>
> Wasn't this Tocqueville's theory about the French Revolution? IIRC, he
> thought it was caused (among other things) by improving economic
> conditions that then got worse, i.e. by disappointed relative
> expectations, not by absolute misery.
>
To my likely intellectual impoverishment I haven't read de Tocqueville. But my understanding is that this was a big factor in the collapse of state socialism. Ben Friedman wrote a - dry and whiggish, but I think well argued - book not too long ago arguing that sustained economic growth is the basic condition for center-left success in developed countries.