Mark N. Katz
Personal Information
Description
Mark N. Katz is a professor of government and politics at George Mason University. He writes on Russian foreign policy, the international relations of the Middle East, transnational revolutionary movements, and other subjects. He earned a B.A. in international relations from the University of California at Riverside in 1976, an M.A. in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in 1978, and a Ph.D. in political science from M.I.T. in 1982. Before starting to teach at George Mason University in 1988, he was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution (1980-81), held a temporary appointment as a Soviet affairs analyst at the U.S. Department of State (1982), was a Rockefeller Foundation international relations fellow (1982-84), and was both a Kennan Institute research scholar (1985) and research associate (1985-87). He has also received a U.S. Institute of Peace fellowship (1989-90) and grant (1994-95), and several Earhart Foundation fellowship research grants. He was a visiting scholar at the Hokkaido University Slavic Research Center (June-July 2007), and at the Kennan Institute (January 2008). He is the author of The Third World in Soviet Military Thought (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), Russia and Arabia: Soviet Foreign Policy toward the Arabian Peninsula (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), Gorbachev's Military Policy in the Third World (Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1989), Revolutions and Revolutionary Waves (St. Martin's Press, 1997), and Reflections on Revolutions (St. Martin's Press, 1999). He is also the editor of The USSR and Marxist Revolutions in the Third World (Wilson Center/Cambridge University Press, 1990), Soviet-American Conflict Resolution in the Third World (U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1991), and Revolution: International Dimensions (CQ Press, 2001). Katz is also a contributor to the Open Society Institute’s Eurasianet, and to Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH).
Books
Reflections On Revolutions
"Religious fundamentalist, extremist nationalist, and democratic revolutions have occurred in various parts of the world since the Cold War. Since much of the theoretical literature on revolutions examines either the "great" revolutions or the Marxist-Leninist revolutions in Third World countries, a re-examination of revolution in the post-Cold War era is crucial. Mark N. Katz rereads important works on revolutions to cull concepts that are still relevant and to update ideas that have changed since their publication."--BOOK JACKET.
Revolutions and revolutionary waves
Revolutions upset the existing international order. But not all revolutions upset it equally. In Revolutions and Revolutionary Waves, Mark Katz focuses on what is arguably the most disruptive kind of evolutionary wave: the kind that spreads by sparking "affiliate revolutions" in other countries. Katz compares three revolutionary waves - Marxist-Leninist, Arab nationalist, and Islamic fundamentalist - to unearth the complex relationship patterns of revolutionary actors within them. He also makes predictions on the fate of the Islamic fundamentalist wave, arguing that it suffers from the same internal problems and contradictions that led to the collapse of the Marxist-Leninist and Arab nationalist revolutions.