Staffing the Revolutionary State

• In Event: New Political Elites: Formation, Consolidation, and Contestation

Abstract

Revolutionaries face strong incentives to carry out purges following state capture. They are also under pressure to consolidate their revolution in the face of challenges, while simultaneously delivering radical change. We theorize five ideal types to explain who is called on to join the new state elite: returners, promotees, outsiders, holdovers, and revolutionaries. As we argue, the prevalence of these ideal types varies depending on the duration of the revolutionary mobilization and the level of participation. We empirically validate our argument using novel biographical data on 542 high-ranking state officials appointed in the aftermath of the 1952 Egyptian Revolution. As we show, following a low-participation, short-duration revolution, revolutionaries are in short supply, leading to a reliance on holdovers and promotees. Supplementary analyses suggest that while revolutionaries make up only a minority of the new state elite, they are more likely to be placed in leadership positions and in strategically important ministries.

Authors

• Neil Ketchley, University of Oxford

• Gilad Wenig, University of California, Los Angeles