Mass Political Action and Revolutionary Capital

Abstract: Why are most mass political action, when they occur, of very short duration? Why does the onset of revolution and mass protests, seem often so unpredictable? We provide unified answers to these questions by building a model based on the concept of revolutionary capital, a state variable that evolves stochastically and endogenously over time, and the stock of which is the basis for a revolutionary leader's decision to engage intertemporally in mass action. The key feature of the equilibrium dynamics is the hazard rate of the status quo to the scale of action. The predictions of the model are consistent with preliminary empirics of reported anti-government protests across 162 countries over 1990--2018.