Throughout history, and especially in this century, revolutions have played a central role in human history. Yet, as both the Iranian revolution of 1978-79 and the revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe made clear, revolutions are rarely predictable nor attributable to a single cause.

Debating Revolutions brings together some of our best social and political thinkers to address two central questions of revolution: Can they be predicted? And what are their causes? In the debating style of Contention, the award-winning journal from which the essays are culled, the contributors—among them Charles Tilly, Jack A. Goldstone, Edward Berenson, Said Amir Arjomand, and Daniel Chirot—focus on the Iranian, Eastern European, and French revolutions, and on the theoretical and comparative aspects of revolutionary study. Unlike most anthologies, Debating Revolutions has a format that enables scholars to engage one another in discussion, thus resolving many disputes and addressing dilemmas, rather than merely outlining differences.