New Possibilities for Analysing Revolution: Introducing a Database of Revolutions of the 21st Century

The revolutionary process in the 21st century has undergone significant changes, and with the decay of democracy and the transformation of the world order, the number of revolutionary episodes with new goals and tactics has only increased. Across the Global South, with the population growth, millions of people began to take part in revolutionary protests, and in the Middle East and the Sahel, the rise of radical Islam led to the emergence of bloody Islamist armed insurgencies. Existing data sources focus on longer historical periods, which complicates the analysis of current processes, and have a number of shortcomings, such as the “streetlight effect,” i.e. the omission of cases that can distort the effects associated with the data. Therefore, we present our own database describing successful and failed revolutionary events from 2000 to 2024 with their unique characteristics, such as goals, tactics, number of participants, the roles of the military, other states and ethnic minorities. The article describes all the presented variables, their operationalization and the data collection process with examples, as well as the methods used to minimize such problems as selection bias and description bias. Empirical tests of conventional factors of the emergence, success and outcomes of revolutions are conducted as well, depicting the compliance of the results with the theory of revolutions. As a result, the database expands the opportunities of the research of revolutions, which are integral elements of the changing international order and the reconfiguration of the World System.