Curtis Ryan
From Resilience to Revolution challenges theories about state-building, authoritarian institutions, and foreign intervention. Longevity, Yom argues, shouldn't be conflated with durability. His analysis reverses expectations about foreign intervention and regime durability. He shows that external support is ultimately destructive, as it allows regimes to avoid compromise with domestic rivals and even facilitates coercion in domestic politics. This book is rich theoretically and empirically, and its implications range well beyond Middle East politics.
Wendy Pearlman
This meticulously researched, beautifully written book is comparative historical analysis at its best. Sean L. Yom elegantly distills complex dynamics into three causal pathways that show how, from the same initial condition of social conflict during early state-building, varying degrees of external intervention affected autocratic leaders' building of narrow or broad coalitions, with lasting consequences for regime durability. Scholars will learn from his insights on the coalitional origins of institutions, while policymakers should heed his conclusions about the counterproductive effects of meddling to prop up dictators.
From the Publisher
This meticulously-researched, beautifully-written book is comparative historical analysis at its best. Yom elegantly distills complex dynamics into three causal pathways that show how, from the same initial condition of social conflict during early state-building, varying degrees of external intervention affected autocratic leaders' building of narrow or broad coalitions, with lasting consequences for regime durability. Scholars will learn from his insight about the coalitional origins of institutions, while policy-makers should heed his conclusions about the counter-productivity of meddling to prop up dictators
"From Resilience to Revolution challenges theories about state building, authoritarian institutions, and foreign intervention. Longevity, Yom argues, shouldn't be conflated with durability. His analysis reverses expectations about foreign intervention and regime durability. External support, he argues, is ultimately destructive, as it allows regimes to avoid compromise with domestic rivals, and even facilitates coercion in domestic politics. The book is rich theoretically and empirically, and its implications range well beyond Middle East politics."
