groups who lose a political struggle in one arena will seek to expand the struggle into
new arenas of contestation if they expect it to improve their chances of success.
For Thucydides and Aristotle, the defining moment of civic breakdown is the
capture of the institutions of state for partisan purposes. These institutions no longer
serve to regulate and constrain competition for wealth and honor, but intensify it by
enabling one faction to enrich itself, or advance its standing, at the expense of others.
Those in power may use the institutions of state to expel, punish or kill opponents. At the
international level this can find expression in efforts to so improve one’s strategic
position as to make challenge by adversaries exceedingly difficult. The Athenian alliance
with Corcyra, followed by the Megarian decree and siege of Potidaea is a case in point.
At either the domestic or international level, this kind of behavior is most likely to
happen when conflict has become sufficiently acute that one or more factions feel the
need to act preemptively; they prepare for strike out before they are victimized. Once, a
cycle of violence and retribution begins, it becomes difficult to stop. Thucydides
provides a chilling description of how runaway civic tensions escalated into an utterly
destructive civil war (stasis) in Corcyra.
Aristotle offers Rhodes, Thebes, Megara and
Syracuse as his examples.
For Lenin and some academic students of revolution, civic unrest and revolution
is most likely to occur when a sharp economic downturn follows a period of sustained
economic growth.
Plato, Aristotle and Thucydides are also sensitive to class conflict,
and believe it will be most acute when discourses that reconcile diverse classes through a
widely shared and overarching commitment to the community as a whole lose their
authority. In such circumstances, the wealthy and high-born become more rapacious and
the d mos less accepting of their subordinate economic and political status. Their
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Convention