InstitutionClaim Cited
Cuba's 1961 literacy campaign mapped learners, trained mass brigades, placed young volunteers with rural families, and joined teaching to revolutionary mobilization, rapidly expanding basic literacy while making education a powerful instrument of political formation.
How can a country rapidly bring basic literacy to dispersed adults while training enough teachers, learning from local conditions, and preserving learners' political agency?
Organizational CaseClaim Cited
Iran's 1978–79 revolution brought religious networks, bazaar communities, students, workers, secular nationalists, liberals, and leftists into mass opposition to monarchy, repression, inequality, and foreign dependence. The coalition could coordinate around the Shah's removal and Ayatollah Khomeini's symbolic leadership without agreeing on the authority structure that 'independence, freedom, Islamic government' would create.
How can a heterogeneous movement coordinate against autocracy without allowing shared opposition to conceal incompatible post-victory constitutions?