“The political cycle typical of revolutions can be viewed as a series of movements of men along the political scale. Preliminary to the upheaval, the once centralized distribution begins to polarize into two extremes as the incumbents increasingly antagonize those who feel themselves oppressed. When the distribution has become so split that one extreme is imposing by force polices abhorred by the other extreme, . . . a clique of underdogs seizes power . . . Finally, violence exhausts itself, a new consensus is reached on the principles of the revolution, and the distribution becomes centralized again.”

—Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, 120–21