and detection can assumerational choice—assume that people act to satisfy motive given means andopportunity—and explain social action by motive, means, and opportunity.38

Likewise, Thucydides’ theory of revolution can assume rational choice andexplain revolutionary violence by motive to be satisfied, means to gang up, andopportunity to get away with it.

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35. Jack A. Goldstone, Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World (Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 1991), 8–12, 83–156.

36. Thucydides 1.22. This notoriously vexed passage on method is about circumstantial evidence. 37. Carlo Ginzburg, “Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm,” in Myths, Emblems, Clues

(London: Hutchinson, 1990), 96–125, 200–214. 38. Scholars who deny and disparage rational-choice theory yet reiterate it in commonsense terms

when they explain social action are too numerous to mention. Terminology is theory’s Trojan horse.

Arguing Thucydides’ theory of revolution on comparative evidence drawnfrom modern research is beyond the scope of this essay. But a few historical gen-eralizations about the motive, means, and opportunity for revolutionary violenceare in order. The motive is power and redress—revolutionary vanguards wantpower to accomplish their ideological mission, rebel rank and file want a redressof grievances. The means are material assets, politico-military organization, andstrategic know-how, either on hand, built up in time, or furnished by allies—insurgents need money and weapons, they must hang together lest they all hangseparately, and they must know how to gang up.39 The opportunity is weak oppo-sition—enemies must be deterred, distracted, or divided. Arguably, these gener-alizations fit the facts of comparative history, including those that Thucydidesreports, though evidence cannot be cited here.

IV. CONCLUSION

This essay codifies the explanatory theory and theoretical method implicit inThucydides’ account of city-state revolutions. The theory is rational choice; themethod is situational logic. The method solves the problem of structure, event,and agency—the micro-macro problem and covering-law problem—by way ofmodels whose elements are people doing what they hope will succeed; structureis people doing structure; events are people making events.40 Structure, event,and agency are like game, match, and players, except the play is for keeps—structures get established, “reproduced,” transformed, or abolished; events getout of hand; and players get killed.

Sociologists and historians who make sense of revolutions all do it likeThucydides: they analyze the narrative history into strategic actions and reactions,explain these actions and reactions by rational choice under constraints that includestructures and events, and document situational logic with independent evidence forhope of success. But they seldom own up on theory and method and preach whatthey practice.41 On the contrary, they often profess “structural” or “cultural” theo-ry—or more often renounce theory altogether—but hide rational choice and situa-tional logic under the table like hard liquor for use “when they really need help.”42

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39. Assets, organization, and know-how are also known as physical, social, and human capital.Coleman, Foundations, 304.

40. The phrase “doing structure” comes from Alvin W. Gouldner, The Two Marxisms:Contradictions and Anomalies in the Development of Theory (New York: Seabury, 1980), 102.

41. Andreas Suter, Der schweizerische Bauernkrieg von 1653: Politische Sozialgeschichte—Social-geschichte eines politischen Ereignisses (Tübingen: Bibliotheca Academica, 1997), is a brilliant excep-tion that proves the rule; Gregor Benton, New Fourth Army: Communist Resistance along the Yangtzeand the Huai, 1938–1941 (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1999), is a brilliant example that highlights it.

42. George C. Homans, “Bringing Men Back In,” in Certainties and Doubts: Collected Papers,1962–1985 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1987), 1–15, at 15. Confessions of a tippler: “I sim-ply assumed that the peasants and others whose actions I narrated were acting rationally. . . . I justdidn’t make such a big fuss about it.” Skocpol, Social Revolutions, 325.