If history teaches anything about the causes of revolution—and history does not teach much, but still teaches considerably more than social-science theories—it is that a disintegration of political systems precedes revolutions, that the telling symptom of disintegration is a progressive erosion of governmental authority, and that this erosion is caused by the government’s inability to to function properly, from which spring the citizens’ doubts about its legitimacy.
—Hannah Arendt, “On Civil Disobedience.”
