An Evolutionary Approach to Techniques of Political Violence

Yannick Veilleux-Lepage1

The Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence

Arts Faculty Building, Library Park, The Scores,

St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9AX, Scotland, UK

E: yvl@st-andrews.ac.uk

T: +44 (0)7454 096477

1. Introduction

In the decade and a half since September 11, 2001, the field of terrorism studies has

seen tremendous growth, from a relatively minor sub-field of security studies to one of the

fastest-expanding areas of research in the English-speaking academic world (Jackson, Gunning,

and Smyth 2007; Shepherd 2007) with significant government investment in terrorism-related

projects, and thousands of new books and articles published over the past few years. Despite

this exponential growth, the field continues to attract sharp criticism for its perceived “tendency

to treat contemporary terrorism as a new phenomenon” and for its “persistent lack of

historicity”(Jackson 2007, 40). Similarly, in thought-provoking critiques of the state of

terrorism studies, Duyvesteyn (2004) laments that “a substantial input by historians in the

debate about the nature of terrorism has been lacking,”2 (p. 440) and that previous historical

research is largely limited to the “obligatory historical introduction” (p. 442), and tends to be

merely a stepping-stone toward discussing other aspects of the phenomenon and largely devoid

of independent historical research. Similarly, Martha Crenshaw bemoaned in her lengthy and

excellent collection, Terrorism in Context (1995), that the limited interest in historical research

on terrorism has given way to a prevalence of historical determinism, anachronistic imposition

of current conceptions, selection biases, and eclecticism.

In fact, among the large-scale and cross-case surveys which seek to examine the

evolution of terrorism (e.g. Ross 2006; Dekmejian 2007; Hoffman 1998; Law 2009), most

research concentrates on the contemporary appearance of terrorism and likens recent instances

to similar forms of violent behaviour in the past, seeking to “universalize terrorism as a

ubiquitous phenomenon” (Erlenbusch 2012, 10), which in turn anachronistically imposes

current conceptions of terrorism onto historical events, which had different aims, used different

techniques, and were interpreted in different ways during their time. Moreover, the tendency

towards historical anachronism is coupled with a predilection for the limited application of

historical cases, seemingly chosen specifically to reinforce preconceived ideas or to suit the

predetermined needs of scholars, which in turn fails to consider the wider context and the

mechanism which drives the spread and acceptance of new techniques of political violence.

The aim of this paper is not to make a case for history and historians as producing the

only valuable knowledge on terrorism, far from it. Instead, it seeks to provide a framework –

drawing on evolutionary theory – for a stronger and analytically defendable incorporation of

historical insights into the study of terrorism. Mainly, this paper seeks to demonstrate how

evolutionary theory can be employed as a useful metaphor to provide a causal explanation of

1 Yannick Veilleux-Lepage receives funding from the University of St Andrews, the Social Science

and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Canadian Centennial Scholarship Foundation.

2 While thought provoking, Duyvesteyn's critique is somewhat outdated. In recent years, several

excellent wide-ranging surveys of specific ethno-national or religious conflicts have been published by

historians well established within the field of terrorism studies, most notably Bruce Hoffman’s Anonymous

Soldiers (2015), a riveting and deeply researched history of the Jewish underground terror campaign against

Arabs and colonial British authorities in a bid to establish the state of Israel and Richard English’s Armed

Struggle: The History of the IRA (2004), a brilliantly detailed history of the Irish Republican Army.

how and why new techniques of political violence emerge, transform, spread, endure, and

sometimes disappear altogether. Prior to the introduction of this framework, this paper provides

a brief, and somewhat simplified, overview of evolutionary theory and underscores the

importance of the three core principles of Darwin’s evolutionary theory: variation, transmission

and selection/retention. Afterwards, drawing on social movement theory, it is proposed that we

can reasonably define terrorism as a label affixed to some claim-making techniques which

represent the deployment of threats and violence that falls outside the forms of claim-making

routinely accepted as legitimate within a given current regime. Thus, techniques of contention

are introduced as an appropriate unit of analysis to which evolutionary insights can be applied.

Subsequently, the notion of claim-making and the fundamental characteristics of repertoires of

contention are explored in order to advance the understanding of how and when techniques

associated with terrorism emerge. Finally, this paper introduces a framework for the future

exploration of the evolution of political violence, building on Darwin’s core tenets.

2. Overview of Evolutionary Insights

The evolutionary framework of the biological sciences is the legacy of Charles Darwin,

whose book the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1964 [1859]) became the

springboard for the development of almost all evolutionary theory thereafter. What made

Darwin’s ideas unique, and the reason he remains celebrated today, was not his proposition

that the environment encouraged organisms to adapt to it, but rather his delineation of precisely

how the environment encouraged, forced, or prompted organisms to adapt to it and his

annunciation of how such adaptations worked (Sterling-Folker 2001, 71). The essence of the

evolutionary argument is that most of the behavioural and physical characteristics of a species

evolve because they help the organism survive and reproduce: “Those whose genes promote

characteristics that are advantageous in the struggle to survive and reproduce are rewarded

through the transmission of their genes to the next generation” (Kitcher 1985, 42). Inherently,

this process has three main components.

(1) Variation. Members of a relevant population vary with respect to at least one

characteristic with selective significance; “some genetic variation must be present in the

species” for, “if all individuals are the same, then there is no basis for change” (Thayer 2004,

30).

(2) Heredity. There exist copying mechanisms to ensure continuity over time in the

form and behaviour of entities in the population. “This variation must affect and improve what

evolutionary theorists term ‘fitness’ – a member of a species is fit if it is better able than others

to survive and reproduce” (Thayer 2004, 30).

(3) Selection. The characteristics of some entities are better adapted to prevailing

evolutionary pressures and, consequently, these entities increase in numerical significance

relative to less well-adapted entities, “there must be a heritable variation in fitness: the

characteristic must be passed from parents to offspring” (Thayer 2004, 30).

Regarding these three principles, there firstly must be some explanation of how

variation is generated. The sources of change in Darwinian evolutionary models are

spontaneous and random mutations which occur between generations, which represent

difference among individuals (Aldrich et al. 2008). Secondly, there must be an explanation of

how useful variations, which effectively provide solutions to specific environmental problems,

are retained and passed on. In biology, this mechanism of transmission usually involves genes

and DNA (Aldrich et al. 2008) and thus variations are passed on via reproduction. This

mechanism of transmission is a slow intergenerational process of genetic inheritance which

involves the transfer of hereditary traits through gametogenesis and fertilization (Ayala 1982,

55-56). Lastly, in order to understand why particular variations are retained whilst others are

eliminated, it is important to examine potential forces of selection. In biology, when entities

are better adapted to their environment than others, they therefore survive longer and generally

are more successful in producing offspring or copying themselves than others (Aldrich et al.

2008). The mechanism of selection identified as the concept of fitness, implicit in the ‘survival

of the fittest’ phrase, refers to “the relative ability of a complex organism to perform the

functions demanded by the environment for survival” (Spruyt 2001, 113). The greater the

ability to meet such demand, the greater the success at reproduction is likely to be. In fact,

Darwin argues that “Natural Selection acts exclusively by the preservation and accumulation

of variations which are beneficial under the organic and inorganic conditions to which each

creature is exposed” (Darwin 1952 [1859], 60). In other words, Darwin’s understanding of

fitness relates to the selection of the fittest and winnowing of the less fit: an organism which is

more fit than others, that is more adapted to the environmental, will continue to survive whereas

those which cannot meet such demands in an absolute sense will die out in the long run. This

Darwinian view lends itself to interpreting evolution as directional and as progressive.

However, contrary to the popular interpretation of Darwinist theory, evolution is undirected,

lacks a general pattern of development, and is unpredictable, since random mutations and

selection by exogenous events drive the process (Spruyt 2001, 113-114). Therefore, as stressed

by Gould (1980; 1989), there is no reason to believe that later stages in evolution yield more

complex, or more intricate, solutions to environmental challenges.

Despite being a cornerstone of the current biological understanding, there is nothing

inherently biological in Darwin’s evolutionary theory. In its broadest form, it is a logical

conclusion from a set of specific assumptions, rather than a concrete description of a specific

biological process (Dennett 1995). Darwin’s theory represents the logic of evolution, rather

than the process of biological evolution; in fact, it took several years after the first publication

of Darwin’s The Origin of the Species until its biological mechanisms, first discovered by

Gregor Mendel, were uncovered by the scientific community. Taken out of its biological

context, Montgomery (2011) argues that Darwin’s logic can be stated as consisting of the three

following assumptions: (1) “a population of agents have variation in fixed traits, behavioral

patterns, or tendencies”; (2) these traits, patterns or tendencies, can be “transferred to other

agents either through reproduction or emulations”; and (3) the “relative rate of this

[transmission] is partially determined by these traits’ usefulness in adapting the agent to its

[ever-changing] environment” (p. 12). By expanding the understanding of evolution beyond its

restrictive biological context of genetic systems, the process of evolution can be framed in more

holistic terms as the “sequential transformation of a system of replicating entities” (Durham

1991, 23) allowing scholars to explain a variety of important phenomena within other

disciplines.

3. Terrorism, Techniques of Contention and Units of Inheritance

An evolutionary explanation, according to Durham (1991), begins with the need to

clearly identify an appropriate unit of inheritance. The identification of such a unit – whether

it is genes, ideas, techniques, values, words, or even entire languages – depends on the nature

and logic of the theory of selection itself and represents the cornerstone of such an application

of evolutionary insight: “every field must struggle with understanding its most basic units and

level” (Dietl 2008, 89). In fact, identifying an adequate and appropriate unit of inheritance does

not merely represent semantics or philosophy, but instead has generated a considerable amount

of confusion in biology (Hull 1998, Ghiselin 1997; Gould 2002) as a result of conceptual

problems on the meaning of causality (Dietl 2008). It is therefore not surprising that to find

similar problems are developing in attempts to apply evolutionary insights in social sciences.

In the original formulation of Richard Dawkins’ (1976) work on cultural evolution, the

unit of inheritance was the meme, that is to say an idea, behaviour, or style that spreads from

person to person within a culture. According to Dawkins, memes are replicated and transmitted

among carriers. These memes structure minds, inform worldviews, behaviours, customs,

artefacts and institutions (Dawkins 1976). Unfortunately, Dawkins' conceptualization of

memes has provided no significant body of empirical research, with the notable exception of

studies of bird song (Lynch 1996; Podos, Huber and Taft 2004; Lynch et al. 1989). In fact, the

literature on the subject has remained almost entirely devoted to theoretical antagonisms,

internecine battles, and scholastic elucidations of prior writings on memes (Aunger 2006, 178).

According to Mokyr (2006, 315) the difficulty in isolating the correct unit of knowledge or

culture has derailed much of Dawkin’s proposition of ‘memes’ as an analogy of genes.

Despite these previously encountered difficulties, it is generally acknowledged that one

of the methodological advantages of an evolutionary approach is its flexibility in terms of units

of analysis (Rapkin 2001; Thomspon 2001). That said, the ontological reality of these entities

as causal agents in the process of selection largely has been taken for granted (Dietl 2008, 90).

Consequently, individual human beings, cities, states, nations, nongovernmental organizations,

firms, policies, behaviours, genes, ideas, norms, institutions, and societies of states, have all

been suggested, amongst others and with mixed success, by various scholars as candidates for

appropriate units of selection which may be “examined fruitfully from an evolutionary

standpoint” (Rapkin 2001, 53). Having recognised the importance of selecting an appropriate

unit of inheritance, Gould (2002) proposes two useful sets of criteria to evaluate the

appropriateness of a unit of inheritance. Firstly, the unit must have a discrete and definable

beginning, an equally discrete and definite ending, and sufficient stability to merit continuous

recognition as the same ‘thing.’ Secondly, the unit must manifest the essential properties that

permit them to function as an evolutionary entity with the capability to act as a causal agent in

the process of Darwinian selection. Ultimately, the principle of inheritance must prevail and

successive variation must in some sense be retained and then passed on (Hull et al. 2001). In

other words, the unit of selection must be able to pass, differentially and in a heritable manner,

favourable properties onto future generations. Without such continuity in heredity, differential

reproductive success will impart absolutely no Darwinian advantage.

The difficulty in selecting an appropriate unit of inherence to survey the emergence,

transformation, and diffusion of terrorism is further complicated by the fundamental

disagreements within the field of terrorism studies about what constitutes terrorism and the

profound and detrimental reliance on case studies that often lack generalizable

characteristics/attributes. In fact, so rampant is the debate on what actually constitutes terrorism

that Brannan et al. (2001) observed that the field is a deeply “perverse situation where a great

number of scholars are studying a phenomenon, the essence of which they have (by now)

simply agreed to disagree upon” (p.11). Inevitably, definitions have evolved into increasingly

complex classifications in attempts to satisfy the needs of each party’s specific inquiry and

interests, amongst which the common definitional elements are (1) the use of violence or threat

of violence for political purposes (Hoffman 1999); (2) a differentiation between the immediate

victims and the ultimate target, immediate victims serving as message generators to reach

various audiences and conflicting parties (Schmid 1982; 2011); and (3) the indiscriminate

targeting of civilians, non-combatants or other innocent and defenceless persons (Goodwin

2006; Schmid 2011). However, as Beck (2008) argues, such neat conceptual boxes rarely

reflect the reality of political violence: does the killing of noncombatants during wartime count

as terrorism?; does the killing of soldiers not actively engaging in a conflict, such as the 2000

USS Cole bombing or the 1983 United States barrack bombing in Beirut, represent acts of

terrorism?; and how about the killing of young men in a society in which mandatory

conscription takes place?

Although definitions cannot, as such, be viewed in a binary fashion as either true or

false, Tilly (2004) argues that “in social science useful definitions should point to detectable

phenomena that exhibit some degree of causal coherence – in principle all instances should

display common properties that embody or result from similar cause-effect relations” (p. 8) As

such, rather than continuing the protracted definitional debates, it is herein proposed to consider

terrorism simply as a label affixed to claim-making techniques which represent the deployment

of threats and violence that falls outside the forms of claim-making routinely accepted as

legitimate within a given current regime. Grounded in social movement theory which stresses

an integrative approach to all form of political contention (McAdam et al. 1996; 2001; Tarrow

1998), this conceptual formulation views terrorism as existing along a spectrum of claim-

making techniques, rather than a uniquely distinct phenomenon boxed in by formal discreet

categories.

Claim-making techniques of contention represent techniques employed by claim-

makers in order to contest or change the existing political status quo in the face of an adversary

such as a state and its institutions (Tilly 1995).3 Claim-making techniques, along with all other

techniques available to humankind, represent an epistemological entity and are, in their barest

form, sets of instructions to manipulate environments (Mokyr 1998, 122) or to alter human-

made systems. For example, vaccinations and quarantines are techniques to prevent the spread

of certain diseases, just as chemotherapy and radiotherapy are techniques to prolong life or to

reduce symptoms associated with cancer (Mokyr 1998, 129). All of these techniques combined,

along with many others, make up the repertoire of modern medicine in the Western world, that

is, the ‘toolbox’ of all techniques which medical professionals can utilize in order to treat or

care for patients. Similarly, and in very general terms, all claim-making techniques available

to a given society at a given time, combined, represent a repertoire of contention (Tilly 1995).

In fact, akin to a doctor selecting the most appropriate technique from the annals of modern

medicine to cure a patient, Tilly (1995) contends that people making claims against powerful

adversaries almost always select their techniques, which he calls ‘tactics’, from the determined

‘repertoire’ that exists – and that they are aware of – in their given place and time, to make

their claims. Repertoires represent only small subsets of all possible techniques feasibly

available in the world and, according to Tilly (1995):

The word repertoire identifies a limited set of routines that are learned, shared, and acted out

through a relatively deliberate process of choice. Repertoires [of contention] are learned

cultural creations, but they do not descend from abstract philosophy or take shape as a result

of political propaganda; they emerge from struggle. People learn to break windows in protest,

attack pilloried prisoners, tear down dishonored houses, stage public marches, petition, hold

formal meetings, organize special-interest associations. At any particular point in history,

however, they learn only a rather small number of alternative ways to act collectively (p. 26).

Amongst the techniques contained in claim-makers’ repertoires of contention, techniques

which include the deployment of threats and violence in a way which is deemed to fall outside

the accepted norms of claim-making are understood to be ‘terroristic.’ This conceptualization

represents an important stipulation, as it signifies a marked departure from labelling claim-

makers who employ such techniques as ‘terrorists,’ which blinds us to the fact that these

individuals typically employ diverse political strategies, not all of them violent. In other words,

3 This criterion excludes so-called ‘state-terrorism’ as, while important and deserving scholarly

attention, the actions of states, elites and countermovement seeking to reinforce and maintain the status quo

constitute the contraposition of social movement’s perspectives.

‘terrorists’ are rarely just terrorists, and thus the label 'terrorist' rather than 'claim-maker'

represents a kind of reification or essentialising device that obstructs the complex and variable

nature of claim-making. Although Richardson (2006) argued that “if the primary tactic of an

organization is deliberately to target civilians, it deserves to be call a terrorist group,

irrespective of the political context in which it operates” (p. 6), claim-makers rarely employ a

single primary static technique. As such, treating terrorism as a ubiquitous phenomena, and

those to engage in it solely as ‘terrorists’ decontextualizes and thereby misunderstands the

adoption and use of such claim-making techniques by focusing too intently on the

characteristics of the claim-makers who employ it, to the exclusion of their dynamic and much

wider claim-making relations with other actors.

Applying Gould’s (2002) two criteria for units of inheritance to techniques of

contention demonstrates the appropriateness of techniques of contention as units of inheritance

on which evolutionary processes act: Firstly, techniques of contention are clearly identifiable

and distinguishable from others and have clearly distinguishable beginnings and endings. For

example, many public techniques of contention popular today in the West, such as marches,

demonstrations, boycotts, sit-ins, and strikes, began to emerge in the nineteenth century

(Mueller 1997; Oliver and Myers 1999), whilst charivari, the practice of assembling and

pounding pots and pans outside the home of an accused moral offender which was once popular

in 18th century France has long since vanished from the French repertoire of contention (Tarrow

1998, 39; Tilly 1978, 144-145). Secondly, techniques of contention, since they represent

separate ‘recipes’ containing sets of instructions on how to make a claim, can be retained and

then passed on, and are subject to adaptation. Moreover, techniques of contention remain

largely immune to the most serious objections launched against Dawkins’ memes: that there is

no guarantee that ideas or memes are replicated identically from mind to mind, and that

language or other mediating tools can impede the replication process of such tacit knowledge

(Boyd and Richerson 2000, 155). In contrast, however, techniques of contention can, in

principle, be codified into lists of explicit instructions on how to engage in ‘claim-making’,

and although some components of this process may remain tacit and, thus be in part vulnerable

to the some of the same critiques, the teaching process creates built-in incentives to replicate

content accurately.

3. Repertoire of Contentions

Tilly’s definition of repertoires of contention encompasses three noteworthy elements.

Firstly, repertoires are temporal and spatial entities and thereby associated with specific

historical periods within specific societies “which change over time, but only glacially”

(Tarrow 1998, 31). Secondly, there is a suggestion that the make-up of the repertoires and the

choice of techniques are constrained. Lastly, there is an emphasis upon the practical

constitution: repertoires of contention do not emerge out of abstract thinking but rather out of

struggle, activities of everyday life and, perhaps most importantly, out of interaction with the

‘adversary.’

3.1 Repertoires as Temporal and Spatial Entities

Tilly’s assumption that repertoires are temporal and spatial entities which change over

time, but “only glacially” as a result of major structural changes in states, such as major

fluctuations in interests, opportunities, and organizations (Tarrow 1998, 31), means that

specific repertoires can be identified with specific historical periods within specific societies.

In Contentious Politics (2008), Tilly revisits the narrative of contention in Great Britain

previously laid out in his Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758-1834 (1995) and argues

that that the prevalent forms of contention in Great Britain evolved from the eighteenth to the

nineteenth century. Similarly, Tilly’s earlier exploration of contention in France in The

Contentious French (1986) also identifies two distinctive repertoires between the eighteenth to

the nineteenth century France. Tilly’s treatment of the various repertoires of contentions in

France and Great Britain supports his claim that particular repertoires of contentions are indeed

specific to given historical periods and to specific societies; despite some similarities, methods

of contention used by the 18th century French were markedly different to those used by either

the 18th century British, or the 19th century French. This diversity in techniques of contention

is directly linked to a core characteristic of cultural evolution: cultures evolve in partial

isolation, either geographical, historical, or social, and tend to diverge from one another as

small differences accumulate generation by generation.

That being said, a cursory examination of contention politics leads one to notice that

specific techniques, while being the products of specific contentious relationships and time

periods, are not necessarily contained to one given society at a given time. Instead, they are

employed across a multitude of diversified contexts. Wada (2012) calls such techniques which

have spread beyond the specific societal context in which they emerged ‘modular’ techniques.

The notion of modularity, which draws on the field of diffusion studies (e.g. Soule 2004; Strang

and Soule 1998; and Givan, Roberts, and Soule 2010), provides a lens by which to explain how

techniques spread and can be exported by claim-makers (McAdam & Rucht 1993; Tarrow

1993). This represents a particularly important line of inquiry as it permits the analysis of

techniques of contention and the mechanisms which led to their transportation across

repertoires. The determination of whether a particular technique has been subjected to an

evolutionary process and represents an adaptation of an existing technique, a new technique

altogether, or whether it is simply a repetition of a technique which already exists within

another society’s repertoire of contention, is in fact crucial to determining whether a particular

technique does indeed represent a watershed moment in the evolution of terrorism.

3.2 Constraints on Choices and the Role of Propositional Knowledge

Tilly suggests that repertoires constrain behaviour by limiting the choices of techniques

available for claim-making and laying the foundation for future choices. While Tilly (1992)

makes numerous references to improvisation within repertoires and recognizes that individuals

will experiment with new techniques in the search for tactical advantage, he contends that

individuals seeking to make a claim are in part bound by previously acquired knowledge of

techniques, as the “prior history of contention… constraints the choices of action currently

available, in partial independence of the identities and interests that participants being to the

action” (Tilly 1995, 29). Moreover, Tilly (1978) contends that “any given populations tend to

have a fairly limited and well-established set of means for actions on shared interests” (p. 39).

In other words, rather than invent techniques de novo, groups typically revert to one of the

handful of familiar and well-established techniques, even when those might be less-than-

ideally suited to achieving the desired outcome (Tilly 1986, 4).

Nonetheless, Tilly’s work comes short of explicitly demonstrating why and how

individuals are faced with constrained choices when selecting a technique from the available

stock. In order to do so, it is useful to ponder Mokyr’s work (1998; 2002) which argues that

the growth of physical technologies to harness nature for the benefit of mankind in recent

centuries was driven by the accumulation of ‘useful’ knowledge and the declining costs of

access to it. According to Mokyr (2002), useful knowledge “deals with natural phenomena

that potentially lend themselves to manipulation” (p. 3) which potentially can be applied to

generate economic value or otherwise benefit human beings. In this sense, useful knowledge

does not refer to truths or falsehoods, or to any epistemological feature of its origin. Instead,

the concept of useful knowledge refers to knowledge which has practical application.

Further building on Michael Polanyi’s (1962) notion of ‘tacit knowing’, Mokyr (1998;

2002) partitions useful knowledge into two distinct subsets. One is propositional knowledge,

which describes and catalogues natural phenomena, the relationship between them. This

roughly translates to what we know about nature, in the sense that it explains what things are

and how they work. The other is prescriptive knowledge, or rather repertoires of techniques,

which contains instructions that can be executed to manipulate nature. On the one hand,

propositional knowledge is defined as the union of “observation, classification, measurement

and cataloguing of natural phenomena,” and the “establishment of regularities, principles, and

‘natural laws’ that govern these phenomena and allow us to make sense of it” (Mokyr 2002, 5)

including formalized knowledge such as scientific knowledge; practical informal knowledge

such as geographical knowledge; artisanal and agricultural knowledge; folk wisdoms; and any

other natural regularity and phenomenon that can be exploited in some way. On the other hand,

prescriptive knowledge consists of the “blueprints, whether codified or tacit, of techniques that

society could carry out if it wanted” to manipulate nature for human purposes (Mokyr 2006,

312). In their barest form, these techniques are akin to a set of instructions or ‘recipes’ to

manipulate environments and alter man-made systems. In sum, prescriptive knowledge defines

what a society is capable of doing, and differs from propositional knowledge in that it defines

a society’s power over, and not just its knowledge of, nature.

Prescriptive knowledge and propositional knowledge are profoundly intertwined: all

(prescriptive) techniques require a set of propositional knowledge that, to some degree,

‘explains’ the phenomenon that is being manipulated by the technique. This set of propositional

knowledge is the epistemic base of the technique. Mokyr’s (1998; 2002; 2006) core contention,

is that the emergence and evolution of techniques contained within a society’s repertoire

depends on the quality of their epistemic base. While techniques must necessarily be bound to

propositional knowledge, there is no requirement for this epistemic base of any technique to be

‘true’, rather it need only to conform to the accepted propositional knowledge of the time period.

In that sense, the epistemic base is bounded from below by a generated support: the very least

a society must know about a technique is that ‘it works’. However, as the epistemic base widens,

and society knows more about the underlying natural processes at work, this in turn has an

important impact on the further refinement of existing techniques or the emergence of new

ones. In this sense, the composition of a repertoire is limited by the body of propositional

knowledge existing within a society.

Mokyr’s distinction between propositional knowledge and prescriptive knowledge

provides two partial insights to comprehend why certain techniques fail to emerge within a

given repertoire at a given time. Firstly, a given technique cannot emerge within a society

which lacks the required body of propositional knowledge. Secondly, whilst the existence of a

minimum epistemic base is a necessary condition for a technique to emerge, it does not describe

anything like a sufficient condition for that technique to emerge: just because society has the

propositional knowledge to feasibly develop a new technique, this will not necessarily lead to

new prescriptive knowledge.

However, Mokyr’s notion of minimum epistemic base does not provide convincing

insights into why relatively simple claim-making techniques, such as sit-ins, failed to emerge

earlier (Tarrow 1998, 97). Surely, explaining the nonexistence of sit-in within the repertoire of

contentions 18th century France, by simply stating ‘no one had thought about doing that’ is

unsatisfactory. Instead, a more convincing line of argumentation focuses on the prescriptive

knowledge of claim-makers about the inner workings of their society itself. A shortcoming of

Tilly’s work is his failure to consider and adequately explore how this knowledge constrains

both individuals’ choices of techniques, and the overall make up of a society’s repertoire of

contention. In fact, Tilly’s assertion that repertoires are more or less a fixed set of actions

followed by claim-makers during episodes of contention, treats actors as passive receptors and

appliers of such mechanisms, and demonstrates little consideration of the claim-makers’

understanding of their own societies and the historical periods in which they live (Brachet-

Marquez 2014, 26). Claim-makers, therefore may have an entirely differently conceptions of

what these techniques mean, and hence different expectations of what they may lead to or

accomplish, than we would have now. In this sense, sit-ins failed to emerge in the 18th century

France because repertoires of contention are at once structural and social concepts, involving

not only what people do when they are engaged in conflict with others and what they know

how to do, but also how they understand and attribute meaning to their actions at a given time

(Tarrow 1998, 30).

In order to properly understand how structural and societal norms influence and further

constrain repertoires of contention, it is useful to return to and expand on Mokyr’s notion of

propositional knowledge. In its original formulation, Mokyr limits propositional knowledge

exclusively to knowledge about nature, rather than that applying this concept to peoples’

knowledge about society: knowledge about social phenomena and the social systems which

coordinate human behaviour and create structures of human interaction (Eggertsson 2015, 720;

North 1994, 359-360). However, it is in fact useful to apply the concept of propositional

knowledge to knowledge about society in the same way as the concept has already been applied

to knowledge about nature.

The social world has a very different origin from the natural world. Humans did not

create nature, and although we only partly understand it, its laws constrain our activities and

shape our opportunities: individuals were subject to the laws of gravitation before Isaac Newton

actually discovered the nature of these forces. The social world is different in that it is man-

made, and yet, individuals live in their societies without understanding social forces any better,

or perhaps understanding them even less, than they understand the principles of nature. As such,

individuals rely on normative social theories or models (ethics, religious beliefs), explicit

theories of social regularities, and the measurement and classification of social phenomena

(Maddison 1982) to understand their social environment. These normative and positivist

theories and expectations represent how individuals perceive their social environment and its

inner workings. All societies contain a huge stock of knowledge about the perceived inner

working of the society in question, such as lessons learned, practical skills, and experience,

which is stored in the form of behavioural and social norms. Like propositional knowledge

about nature, propositional knowledge about society does not need to be ‘true’ in the sense of

having been empirically tested or falsified. Rather, it simply needs to be more or less accepted

as a ‘truth’ by the society in order for it lead to the emergence of social techniques.

Returning to the question of techniques of contention, expanding Mokyr’s definition of

propositional knowledge to include knowledge about how societies function provides

additional means by which to explain the constraints on repertoires. As will be described in

greater detail in the subsequently, at the core of politics of contention is a form of interaction

between claim-makers and those who seek impose or maintain the status quo. As such,

techniques of contention are directly linked to claim-makers’ understanding of the societal

system in which they operate, and incidentally, their understanding of how the population and

the authorities will react to various techniques of contention. As the body of propositional

knowledge about society expands, and new beliefs and notions emerge, the epistemic base on

which repertoires of contention rests widens.

Therefore, when faced with a new technique of contention, one must ponder whether

this technique emerged as a result of technological changes, or rather as the result of a new

understanding of society’s inner workings. This focus represents a significant departure from

Tilly’s analysis which views changes to repertoires as glacial and only as the result of major

structural changes in states. Instead, it is posited that changes to repertoires occur not

necessarily due to actual changes in state itself, but also due to changes in peoples’

understanding of society’s inner workings, namely, their understanding of the relationship

between themselves and the state.

3.3 The Role of Struggles and the Relationship with ‘Authority’

Tilly’s conceptualization of repertoires of contention stresses that they emerge out of

interaction with the ‘adversary.’ Tilly uses the analogy of improvisational jazz music, or

spontaneous skits by a troupe of actors to describe this form of interaction (Tilly 2005: 27):

composers provide the initial "head" for a jam session, but the improvisations depend on a

group of players over whom they have little control and who interact with one another, with

opponents, and with those they are trying to attract (Tilly 1983, 463). Just as with a musical

riff, the process implies a “paradoxical combination of ritual and flexibility,” (Tilly 1977, 22)

in which neither element is allowed to completely dominate the other, lest the performance lose

its effectiveness. Moreover, he argues, “people learn a limited set of collective action

techniques and they tailor” them to “the immediate situation and to the responses of other

parties, e.g. antagonists, authorities, allies, observers, objects of their action, and other people

somehow involved in the struggle” (Tilly 1987, 33; 37).

Access to repertoires of any subset of techniques is not limited to individuals seeking

to make a claim against powerful adversaries. The adversaries themselves also have access to

a repertoire containing the various techniques to respond to collective action and dissent. These

techniques can range from enacting legislative changes to military repression of dissent or even

summery imprisonment or assassination of activists and dissenters. As such, claim-makers’

repertoires of contentions can be understood as being mirrored and directly influenced by the

existing authority’s own repertoire to enforce the status quo. The notion of a mirrored

relationship between claim-makers and authorities, which informs and influences claim-

makers’ choices of techniques and repertoires, can be observed in Roland Crelinsten’s work

(1989; 2002). When choosing to employ a particular technique contained within a society’s

repertoire of contention, claim-makers do so anticipating the authorities’ reactions based on

previous experience and their particular understanding of their adversary. In order to

understand a claim-maker’s strategic decision-making process (when made in relation to their

adversaries), it is useful to distinguish between factors influencing the costs and benefits of the

particular technique, and the factors related to the goals of such action (Kriesi 2004, 78).

Regarding both, claim makers may anticipate positive, negative, mixed, or non-existent

reactions. Claim makers will, therefore, make strategic choices on the basis of their

appreciation of the specific chances of reform and of failure, and the specific risks of repression

or facilitation they face as a result of their efforts. As Gamson and Meyer (1996) suggest, the

existing literature has focused extensively on this decision making process and has largely

ignored the question of “relative opportunity” presented by the ability to choose between

various techniques (p. 283). Gamson and Meyer (1996) further argue that the opportunity for

the use of a particular technique may shift based on the ever-changing configuration of actors

and the structural context. Once a claim-making process between claim-makers and the

authorities is set in motion, it will contribute to the modification of the larger political context.

The mechanism involved in this interaction can be understood in similar terms as a two-

player ‘repeated game’ in game theory, in which the players can both observe public (possibly

imperfect) information regarding other players' past actions. As both players, the claim-makers

and the authorities, interact with each other – either by attempting to change or preserve the

status-quo – their adversaries obtain additional information on their opponents, including

which techniques exist in their respective repertoires, under which conditions their opponents

will employ particular techniques, and so on. This additional information represents an increase

in the propositional knowledge about society, and thus forms the epistemic base for the

emergence of new techniques. In this sense, existing repertoires of contention are subject to

and influenced by the societal relationships between those making a claim and their adversaries,

and more specifically dependant on the acquisition of new propositional knowledge about

society from their interactions.

4. Framework on the Evolution of Techniques of Contention

If we define evolution as “the sequential transformation of a system of replicating

entities,” it becomes evident that culture itself can be subject to evolutionary analysis (Durham

1991, 23). In this sense, the prescriptive knowledge of any society, namely plans, recipes, or

rules – including standards of behaviour (Patrick 2001, 142) and techniques of contention –

represents a unique ‘cultural pool’, analogous to a gene pool. These ‘cultural pools’ of

knowledge change continually (Geertz 1973, 44; Ruyle 1973) and may also differ drastically

from another different or isolated society’s ‘cultural pool.’

Returning to the three Darwinian principles of variation, heredity, and selection, the

framework advanced in this paper identifies three generic properties required to enable the

evolutionary process to be applied to techniques of contention; (1) a source of variation, or the

continual appearance of new variants upon which selection can act, (2) mechanisms of

transmission, or means by which the units are reproduced; (3) processes of transformation,

which explain the retention and rejection of alternative variants over time.

The following table applies these three generic properties to the evolution of techniques of

contention, comparing it to genetic evolution.

System Properties Genetic Evolution Evolution of Contention

Source of Variation

(Principle of variation)

Random mutations or

recombinations of

genetic material

Deliberate or random innovations as a

result of a change in propositional

knowledge

Transmission Mechanism

(Principle of Heredity)

Sexual reproduction

(Vertical parent-to-

offspring transmission)

Relational ties: Intra-societal and

inter-societal diffusion

Non-relational ties: Inter-societal

diffusion

Transforming Forces

(Principle of Selection)

Natural selection

Cultural selection:

(1) feasibility; (2) legitimacy, and (3)

effectiveness.

(Modified from Durham 1991)

4.1. Source of Variation

Variation amongst replicating units supplies the raw material for selection in evolving

systems. In biology, the process by which this occurs is traditionally understood to be largely

the result of random or ‘blind’ mutation. According to the prevalent understanding of modern

evolutionary synthesis, there are in fact two sources of genetic variation: mutation and

recombination. Both sources of genetic variation are considered unpredictable phenomena in

terms of the time they occur, the genes they affect, and the individual organisms concerned

(Dobzhansky 1951 [1937], 1970; Simpson 1984 [1944]). In contrast, variations within cultural

systems are generally understood to be strategically and deliberately generated. For example,

when Witt (2003) asserted that “cultural, institutions, technology, and economic activities

evolved according to their own regularities” (p. 8), he highlighted that, in contrast to biological

evolution, human intentionality and purposefulness play an important role in human-made or

cultural systems. Witt (2003) further argues that variation in socioeconomic or cultural realms,

where intelligent humans beings act on insight and premeditated plans, occurs as a result of

humans responding to their changing environments by deliberately designing and intelligently

choosing strategies.

Cultural variation, including variations in techniques of contention, are therefore

consciously developed, since humans possess foresight and creativity, learn from experience,

modify existing practices, synthesise old habits, and invent novel solutions to current or

anticipated necessity (Patrick, 2001). This represents an important distinction in the

relationship between subjects and their environment in the context of cultural and biological

evolution. Whilst in “classic Darwinian models, environmental impacts alter subjects in an

involuntary fashion,” in this models applied to techniques of contention, “humans can influence

their environment as opposed to being mere passive reactors to the changes that effect it”

(Thompson, 2001: 4-5). In the biological world, environmental changes refer to changes –

whether they be the introduction of a new predator, a shortage of food or shelter, or changes in

climate – which make it difficult for an organism to survive in its current form and within the

setting in which it lives. When dealing with the evolution of techniques of contention,

environmental change refers to changes in the body of propositional knowledge within a

society, which can then affect the likelihood of certain techniques of contention (the unit of

inheritance) being employed.

As previously described, propositional and prescriptive knowledge are profoundly

intertwined: all (prescriptive knowledge) techniques require an epistemic base: a set of

propositional knowledge that, to some degree, ‘explains’ the phenomenon that is being

manipulated by the technique, and which determines what a society can do. Throughout history,

propositional knowledge limited societies’ access to feasible techniques because they lacked

the required epistemic base. On the other hand, the existence of some part of propositional

knowledge that could serve as an epistemic base for a new technique does not necessarily

guarantee that such a technique will emerge. In other words, the existence of an epistemic base

creates the opportunity for the emergence of new techniques but does not guarantee that it will

be taken advantage of. This can be compared to evolutionary biology in that environmental

change provides the opportunity for adaptation, but does not make adaptation inevitable. If the

epistemic base of a technique is narrow, little is understood about how and why a certain a

technique works, and the evolution of further related techniques is thereby limited. Conversely,

once the epistemic base is broadened as a result of a greater understanding of the technique’s

‘inner workings’, resultant techniques can evolve much further. The real driver, therefore, of

new and emerging techniques is the growth of the knowledge base which underpins the

technique.

When faced with the emergence of a new variant of an existing technique, if one wishes

to explain the source of variation, one must therefore ask oneself ‘what propositional

knowledge represents the epistemic base which supports this new variation?’, and ‘when/how

did this propositional knowledge emerge?’ As aforementioned, humans can influence “their

environment as opposed to being mere passive reactors to the changes that effect it” (Thompson,

2001: 4-5). As such, it is crucial to understand the changes in society that alter a society’s body

of propositional knowledge, and thus lead to the emergence of new variations of techniques

which were previously unthinkable or impossible. These changes in propositional knowledge

can include changes in social, cultural, economic, political or religious contexts, and changes

in the nature of the relationships between claim-makers and their adversaries (and thus the

status quo).

The impact of changes in propositional knowledge, namely related to changes in the

nature of the relationship between claim-makers and their adversaries, on the emergence of

new techniques of contention, is consistent with the insights derived from a great deal of work

within the domain of political economy. Enders and Sandler (1993, 2002), Enders, Sandler and

Cauley (1990) and, Im, Cauley and Sandler (1987) found that claim-makers respond

strategically to counterterrorism measures when deciding which technique of contention to

employ, thereby generating ‘substitution effects.’ The argument goes as follows: when claim-

makers observe an increase in a particular government counterterrorism program, they will

switch techniques and pursue techniques less likely to be affected by the government’s efforts.

For instance, Enders and Sandler (1993) demonstrate that when the United States installed

metal detectors in airports in the 1970s, aeroplane hijackings decreased but other forms of

terrorism increased. This insight can be applied to the evolutionary model at hand: the

introduction of counterterrorism measures alters claim-makers' understanding of their

adversaries and of their strategic choices (choices of techniques and targets), this new

propositional knowledge (e.g. a change in the environment), in turn may create an incentive

for claim-makers to innovate and develop new techniques of contention.

4.2. Transmission Mechanism

Genetic transmission is a slow intergenerational process of inheritance, in which the

transfer of heritable traits occurs through gametogenesis and fertilization (Patrick 2001, 144).

Cultural transmission, by contrast, is a rapid, flexible, and continuous process, involving

imitation and exploiting the ever proliferating avenues of human communication. Unlike

genetic transmission, cultural transmission is not limited to parents and offspring, but instead

involves various ‘teachers’ and ‘learners’ and could, in principle, involve the transmission of

information between any one individual to any other individual(s). In other words, cultural

transmission can include the various transmission ratios: many-to-one (in the ‘it takes a village

to raise a child’ tradition), one-to-few, or one-to-many, (Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman, 1981;

Boyd and Richerson 1985).

Since repertoires of contention are inherently flexible and evolve as a result of changing

propositional knowledge, claim-makers can, therefore, observe other groups' techniques of

contention and may choose to imitate said techniques in order to gain a tactical advantage over

their adversary. When one group of claim-makers uses a particular technique successfully,

others are then more likely to adopt this technique (Oberschall 1989; Tilly 1993; 1995). In

other words, “innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among members

of a social system” (Rogers 1983, 14). According to traditional theories of diffusion, there are

two main forms of channels along which information, leading to the borrowing or imitation of

techniques of contention, can be transmitted: (1) direct, or relational ties, which can occur either

within the same society (intra-societal diffusion), or between societies (inter-societal diffusion)

and (2) indirect, or non-relational ties (Soule 1997), which typically involves only inter-societal

diffusion. With regards to inter-societal diffusion, it is important to note that while a particular

technique of contention can be invented more than once, by different people in different

societies and thus emerge in two places at once, the rate of adoption far exceeds the rate of

variation (Biggs 2013). As such, in most cases where claim-makers use a new variation of an

existing technique for the first time in their society, they are likely adopting it from others who

have previously used it rather than inventing a novel solution themselves.

Relational models of diffusion maintain that information flows between actors through

their direct interpersonal networks (Strang & Meyer 1993). Therefore, the rate at which

information diffuses varies with the level of interactions between actors. As argued by Soule

(1997), social science research has benefitted greatly from relational models of diffusion. In

particular, researchers have attempted, and succeeded to various degrees, in mapping the ties

and communications between individuals, in order to track intra-societal diffusion of

techniques of contention (e.g. Singer 1970). When scholars have been unable to obtain precise

data on who spoke to whom, or who is connected to whom, they frequently employ inferences

to establish that direct contact has occurred (e.g. Bohstedt and William 1988; Hedstrom et al.

2000). Scholars have also inferred direct, interpersonal communication via shared

organizational membership, arguing that “people are sharing ideas, communicating, and

facilitating the diffusion of social movements because they belong to the same movement

organizations” (Givan et al. 2010, 10). Moreover, since individuals often belong to multiple

organizations, they also serve as conduits of information between organizations (e.g. Morris

1981; Stokes 1995; Wood 2003; Patras and Zeitlin 1967). Lastly, scholars have been able to

infer that interpersonal communications occur via geographical proximity (Givan et al. 2010,

11).

With regards to inter-societal diffusion, Rude (1964) focused on the way in which the

emergence of new trade routes brought people from disparate locations together, arguing that

the connections forged via these routes were necessary for the dissemination of information of

various kinds, including about politics and social movements. Similarly, McAdam and Rucht

(1993) identified individuals whose trans-Atlantic travels and friendships linked the German

and American students’ movements in the 1960s and led to the transmission of techniques

across repertoires of contention, such as the teach-in. This demonstrates that the mobility of

experienced individuals, or ‘teachers,’ has an important impact on the inter-societal diffusion

of techniques of contention: these teachers repeat techniques they are familiar with in new

locations, thus making them more readily adoptable by locals.

Despite the varied and thorough research conducted on how innovations spread

between directly connected actors, most scholars recognise that direct networks only account

for part of the story, and that the transmission of ideas or techniques among actors that are not

directly connected must not be disregarded. In fact, Soule (2004, 295) asked why unconnected

actors display high degrees of homogeneity in form, structure, ideology, and practice, and how

it is that innovation on these dimensions spread between actors who are not connected in any

obvious manner. One type of indirect tie identified in the diffusion study literature, is the shared

cultural understanding of claim-makers, or what Strang and Meyer (1993) dub "cultural

linkages." Essentially, claim-makers in different locales, although not directly connected, can

imitate the actors of others with whom they define themselves as similar (e.g. McAdam and

Rucht 1993; Soule 1997).

In the absence of direct personal or organizational relations, another mechanism must

be found to diffuse ideas and inform actors in different environments of the techniques of

contention employed elsewhere. Mass media often appears to perform this function, and thus

plays a crucial role as an indirect channel facilitating the transmission of ideas or techniques

(e.g. Spilerman 1976; Singer’s 1970; Myers 2000; Andrews and Biggs 2006). More recently,

Earl and Kimport (2010) have begun to explore how the internet facilitates the sharing of

information and techniques of contention amongst groups that otherwise may have little contact

with each other.

Indirect diffusion accounts, in most cases, for inter-societal diffusion. While new

techniques of contention can emerge within a society as a result of changes to that society’s

propositional knowledge, more often they are adopted and transported from an existing

repertoire elsewhere. As such, in addition to asking oneself ‘what propositional knowledge

represents the epistemic base which supports this new variation?’, and ‘when did this

propositional knowledge emerge?’, when confronted with a technique emerging in a society’s

repertoire of contention, we must also ask ourselves the following questions: ‘is this technique

a product of a (a) changing propositional knowledge within this society or (b) has this technique

been used in another society before? If (a) is true and a new technique has emerged as a result

of changing propositional knowledge within the society in which that technique is observed,

we must then ask ‘has the technique been diffused to another society?’ and if so ‘to which other

society has it been diffused?’ Conversely, if (b) is true and the technique of contention is

observed in an environment in which it did not originate, one must ask the following questions:

‘Where did this technique originate from?’, ‘How did it come to be diffused to this

environment?’, ‘Was there already an epistemic base within this society to suppose this

technique, which could explained its emergence?’, ‘How has the apparition of this technique

in this environment altered the existing propositional knowledge held within this society?’, and

lastly, ‘Does this technique differ in some way from the original iteration?’

Classic diffusion scholars identify four kinds of actor central to the diffusion process.

(1) In the society in which the technique initially emerges, one finds innovators, who are the

first actors to create the technique. (2) Both intra-societally and inter-societally, one then finds

early adoptors, who spread knowledge of the innovation. In the case of inter-societal diffusion,

these early adopters generally have connections to others outside their own social system,

allowing for innovations to be introduced either by means of direct or indirect diffusion. These

early adopters can be viewed in terms of ‘teachers.’ (3) Both intra-societally and inter-

societally, late adopters then slowly adopt the innovations, through their interactions with the

early adaptors. These are generally the early adopter’s ‘pupils,’ but may in turn become

‘teachers’ themselves. (4) Non-adopters, those who will not, or have yet to, adopt the

innovation (Givan et al. 2010, 8). The actions of these actors lead to the classic S-Shaped curve

of diffusion, which depicts the rate of adoption of a given innovation as a function of the

number of actors in the population who have adopted the innovation, based on their

assessments of the fitness of the innovation. The criteria for these assessments are discussed

subsequently. Both figures show that initially there are no adopters. In the case of intra-societal

diffusion, innovators who developed the technique are the first to employ it. In contrast, when

the technique is diffused from another society there are no innovators present. Then, in both

cases, the new technique begins to spread as early adopters being to embrace the innovation

and in turn spread the innovation, steeply increasing the number of adoptions, until the rate of

adoption slows, eventually approaching zero. As Givan, Roberts and Soule (2010) aptly remark

“this S-shaped curve characterises diffusion dynamics in many different social and institutional

settings, but the mechanisms that account for upward shifts along the curve may vary for

different types of diffusion” (p. 8). With regards to the diffusion of techniques of contention,

complete adoption of a technique does not imply that claim makers will always utilise said

techniques to make their claim, but rather that the technique is now well-established within a

society’s repertoire of contention, rather than simply within the repertoire of techniques of a

limited number of claim makers.

As previously mentioned, focusing on the mechanism of transmission provides

important insights as to how new techniques of contention spread within a society – and are

sometimes transported to another society – since evolutionary processes are both incremental

and path dependent. With sufficient time, however, minute differences can be bifurcating and

lead to quite different outcomes. Path dependence means that the form of these final outcomes

depend on the exact itinerary taken (David 1994; 1996). This implies, according to Mokyr

(2005), that there is a great deal of importance in identifying the trajectory of the historical

process leading to a given outcome if we wish to fully understand said outcome.

4.3. Selection (Fitness)

To understand why particular techniques are retained or eliminated, we must examine

the potential forces of selection at play. In comparison to genetic information, there are many

more ways for cultural information to be transmitted. Consequently, there are many more ways

for cultural information to be differentially replicated (Patrick 2001, 144). If cultural selection

is the differential replication of cultural information, then cultural fitness measures the relative

transmission, or success of, particular variants of techniques of contention. In genetic evolution,

fitness depends on the consequences of the genetic variation for the organism. In cultural

selection, fitness depends on the consequences of the technique. However, whereas organisms

cannot choose their own genes, claim-makers can determine which technique of contentions to

employ to advance their claim.

The selection of techniques of contention, whether associated with terrorism or not,

entails a rational choice (Hoffman & McCormick 2004; Pape 2003; Sprinzak, 2000). As

rational choice theorists point out, human beings may select or reject beliefs according to

perceived likely consequences long before their overt behaviour is selected due to those

consequences (Durham 1991). This process might be thought of, as Patrick (2001) argues, as

“rational ‘self-selection’” (p.153). Similarly to how biologists define a variation’s ‘fitness’ as

its usefulness for the survival and reproduction, some ecological anthropologists contend that

culture is adaptive and subjected to a process in which fitness-enhancing traits are naturally

selected for their current functions, as human consciously select cultural elements such as ideas,

norms, values or techniques, based on their perceived usefulness (Durham 1991). As Strang

and Meyer (1993) observed, cultural elements “are adopted to the extent that they appear more

effective or efficient than the alternative” (p. 488). In fact, Tilly himself drew extensively on

the rational choice theory to introduce a set of assumptions that inform the totality of his work:

namely that collective actions and claim-making have both costs and benefits that are counted

and weighed by claim-makers, even though they will have imperfect information regarding the

costs and benefits (Krinsky and Mische 2013, 11). Tilly’s insights are now deeply ingrained

within political process theory. This now standard explanation of social movement

mobilization emphasises the role of political opportunities and mobilizing structures, along

with repertoires of contention, and rejects the formerly prevailing view that claim-makers,

whether they be protesters or other social movements participants, were irrational mobs

overwhelmed by collective mentality (Neal 2007). In other words, political process theorists

argue that claim-making movements did not result from alienation or abnormal psychological

dispositions, but were instead a rational means to achieve political ends and to resolve

legitimate grievances.

In his study of the spread of self-immolation as a technique of contention, influenced

by political process theory, Biggs (2013) proposes three sources of selection exercised on

techniques of contention: (1) Feasibility, which refers to the structural preconditions and the

costs of a technique and to resource limitations; (2) legitimacy, referring to the sense whether

a technique is “just and right – from the perspective of those who are going to perform it” (p.

409); and lastly (3) effectiveness, the probability that the technique will be successful and lead

to the outcome desired by the claim-makers. Biggs’s explanation for why new claim-making

techniques are adopted in new places – in other words ‘selected-in’ – emphasises the rational

judgment of actors: If a technique is no longer considered to be feasible, legitimate, and/or

effective it will cease to be employed, and therefore be removed from the repertoire of

contention. Alternatively, if a technique is not considered to be feasible, legitimate, and/or

effective from the outset, it may simply never enter that specific repertoire of contention.

Feasibility can refer to structural preconditions (e.g. unemployed workers cannot strike),

or to resource limitation, or prohibitive costs of a given technique. The impact of resource

limitation can be seen in two ways: Firstly, a particular technique might be inaccessible because

a society lacks the required propositional knowledge to enact it. Secondly, a particular

technique might be inaccessible, not because the required knowledge for its enactment is non-

existent, but due to limited access to the resource(s) required to enact such a technique. In fact,

limiting claim-makers access to resources remains one of the core strategies of authorities to

maintain the status-quo. This has ranged, for example, from limiting claim-makers’ access to

the press or internet, to raids and seizures of assets, or to the control of goods which can be

used to employ a particular type of technique of contention deemed as unacceptable by the

authorities, such as banning large purchases of fertilizers to thwart the construction of

ammonium nitrate/fuel oil bombs.

Legitimacy refers to the sense that the technique is just and right – from the perspective

of those who are going to perform it. Techniques of contention are selected for compatibility

with the existing cultural environment. As Patrick (2001) argues, “cultural selection is no mere

‘tinkerer,’ but ‘constraints of inherited form’ can bias cultural (like biological) evolution” (p.

145). Just like “current technology can determine the feasibility of cultural innovation,”

(Patrick 2001, 145) so can the current understanding of society – including the understanding

of values, religion, norms, etc. – render some seemingly plausible techniques of contention

socially inconceivable. In fact, Snow and his contributors (1986; and 1988) have suggested that

claim-makers’ successes and failures depend, in large parts, on a group’s ability to frame the

use of techniques of contention in a way that links claim-makers’ grievances to mainstream

beliefs and values.

Pondering the question suicide bombings, Kalyvas and Sanchez-Cuenca (2005),

explain its conspicuous absence as a technique of contention in several protracted and violent

conflicts, such as the Irish Troubles, by invoking two factors. (1) normative preferences, and

(2) constituency costs, both of which are directly tied with the perceived legitimacy of a given

technique of contention. Firstly, it is argued that normative preferences represent constraints

on claim-makers. Claim-makers tend to see themselves as acting in a just way (Gilbert 1995).

Thus, the expression ‘legitimate targets,’ and by extension ‘legitimate technique,’ is not

uncommon in the discourse of claim-makers who engage in acts of political violence. For

example, the IRA has relied extensively on a wide range of exculpatory justifications when

civilians unconnected to the state apparatus have been killed: the killing was a mistake; the

killing was accidental; the police or authorities did not take warnings seriously; collateral

damage is an necessary component of any conflict and so on (Kalyvas and Sanchez-Cuenca

2005). This sort of discourse, according to Kalyvas and Sanchez-Cuenca (2005), provides

claim-makers with the means to exonerate themselves when using techniques seen within the

society as illegitimate, such as killing innocent civilians. However, given the intentionality of

killing civilians inherent in suicide bombing, such means of exoneration would be rather

unconvincing (a suicide bomber’s awareness of his immediate surroundings is hard to deny).

Secondly, whilst clearly related to normative preference, constituency costs involve the

preference and moral sentiments of the claim-maker’s supporters, upon whom claim-makers

depend. Claim-makers must recognise that a trade-off usually exists between the intensity of

any technique of contention employed, and the maintenance of popular support. Supporters

may share the same aim as claim makers, but disagree over the means by which to achieve

these aims. These disagreements can be normative (related to the legitimacy of the technique),

or strategic (related to whether the technique used is the most efficient to accomplish said aims),

a theme which will be explored subsequently. With regards to normative considerations, it

stands to reason that unless suicide bombing is seen as a natural and proper action by the

population, the use of this technique will only deepen the gap between claim-makers and the

public at large.

Lastly, effectiveness refers to the probability that a technique will be successful, which

depends on a myriad of factors. In fact, researchers who have explored which factors affect

whether a technique of contention will cause effective political or social change, have identified

three potential factors which influence the efficacy of different techniques of contention:

novelty, militancy, and variety.

(1) Novelty: although claim-makers typically choose from their fairly limited

repertoires of contention when deciding on which technique to employ, empirical studies have

demonstrated that innovative techniques are most successful in achieving policy changes. For

example, McAdam (1983) showed how the emergence of new techniques of contention

employed by the U.S. civil rights movements claim-makers, such as sit-ins and freedom rides,

were effective because they caught the authorities off guard. Similarly, McCammon et al.

(2001), also provided evidence that the British suffragette movement was successful in gaining

women the right to vote partly as a result of their innovative use of the suffrage parade as a

technique of contention. This technique put hundreds of women on the streets to both publicise

their claim for the right to vote, and to “resist the ideology of separate spheres that precluded

women from participating in political life” (Taylor and Van Dyke 2004, 279).

(2) Militancy: “innovative techniques of contentions are often successful because of the

uncertainty and disruption they bring about” (Taylor and Van Dyke 2004, 280). Several early

studies have led to the conclusion that claim-makers who employed disruptive techniques were

more successful than those who opted for tamer means of claim-making (Tilly et al. 1975;

Piven and Cloward 1979; Steedly and Foley 1979; Mirowsky and Ross 1981; McAdam 1983).

However, more recent research, especially from within the field of terrorism studies, shows a

much more complicated picture, with two opposing views on the issues. On one side, it is

argued that techniques of contention associated with terrorism are becoming increasingly

popular because they are effective. Pape (2003; 2005) has claimed that terrorism is particularly

effective against democracies because of the electorate’s high sensitivity to civilian causalities,

which induces leaders to grant concessions to claim-makers who employ techniques commonly

associated with terrorism. However, on the other side, it is argued that not only that there is

little empirical evidence to demonstrate that violent techniques of contention are effective, but

that in fact these techniques are generally less effective than others. In a rare meaningful

contribution to the field of terrorism studies, Abrahms (2006) examined 28 terrorist groups,

and argued that claim-makers who employ violent techniques commonly understood as

terroristic, achieve their political goals only 7% of the time.

(3) Variety: lastly, it has been argued that the use of a variety of techniques of

contention yields the best results in terms of policy change. An example of this comes from

Morris’ (1993) study on the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama, campaign against racial segregations

which demonstrated how civil rights claim-makers simultaneously staged an economic boycott

against the city’s businesses, held sit-in demonstrations at local lunch counters, and staged

large scale demonstrations. This use of multiple techniques, Morris concludes, resulted in a

community-wide crisis that authorities were unable to contain, and explains the gains of the

civil rights movements in Birmingham far more convincingly, in his opinion, than explanations

offered up for the efficacy of either novelty or militancy. Scholars of the feminist movement

(e.g. Rupp and Taylor 1987; Staggenborg 1991; and Gelb and Harts 1999) have also provided

evidence that when the women’s movement employed a vast variety array of techniques of

contention simultaneously, the movement was more likely to achieve policy changes.

While scholars have advanced compelling arguments demonstrating the impacts of

these three factors, novelty, militancy and variety, on a given technique’s efficiency, evaluating

a technique remains inherently difficult, for both claim-maker and for sociologists (Soule 1999),

since it can only be tested by putting a technique into practice (Biggs 2013; 409). As Tilly

(1995) points out, protest in modern societies achieves its effects indirectly, through long and

complicated chains of causality, whereas, two centuries ago, people aggravated by a brothel in

their neighbourhood could simply assemble and ransack the building, a task accomplished

within a few short hours. Moreover, any episode of sustained contention invariably involves

multiple techniques of contention, and it can thus be difficult to measure the effectiveness of

any particular one. To make matters more complicated still, since the cultural environment

changes at a much quicker pace than the biological one, a novel technique which is found to

be more effective relative to other techniques practiced, is likely to be repeated on subsequent

occasions, but may over time lose its efficacy. This may be due to the fact that claim-makers’

opponents, namely the authorities, may have either a positive or negative response to the claim

being articulated based on their appreciation (or not) of a given claim’s validity, and to the

technique used to articulate it, thus changing the body of propositional knowledge held within

a society

In addition to feasibility, legitimacy and effectiveness, it is necessary to recognise that

the adoption of new techniques of contention may also depend on the various determinants of

claim-making in general – grievances, opportunities, resources, networks, identity, and so on.

However, if a technique seems more feasible, more legitimate, or more effective than other

existing techniques within a given repertoire of contention, then claim-makers within that

society will be more likely to use said technique again on subsequent occasions. As such, when

trying to understand why one particular technique is selected in or winnowed out of a given

repertoire of a contention, it is crucial to consider these factors in relation to that given

technique and other techniques against which it might be competing. The same is true when

seeking to provide plausible causal explanations as to why a certain technique never entered a

particular repertoire despite the presence of the necessary transmission mechanism. Since

claim-makers, as rational actors, adopt a competing choice-based approach when selecting one

technique over another, we must ask ourselves the following questions: with regards to the role

of feasibility: ‘What are the structural and resource requirements of each of the competing

techniques?’ Once identified, we must investigate whether changes occurred within the society,

thereby either modifying the structural or resource requirements of the technique and effecting

how feasible it is for claim-makers to employ said technique. In order to establish this, we must

ponder ‘Have there been new technological or structural developments which link to the

technique?’, ‘Has the access to the required resources to enact a certain technique either been

widened or narrowed?,’ and, crucially ‘How have these changes affected the feasibility of one

technique compared other techniques available within the claim-makers' repertoire?’ The same

basic approach should be used to evaluate and understand how claim-makers (and their

supporters, in the case of legitimacy) perceive the legitimacy and effectiveness of various

techniques of contention when deciding whether to employ such techniques.

5. Conclusion

The foundations of terrorism studies in historical research are not very deep, with

scholars of terrorism studies generally shying away from conducting rigorous historical

analysis of the phenomenon. In fact, existing research on the development of terrorism has

been largely plagued by the anachronistic imposition of current conceptions of terrorism onto

historical events, and a focus on historical events chosen specifically to reinforce preconceived

ideas about important factors in the development of terrorism. In an attempt to provide a

remedy to this situation, this paper has outlined a framework to facilitate the examination of

the emergence of claim-making techniques associated with terrorism by means of an

evolutionary theory. It is postulated that, employed as a useful metaphor, evolutionary theory

can allow for the derivation of useful causal explanations as to how and why new techniques

of political violence emerge or are innovated upon, spread across various times and places,

endure, and sometimes disappear altogether. In order to do so, it is argued the appropriate unit

of analysis, is not terrorism as a holistic phenomenon, but rather individual violent techniques

of contention that fall outside the forms of claim-making deemed legitimate by the authorities.

Abrahms, Max. 2006. “Why Terrorism Does Not Work,” International Security 31: 42–78.

Aldrich, H.E., G.M Hodgson, D.L. Hull, T. Knudsen, J. Mokyr, and V.J. Vanberg. 2008. “In

Defence of Generalized Darwinism.” Journal of Evolutionary Economics 18: 577–

596.

Andrews, Kenneth T., and Michael Biggs. 2006. “The Dynamics of Protest Diffusion:

Movement Organizations, Social Networks, and New Media in the 1960 Sit-Ins.”

American Sociological Review 71:752-777.

Aunger, Robert 2006. “What’s the Matter with Memes?” pp. 176-190 in Richard Dawkins:

How a Scientist Changed the Way we Think, edited by Alan Grafen and Mark Ridley.

Oxford University Press.

Ayala, Francisco. 1982. Population and Evolutionary Genetics. London:

Bengamin/Cummings.

Beck, Colin J. 2009. “The Contribution of Social Movement Theory to Understanding

Terrorism.” Sociology Compass 2(5): 1565-1581.

Biggs, M. 2013. “How Repertoires Evolve: The Diffusion of Suicide Protest in the Twentieth

Century.” Mobilization: An International Quarterly 18(4): 407-428.

Bohstedt, John and Dale E. Williams. 1988. “The Diffusion of Riots: The Patterns of 1766,

1795, and 1801 in Devonshire.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 19: 1-24.

Boyd, Robert and Peter J. Richerson. 1985. Culture and the Evolutionary Process. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press.

Boyd, Robert and Peter J. Richerson. 2000. “Memes: Universal Acid or Better Mouse Trap?”

pp. 143-162 in Darwinizing Culture edited by Robert Aunger. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

Brachet-Marquez, Vivaine. 2014. Contention and the Dynamics of Inequality in Mexico,

1910-2010. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brannan, David, Phillip F. Esler and N.T. Anders Strindberg. 2001. “Talking to ‘Terrprosts’:

Towards an Independent Analytical Framework for the Study of Violent Substate

Activism.” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 23: 3-24.

Cavalli-Sforza, L. and M. Feldman. 1981. Cultural Transmission and Evolution: A

Quantitative Approach. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press

Crelinsten, Roland. 1989. “Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism and Democracy: The Assessment

of National Security Threats.” Terrorism and Political Violence 1(2): 242-269.

Crelinsten, Roland. 2002. “Analysing Terrorism and Counter-terrorism: A Communication

Model.” Terrorism and Political Violence 14(2): 77-122.

Crenshaw, Martha. 1995. Terrorism in Context. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State

University Press.

Darwin, C. 1952[1859]. The Origin of Species. Chicago: University of

Chicago/Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Darwin, C. 1964[1859]. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the

Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

University Press.

David, Paul A. 1996. “Path Dependence in Economic Processes: Implications for Policy

Analysis in Dynamical System Contexts.” International Journal of Industrial

Organization. Special Issue on Path-Dependence.

David, Paul. A. 1994. “Why Are institutions the ‘Carriers of History?: Notes on Path-

Dependence and the Evolution of Conventions, Organizations and Institutions.”

Structural Change and Economic Dynamics 5(2): 205-220.

Dawkins, R. 1976. The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dekmejian, R H. 2007. Spectrum of Terror. Washington: CQ Press.

Dennett, D.C. 1995. Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life. New

York: Simon and Schuster.

Dietl, Gregory P. 2008. “Selection, Security and Evolutionary International Relations,” pp.

86-101 in Natural Security: A Darwinian Approach to a Dangerous World, edited by

R. Sagarin and T, Taylor. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Dietl, Gregory P. 2008. “Selection, Security and Evolutionary International Relations,” pp.

86-101 in Natural Security: A Darwinian Approach to a Dangerous World, edited by

R. Sagarin and T, Taylor. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Dobzhansky, Theodosius. 1951 [1937]. Genetics and the Origin of Species. New York:

Columbia University Press.

Dobzhansky, Theodosius. 1970. Genetics of the Evolutionary Process. New York: Columbia

University Press.

Durham, W.H. 1991. Coevolution: Gene, Culture, and Human Diversity. Stanford, CA.:

Stanford University Press.

Duyvesteyn, Isabelle. 2004. “How New Is the New Terrorism?” Studies in Conflict &

Terrorism 27(5): 439–54.

Earl, Jennifer and Katrina Kimport. 2010. “The Diffusion of Different Types of Internet

Activism: Suggestive Patterns in Website Adoption of Innovations,” pp. 125-139, in

Dynamics of Diffusion in Social Movements, edited by Becky Givans, Kenneth

Roberts and Sarah Soule. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Eggertsson, Thrainn. 2015. “Knowledge and the Theory of Institutional Change.” Journal of

Institutional Economics 5(02): 137–15.

Eldredge, Niles and Stephen Jay, Gould. 1972. “Punctuated Equilibira: An Alternative to

Phyletic Gradualism,” pp. 82-115 in Models in Paleobiology, edited by Thomas J.M.

Schopf. San Francisco: Freeman Cooper.

Enders, Walter and Todd Sandler. 1993. “The Effectiveness of Anti-Terrorism Policies:

Vector-Autoregression-Intervention Analysis.” American Political Science Review

87(4): 829-44.

Enders, Walter and Todd Sandler. 2002. “Patterns of Transnational Terrorism, 1970-99:

Alternative Time Series Estimates.” International Studies Quarterly 46: 145-165.

Enders, Walter, Todd Sandler, and Jon Cauley. 1990. “UN Conventions, Technology and

Retaliation in the Fight against Terrorism: An Econometric Evaluation.” Terrorism

and Political Violence 2(1): 83-105.

English, Richard. 2007. Irish Freedom: The History of Nationalism in Ireland. London: Pan

Books.

Erlenbusch, Verena. 2012. “A History of Terrorism in the Age of Freedom.” Doctoral thesis,

University of Sussex.

Gamson, William A., and David S. Meyer. 1996. “Frame Political Opportunity,” pp. 275-290

in Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities,

Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Frames, edited by Doug McAdam, John

McCarthy, and Mayer Zald. Cambridge, MA. Cambridge University Press.

Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Culture: Selected Essays. New York: Basic

Books.

Gelb, Joyce and Vivien Harts. 1999. “Feminist Politics in Hostile Environments” pp.148-181

in How Social Movements Matter, edited by Marco Guigni, Doug McAdam and

Charles Tilly. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Ghiselin, M.T. 1997. Metaphysics and the Origin of Species. Albany: State University of

New York Press.

Gilbert, P. 1995. Terrorism, Security & Nationality. London: Routledge.

Givan, R. K., Roberts, K. M., and Soule, S. A. 2010. “Introduction: The Dimensions of

Diffusion.” Pp. 1–15 in The Diffusion of Social Movements: Actors, Mechanisms, and

Political Effects, edited by R. K. Givan, K. M. Roberts, and S. A. Soule. New York:

Cambridge University Press.

Goodwin, Jeff. 2006. “A Theory of Categorical Terrorism.” Social Forces 84: 2027-2046.

Gould, Stephen J. 1980. The Panda’s Thumb. New York: W.W. Norton.

Gould, Stephen J. 1989. Wonderful Life. New York: W.W. Norton.

Gould, Stephen J. 2002. Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin. New

York: Harmony Books.

Hedstorm Peter, Rickard Sandell, and Carlotta Stern. 2000. “Mesolevel Networks and the

Diffusion of Social Movements.” American Journal of Sociology 106: 145-172.

Hoffman, B., and G. McCormick. 2004. “Terrorism, Signaling, and Suicide Attack.” Studies

in Conflict and Terrorism 27: 243–281

Hoffman, Bruce. 1998. Inside Terrorism. Columbia University Press.

Hoffman, Bruce. 1999. Inside Terrorism. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Hoffman, Bruce. 2015. Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947. New York:

Alfred A. Knopf.

Hull, D. 1988. Science as a Progress. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hull, D.L., R.E. Langman, and S.S. Glen. 2001. “A General Account of Selection: Biology,

Immunology, and Behavior.” Behavorial and Brain Science 24: 511-573.

Im, Eric I., Jon Cauley, and Todd Sandler. 1987. “Cycles and Substitutions in Terrorist

Activities: A Spectral Approach.” KYKLOS 40(2):238-55.

Jackson, Richard, Jeroen Gunning, and Marie Breen Smyth. 2007. “The Case for a Critical

Terrorism Studies,” pp. 1–25 in Critical Terrorism Studies: A New Research Agenda,

edited by Richard Jackson, Marie Breen-Smyth and Jeroen Gunning. Abingdon:

Routledge.

Jackson, Richard. 2007. “Symposium: The Core Commitments of Critical Terrorism

Studies.” European Political Science 6 (3): 244–51.

Jackson, Richard. 2012. “The Study of Terrorism 10 Years after 9/11: Successes, Issues,

Challenges.” Uluslararası Iliskiler 8(32): 1–16.

John Krinsky and Ann Mische, 2013. “Formations and Formalisms: Charles Tilly and the

Paradox of the Actor.” Annual Review of Sociology 39:1-26.

Kitcher, Philip. 1985. Vaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature.

Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Kriesi, Hanspeter. 2004. “Political Context and Opportunity.” Pp. 67-90 In The Blackwell

Companion to Social Movements, edited by David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, and

Hanspeter Kriesi. Blackwell Publishing Ldt.

Laqueur, W. 1987. The Age of Terrorism. Boston; Toronto: Little, Brown and Company.

Law, Randall. 2009. Terrorism: A History. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Law, Randall. 2009. Terrorism: a History. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Lynch, A. 1996. “The Population Memetics of Birdsong,” in pp. 181-197 in Ecology and

Evolution of Acoustic Communication in Birds, edited by D. E. Kroodsma & E. H.

Miller. Ithaca, NY; London: Comstock Publishing.

Lynch, A., G.M. Plunkett, A.J. Baker, and P.F. Jenkins. 1989. “A Model of Cultural

Evolution of Chaffinch Song Derived with the Meme Concept.” The American

Naturalist 133:634-653.

Maddison, A. 1982. Phases of Capitalistic Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McAdam, Doug and Dieter Rucht. 1993. "Cross National Diffusion of Social Movement

Ideas." The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 528: 56-

74.

McAdam, Doug, John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald. 1996. “Introduction: Opportunities,

Mobilizing Structures, and Framing Processes – Toward a Synthetic, Comparative

Perspective on Social Movements.” Pp 1-20 in Comparative Perspectives on Social

Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings,

edited by Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald. Cambridge, UK:

Cambridge University Press.

McAdam, Doug, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly. 2001. Dynamics of Contention.

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

McAdam, Doug. 1983. “Tactical Innovation and the Pace of Insurgency.” American

Sociological Review 48: 735–54.

McCammon, Holly J., Karen E. Campbell, Ellen M. Granberg, and Christine Mowry. 2001.

“How Movements Win: Gendered Opportunity Structures and U.S. Women’s

Suffrage Movements, 1866–1919.” American Sociological Review 66: 49–70.

Miller, Martin A. 1995. “The Intellectual Origins of Modern Terrorism in Europe.” In

Terrorism in Context, edited by Martha Crenshaw, 27–62. University Park, PA.

Mirowsky, John, and Catherine Ross. 1981. “Protest Group Success: The Impact of Group

Characteristics, Social Control, and Context.” Sociological Focus 14: 177–92.

Mokyr, J. 2002. The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origin of Knowledge Economy. Princeton:

Princeton University Press.

Mokyr, Joel. 1998. “Induced Technical Change and Medical History: An Evolutionary

Approach.” Journal of Evolutionary Economics 8: 119-37.

Mokyr, Joel. 2005. “King Kong and Cold Fusion: Counterfactual Analysis and the History of

Technology,” pp. 277-322 in Counterfactual Analysis in History and the Social

Sciences, edited by Philip Tetlock, Ned Lebow, and Geoffrey Parker. Ann, Arbor:

Michigan University Press.

Mokyr, Joel. 2006. “Useful knowledge as an Evolving System: The View from Economic

History,” pp. 309-338 in The Economy of an Evolving Complex System, III: Current

Perspectives and Future Directions, edited by Lawrence E. Blume, and Steven N.

Durlauf. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Montgomery, J.M. 2011. An Evolutionary Theory of Democracy: Dynamic Evolutionary

Models of American Party Competition with an Empirical Application to the Case of

Abortion Policy from 1972-2019. Doctoral dissertation, Duke University.

Morris, Aldon. 1981. “Black southern Student Sit-In Movement: An Analysis of Internal

Organization.” American Sociological Review 45: 744-767.

Morris, Aldon. 1993. “Birmingham Confrontation Reconsidered: An Analysis of the

Dynamics and Tactics of Mobilization.” American Sociological Review 58: 621–36.

Mueller, Carol. 1999. “Escape from the GDR, 1961‐1989: Hybrid Exit Repertoires in a

Disintegrating Leninist Regime.” American Journal of Sociology 105(3): 697–735.

Myers, Daniel J. 2000. “The Diffusion of Collective Violence: Infectiousness, Susceptibility,

and Mass Media Networks.” American Journal of Sociology 106: 173-208.

Neal, Caren. 2007. "Political Process Theory," In Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology,

edited by George Ritzer. Blackwell Publishing.

Nissen, Hans Jorg, Peter Damerow, and Robert K. Englun. 1993. Reviewed Work: Archaic

Bookkeeping: Writing and Techniques of Economic Administration in the Ancient

Near East. Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press.

Nissen, Hans Jorg, Peter Damerow, and Robert K. Englun. 1993. Reviewed Work: Archaic

Bookkeeping: Writing and Techniques of Economic Administration in the Ancient

Near East. Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press

North, Douglass C. 1994. “Economic Performance through Times.” The American Economic

Review 84(3): 359-368.

Oberschall, Anthony. 1989. "The 1960 Sit-Ins: Protest Diffusion and Movement Take-Off."

Research in Social Movements, Conflict, and Change 11:31-53.

Oliver, Pamela E. and Daniel J. Myers. 1999. “How Events Enter the Public Sphere: Conflict,

Location, and Sponsorship in Local Newspaper Coverage of Public Events.”

American Journal of Sociology 105(1): 38-87

Pape, Robert A. 2003. “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.” American Political

Science Review 97(3): 1–19.

Pape, Robert A. 2003. “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.” American Political

Science Review 97(3): 1–19.

Pape, Robert A. 2005. Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. New York:

Random House Trade Paperbacks.

Patras, James and Maurice Zeitlin. 1967. “Miners and Agrarian Radicalism.” American

Sociological Review 32(4): 578-586.

Patrick, Steward. 2001. “The Evolution of International Norms: Choice, Learning, Power and

Identity,” pp. 113-174 in Evolutionary Interpretations of World Politics, edited by W.

R. Thompson. New York and London: Routledge.

Piven, Frances F., and Richard Cloward. 1979. Poor People’s Movement. 2nd ed. New York:

Vintage.

Podos J, Sarah K. Huber, Benjamin Taft. 2004. “Bird Song: The Interface of Evolution and

Mechanism.” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 35: 55–87.

Polanyi, M. 1976. “Tacit knowledge,” pp. 330-344 in Theories in contemporary psychology,

edited by M. Marx & F. Goodson. New York: Macmillan.

Rapkin, David. 2001. “The United States, Japan, and the Power to Block: the APEC and

AMF Cases.” The Pacific Review 14(3):373-410.

Richardson, L. 2006. What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the

Threat. New York: Random House.

Rogers, Everett M. 1983. Diffusion of Innovations. Wiley.

Ross, J I. 2006. Political Terrorism: an Interdisciplinary Approach. New York: Peter Lang

Publishing, Inc.

Rude, George. 1964. The Crowd in History, 1730-1848. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

Rupp, Leila J. and Verta Taylor. 1987. Survival In The Doldrums: The American Women’s

Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s. New York and Oxford: Oxford University

Press.

Ruyle, Eugene E. 1973. “Genetic and Cultural Pools: Some Suggestions for a Unified Theory

of Biocultural Evolution.” Human Ecology 1: 201-215.

Schmid, Alex P. 1982. Political Terrorism: A Research Guide to Concepts, Theories, Data

Bases, and Literature. Amsterdam, Netherlands: North-Holland Publishing.

Schmid, Alex P. 2011. Handbook of Terrorism Research. London: Routledge.

Shepherd, Jessica. 2007. “The Rise and Rise of Terrorism Studies.” The Guardian, July 3.

Simpson, George. 1984[1944]. Tempo and Mode of Evolution. New York: Columbia

University Press.

Simpson, George. 1984[1944]. Tempo and Mode of Evolution. New York: Columbia

University Press.

Singer, Benjamin D. 1970. “Mass Media and Communication Processes in the Detroit Riot of

1967.” Public Opinion Quarterly 34: 236-245.

Snow, D. and R. Benford, "Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization."

International Social Movement Research 1: 197-217.

Snow, D., B. Rochford, S. Worden, and R. Benford. 1986. "Frame Alignment Processes,

Micromobilization, and Movement Participation." American Sociological Review 51

(4): 464-481.

Somit, Albert and Steven Peterson. 1992. The Dynamics of Evolution: The Punctuated

Equilibrium Debate in the Natural and Social Science. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell

University Press.

Soule, Sarah A. 2004. “Diffusion Processes Within and Across Movements,” pp. 294-310 in

The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, edited by David A. Snow, Sarah A.

Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi. Blackwell Publishers.

Soule, Sarah. A. 1997. “The Student Divestment Movement in the United States and Tactical

Diffusion: The Shantytown Protest.” Social Forces 75(3): 855-883.

Soule. Sarah A. 1999. “The Diffusion of an Unsuccessful Innovation: The Case of the

Shantytown Protest Tactic.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social

Science 566(1): 120-131.

Spilerman, Seymour. 1976. “Structural Characteristics of Cities and the Severity of Radical

Disorders.” American Sociological Review 41: 771-793.

Sprinzak, E. 2000. Rational Fanatics. Foreign Policy 120: 66–74.

Spruyt, H. 2001. “Diversity of Uniformity in the Modern World: Answers from Evolutionary

Theory, Learning, and Social Adaptation,” pp. 110-132 in Evolutionary

Interpretations of World Politics, edited by William R. Thompson. New York and

London: Routledge.

Spruyt, H. 2001. “Diversity of Uniformity in the Modern World: Answers from Evolutionary

Theory, Learning, and Social Adaptation,” pp. 110-132 in Evolutionary

Interpretations of World Politics, edited by William R. Thompson. New York and

London: Routledge.

Staggenborg, Suzanne. 1991. The Pro-Choice Movement. New York: Oxford University

Press.

Stathis N. Kalyvas and Ignacio Sanchez-Cuenca. 2005. “Killing without Dying: the Absence

of Suicide Missions,” pp. 209-232 in Making Sense of Suicide Missions, edited by

Diego Gambetta. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.

Steedly, Homer R., and John W. Foley. 1979. “The Success of Protest Groups: Multivariate

Analyses.” Social Science Research 8: 1–15.

Sterling-Folker, J. 2001. “Evolutionary Tendencies in Realist and Liberal IR Theory,” pp.61-

109 in Evolutionary Interpretations of World Politics, edited by William R.

Thompson. New York and London: Routledge.

Stokes, Susan C. 1995. Cultures in conflict: Social Movements and the State in Peru.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

Strang, D. and Soule, S. A. 1998. “Diffusion in Organizations and Social Movements: From

Hybrid Corn to Poison Pills.” Annual Review of Sociology 24(1): 265–90.

Strange, David and John W. Meyer. 1993. “Institutional Conditions for Diffusion.” Theory

and Society 22: 67-103.

Tarrow, Sidney. 1993. “Modular collective Action and the Rise of the social Movement: Why

the French Revolution Was Not Enough.” Politics and Society 21:319-345.

Tarrow, Sidney. 1998. Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics.

Cambridge MA.: Cambridge University Press.

Tarrow, Sidney. 1998. Power in Movement: social Movements and Contentious Politics.

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Taylor, Verta, and Nella Van Dyke. 2004. “‘Get up, Stand up’: Tactical Repertoires of Social

Movements,” pp. 262-293 in The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements edited

by Snow, David A., Sarah A. Soule and Hanspeter Kriesi. Malden, MA: Blackwell

Publishing Ltd.

Taylor, Verta, and Nella Van Dyke. 2004. “‘Get up, Stand up’: Tactical Repertoires of Social

Movements,” pp. 262-293 in The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements edited

by Snow, David A., Sarah A. Soule and Hanspeter Kriesi. Malden, MA: Blackwell

Publishing Ltd.

Thayer, B.A. 2004. Darwin and International Relations: On the Evolutionary Origins of War

and Ethnic Conflict. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

Thompson, W. R., 2001. “Evolving towards an Evolutionary Perspective,” pp. 1-14 in

Evolutionary Interpretations of World Politics, edited by William R. Thompson. New

York and London: Routledge.

Tilly, Charles, Louise Tilly, and Richard Tilly. 1975. The Rebellious Century 1830–1930.

Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Tilly, Charles. 1978. From Mobilization to Revolution. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University

Press.

Tilly, Charles. 1983. “Speaking Your Mind without Elections, Surveys, or Social

Movements.” Public Opinion Quarterly 47: 461-78.

Tilly, Charles. 1986. The Contentious French. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.

Tilly, Charles. 1992. Coercion, capital, and European states, AD 990-1992. Cambridge,

MA.: Blackwell.

Tilly, Charles. 1993. "Contentious Repertoires in Britain, 1758-1824." Social Science History

17: 253-80.

Tilly, Charles. 1995. Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758-1834. Cambridge, MA.:

Harvard University Press.

Tilly, Charles. 2004. “Terror, Terrorism, Terrorist*.” Sociological Theory 22(1): 5-13.

Tilly, Charles. 2005. Regimes and Repertoires. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Tilly, Charles. 2008. Contentious Performances. Cambridge, MA.: Cambridge University

Press.

Vincenti, W. 1990. What Engineers Know and How They Know It. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

Press.

Vincenti, W. 1990. What Engineers Know and How They Know It. Baltimore: Johns

Hopkins Press.

Wada, Takeshi. 2012. “Modularity and Transferability of Repertoires of Contention.” Social

Problems 59(4): 544-571.

Witt, Ulrich. 2003. The Evolving Economy - Essays on the Evolutionary Approach to

Economics. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Wood, Elisabeth Jean. 2003. Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador.

Cambridge, MA.: Cambridge University Press.

Zekulin, Michael G. 2014. “A Growing Disconnect: Can the Contemporary Terrorism

Literature Explain Domestic Homegrown Terrorism?” Doctoral thesis, University of

Calgary.