Thomas Kuhn (1962)
from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) publ. University of Chicago Press
IX. The Nature and Necessity of Scientific Revolutions
..Political revolutions are inaugurated by a growing sense, often restricted to a segment of the political community, that existing institutions have ceased adequately to meet the problems posed by an environment that they have in part created...
..In both political and scientific development the sense of malfunction that can lead to crisis is prerequisite to revolution...
..Political revolutions aim to change political institutions in ways that those institutions themselves prohibit. Their success therefore necessitates the partial relinquishment of one set of institutions in favour of another, and in the interim, society is not fully governed by institutions at all...
..In increasing numbers individuals become increasingly estranged from political life and behave more and more eccentrically within it. Then, as the crisis deepens, many of these individuals commit themselves to some concrete proposal for the reconstruction of society in a new institutional framework. At that point the society is divided into competing camps or parties, one seeking to defend the old institutional constellation, the others seeking to institute some new one. And, once that polarisation has occurred, political recourse fails...
Because they differ about the institutional matrix within which political change is to be achieved and evaluated.. the parties to a revolutionary conflict must finally resort to the techniques of mass persuasion, often including force..."