ABSTRACT
The position of the leader may not be completely secure from an ambitious peer or nominal subordinate, a recurrent theme in Tullock. In the early years of the American Revolution, for example, wrangling over political and military prominence was a persistent bane. George Washington was challenged, albeit indirectly, by generals Horatio Gates and Charles Lee in league with a faction of the Continental Congress, the so-called “Conway Cabal,” although to no avail. A series of partly concentric and partly overlapping circles that vary in size and distance from the leader describes the party and its constituency. Ideology is one defining element that differentiates revolutionary leaders and their parties from pirates and gangsters or criminal syndicates. Triumphant revolutionaries may be guided by a theory according to which “the laws of nature and of nature’s God” endow individuals with “inalienable rights” that governments are established to protect.
