Gordon Tullock explains his theory of popular revolutions and palace coups
01 Apr 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of bureaucracy, Gordon Tullock, income redistribution, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: Arab Spring, autocracy, military coups, palace coups, popular revolutions
[I]n most revolutions, the people who overthrow the existing government were high officials in that government before the revolution.
If they were deeply depressed by the nature of the previous government’s policies, it seems unlikely that they could have given enough cooperation in those policies to have risen to high rank. People who hold high, but not supreme, rank in a despotism are less likely to be unhappy with the policy of that despotism than are people who are outside the government.
Thus, if we believed in the public good motivation of revolutions, we would anticipate that these high officials would be less likely than outsiders to attempt to overthrow the government.
From the private benefit theory of revolutions, however, the contrary deduction would be drawn. The largest profits from revolution are apt to come to those people who are (a) most likely to end up at the head of the government, and (b) most likely to be successful in overthrow of the existing government. They have the highest present discounted gain from the revolution and lowest present discounted cost.
Thus, from the private goods theory of revolution, we would anticipate senior officials who have a particularly good chance of success in overthrowing the government and a fair certainty of being at high rank in the new government, if they are successful, to be the most common type of revolutionaries.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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