Recently, some of the most sustained demonstrations we have seen have been in Brazil and Thailand. Both upheavals fall under the broad theme elucidated by the late Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington in his 1968 book, "Political Order in Changing Societies," in which he posits that the more developed and complex a society turns out to be, rather than become more satisfied, the emerging middle class of that society becomes less satisfied and therefore demands more efficiency and accountability from the government. The more complex a society becomes, in other words, the more it requires more nimble and responsive institutions. This means that social and political upheaval is a constant. Brazilians are dissatisfied that the country's newfound wealth is not being more equally distributed, even as their government is not becoming more efficient. Thailand's political divisions are based in part on the wealth disparity between the capital of Bangkok and the far poorer, rural countryside. These are the problems of relative success, but they can nonetheless lead to fierce and prolonged disturbances. And in the case of Thailand, they can lead even to a military coup.
All these demonstrators, from Ukraine to Tunisia to Thailand, have had an ally: postmodern communications technology. Not only does social media facilitate crowd organization, but so does satellite television, which requires only enough bodies to fill a screen in order to provide a crowd with global significance. And with global significance -- the knowledge that you are not alone against a hated regime, but have virtual supporters worldwide -- comes a lift in morale that, in turn, brings along with it courage and the sense of empowerment for those in the street.
The crowd can thus be small in size but vast in meaning. Among the many themes in the late Nobel Laureate Elias Canetti's 1960 book, "Crowds and Power," is his concept that crowds provide an escape from loneliness. Inside a crowd you are protected, for your passions are those of the person next to you, and the next, all flowing together. If a hated regime represents one type of crowd formation, the demonstrators in the square represent another. And from that comes their strength.
The virtual crowd is now everywhere, whether as a horde of Facebook followers tracking an entertainment star or as a throng of people in sync on Twitter supporting or opposing some person or idea. Postmodern civilization encourages loneliness and anxiety, for which joining a crowd constitutes an escape.
Thus, we should expect crowd formations to be a permanent feature of global politics. And the nightmare of leaders, particularly authoritarian ones, is that of being overthrown by a crowd as in Ukraine. Chinese leaders live with this fear, especially as their country's rate of economic growth is expected to continue its decline. The clerical regime in Iran fears ending up like the Shah's -- toppled by a crowd. That is why the ayatollahs are so keen to see a relaxation of economic sanctions against their country.
Perhaps the most famous crowd formations in early modern and modern history were those of the 1848 revolutions in Europe, when crowds of bourgeois intellectuals and working class radicals rose from France to the Balkans demanding the end of authoritarian imperial orders. But with the exception of the Orleans monarchy in France, those regimes all ultimately survived because divisive ethnic interests undermined the universalist longings of the demonstrators. It was all a close-run affair, though, that took many months to play out. Had the 1848 rebellions succeeded, the history of Europe thereafter would have been dramatically different, with different power arrangements that could very well have precluded the world wars of the 20th century.
Always keep 1848 in mind. For with technology now providing a tipping point in a world of vast urban concentrations, and with more and more human beings living in dense, claustrophobic settings, crowds will be at the very center of history in the 21st century -- and, therefore, at the center of geopolitics.
