Based on materials taken from "Keesing's Record of World Events," the Guide surveys "other than legal" opposition movements and parties dealing with 166 states. As the editor notes, most of the revolutionary movements have failed, especially the extreme left-wing groups in West Europe and Latin America.
Of course, there is a certain arbitrariness as to which groups are included and how much space they are allotted, but there is some interest in the quantitative results of this fine survey. Among the states listed as facing no revolutionary or dissident movements are Iceland, Norway, and New Zealand, and one intuits the accuracy of this assessment. But in most cases, the absence of groups suggests only the inadequacy of categories or reporting, not a peaceful polity: this applies to Mongolia, Qatar, Ciskei, Bophuthatswana, Swaziland, Botswana, Zambia, Burundi, Rwanda, Mali, Guinea, Belize, Brazil, and Uruguay. It is also noteworthy how many of the supposedly non-revolutionary states are islands, including Fiji, Western Samoa, Nauru, Kiribati, Mauritius, Maldives, Madagascar, Cyprus, Malta, Ireland, Grenada, Barbados, Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, Trinidad and Tobago, St. Christopher and Nevis, St. Lucia, Jamaica, and Haiti. At the other end of the spectrum, movements against the governments of India, Czechoslovakia, the United Kingdom, and El Salvador fill up 9 pages each. These are exceeded only by those against Poland (11 pages), Lebanon (13), France (14), and Israel (21).
