The rationality of revolution

Abstract.

Between 950 and 1950, European states experienced four short intervals of rapid social, political and economic change. Each such period followed the introduction of a macroinvention in information and communication technology. Here these two sets of events are linked by a rational theory of revolution in which the optimal system for producing the information to allocate a society's resources depends on the relative importance of fixed costs and network effects. Variations in these parameters can trigger four types of revolution –contractual, consensual, preemptive and prescriptive– each of which captures the essential features of one of the historical periods of change.