ABSTRACT
Notwithstanding many decades of research in history and the various social sciences, the concept of revolution remains primarily undefined and difficult to agree upon. It is generally conceded that the first great revolution in the modern sense of the term was the French Revolution. The Egyptian revolution is an excellent case in point. There was an explosion that destroyed the old regime. There were attempts at creating a new set of institutions sustaining a new political order. As a rule, where there is no state there is no revolution. The institutionalized framework of politics is not sufficiently strong to allow for the concentration of power that is necessary to implement revolutionary change. In studying Egypt, the variable of stateness is a necessary tool of modern political sociology. In analyzing the Egyptian revolution, scholars point at rapid changes, constant shifts, and the general difficulty of comprehending the exact nature of what is actually revolutionary in the Egyptian revolution.
