Introduction; Part I. Doing Macroscopic Social Science: 1. A critical review of Barrington Moore's social origins of dictatorship and democracy; 2. Wallerstein's world capitalist system: a theoretical and historical critique; 3. The uses of comparative history in macrohistorical research; Part II. Making Sense of the Great Revolutions: 4. Explaining social revolutions: in quest of a social-structural approach; 5. Revolutions and the world-historical development of capitalism; 6. France, Russia, and China: a structural analysis of social revolutions; Part III. A Dialogue about Culture and Ideology in Revolutions: 7. Ideologies and revolutions: reflections on the French case, byWilliam H. Sewell, Jr; 8. Cultural idioms and political ideologies in the revolutionary reconstruction of state power; Part IV. From Classical to Contemporary social revolutions: 9. What makes peasants revolutionary?; 10. Rentier state and Shi'a Islam in the Iranian revolution; 11. Explaining revolutions in the contemporary Third World; 12. Social revolutions and mass military mobilisation; Conclusion: reflections on recent scholarship about social revolutions and how to study them.