Abstract: This paper views party politics as a channel through which democratic institutions may affect individual revolutionary behavior, and offers a framework in which the consequences of party politics on both the likelihood and the patterns of revolutions can be assessed. The revolution to democracy is formulated as an asymmetric global game, and the coordination problem between a single political group (party) and a continuum of ordinary citizens (popular) under incomplete information concerning the strength of autocracy is addressed. The presence of a pro-democracy group, regardless of hiss action, is shown to facilitate revolution. Moreover, the diversity of revolution, including Party-led popular revolution, popular revolution, and one-side action by party, is characterized as equilibrium outcomes under different interplay between the revolutionary cost and the party's strength. The novel predictions of model are applied to explain the cases of students movement and the revolutionary wave in 1989, and the efficient ways for democratization promotion are proposed.
Key Word: Party politics, Collective action, Global games, Revolution
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