Measuring Revolution

Domestic political upheaval has profound consequences, both for the country in which it takes place and for international politics. It is therefore striking that there is no standard cross-national time-series dataset that focuses specifically on the concept of revolution. This article aims to address that gap by introducing a new dataset on revolutionary governments and leaders, 1945–2004. Revolutionary leaders tend to be younger, to have longer tenure in office, and to be more prone to international conflicts than non-revolutionary leaders. This new dataset facilitates quantitative analyses of a variety of questions about both the causes and consequences of revolutionary governments.