Within short he began implementing a radical programme of social, cultural, economic and political reform, which he dubbed the "Democratic and Popular Revolution" (French: Révolution démocratique et populaire, or RDP).

Corrupt officials, "lazy workers" and supposed counter-revolutionaries were tried publicly in the Popular Revolutionary Tribunals (French: Tribunaux populaires de la Révolution, TPRs).

[5] The Burkinabé CDRs, however, took a wider approach – Sankara intended them to serve as a new foundation of society, a platform for popular mobilization[6] which would revolutionize life in Burkina Faso and restructure its social space on a local level.

[10] The Ugandan Catholic priest Emmanuel Katongole has written that the CDRs operated as "administrative tentacles and vigilante groups rather than incubators or exemplars of what a genuinely transformed new society might look like.

[12] In Ghana, ruled by the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC), the military junta led by Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings, groups likewise dubbed the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution were instituted on 31 December 1984, possibly inspired by the Burkinabé variant of the name.

Compaoré, who would go on to rule Burkina Faso for almost three decades before being ousted from power by the 2014 Burkinabé uprising (at least partially inspired by Thomas Sankara[16]), immediately set out to reverse most of the reforms made in the name of the "Democratic and Popular Revolution".