Definitions

State: Monopoly of violence, stock of resources required to enforce political decisions in a territory. Territory and violence are the key components. In terms of tangible assets, the state centrally includes army, police, jails, weapons (instruments that are used to threaten/prevent attempts at disobedience). A state can exist without schools or hospitals, but it cannot exist without weapons (Weber is relly the genius who discovered these features of the state, and the territorial character of the modern state, a complete innovation).

Regime: Institutions, formal or informal, of access to the state (i.e., to the control of resources that back up political decisions). Examples: in a democracy, the form of access to the state is elections (competitive and participatory).

Government: Specific group of people in control of the state. E.g.: Bush Jr government, or Obama government. State and regime remain the seam, but the team of people in charge changes.

Now, finally, Revolution: is it a change in government, regime, or state? Does it involve broader social change?

Think about the revolutions that we know:

Latin America Independence Revolutions: change in all three political levels, including the state, (because new territories are created, different from the old Iberian Empires), but no social change.

Soviet Revolution: change in Regime, Government, and Society, but not in the State (which in the beginning has the same old Russian territory).

French Revolution: paradigmatic case of regime change, but no change in state (France remains France). Change in social order? Yes, no more aristocracy.

American Revolution: change in State (the British empire breaks up), but not too much social change.

Mexican Revolution: no change in state, change in government and regime (but from one subtype of dictatorship to another subtype, caudillo to party), and broad social changes, which nevertheless fall short of socialism.

And the Cuban Revolution?