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: [email protected]
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 claimmaking techniques, rather than a uniquely distinct phenomenon boxed in by formal discreet
categories.
Claim-making techniques of contention represent techniques employed by claimmakers 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 humanmade 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 claimmakers 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,
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.
3
‘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-thanideally 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 (BrachetMarquez 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 manmade, 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 claimmakers’ 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 twoplayer ‘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
Sexual reproduction
Relational ties: Intra-societal and
inter-societal diffusion
(Principle of Heredity)
(Vertical parent-tooffspring transmission)
Transforming Forces
Natural selection
(Principle of Selection)
Non-relational ties: Inter-societal
diffusion
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 claimmakers 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 intersocietally, 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 nonexistent, 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.
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