Methodologically
\label{methodologically}
scholars in the field generally gravitate towards broad historical
institutional studies.11Giovanni Capoccia and R. Daniel Kelemen,
”The Study of Critical Junctures: Theory, Narrative, and
Counterfactuals in Historical Institutionalism,” World Politics
59, no. 03 (2007). Mahoney and Thelen, ”A Theory of Gradual
Institutional Change.” The interaction of these theoretical and
methodological pillars favors the study of transformative events or
‘critical junctures’ either in the context of a single military over
time or by a comparison between militaries.22Capoccia and
Kelemen, ”The Study of Critical Junctures: Theory, Narrative, and
Counterfactuals in Historical Institutionalism.” Mahoney and Thelen,
”A Theory of Gradual Institutional Change.”
We will start by identifying the main conceptual and theoretical
obstacles that characterize the scholarship on military
transformations.33This problem is prevalant in other areas of
innovation studies: Padgett, The Emergence of Organizations and
Markets, 1-2. Then, drawing from recent developments comparative
politics44Lustick, ”Taking Evolution Seriously: Historical
Institutionalism and Evolutionary Theory.”; Orion Lewis and Sven
Steinmo, ”How Institutions Evolve: Evolutionary Theory and
Institutional Change,” ibid.44, no. 3 (2012). Streeck and Thelen,
Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced Political
Economies , 3. James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen, ”A Theory of Gradual
Institutional Change,” in Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity,
Agency, and Power, ed. James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen(New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2010). Ibid. Lustick, ”Taking Evolution
Seriously: Historical Institutionalism and Evolutionary Theory.”;
Orion Lewis and Sven Steinmo, ”How Institutions Evolve: Evolutionary
Theory and Institutional Change,” ibid.44, no. 3 (2012). and
organizational studies55Angela M. O’Rand and Margaret L.
Krecker, ”Concepts of the Life Cycle: Their History, Meanings, and
Uses in the Social Sciences,” Annual Review of Sociology 16,
no. 1 (1990). Howard Aldrich and Martin Ruef, Organizations
Evolving(London ; Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2006); Andrew J.
Hoffman, ”Institutional Evolution and Change: Environmentalism and the
U.S. Chemical Industry,” The Academy of Management Journal 42,
no. 4 (1999). Howard E. Aldrich and Jeffrey Pfeffer, ”Environments of
Organizations,” Annual Review of Sociology 2(1976). Ulrich
Witt, ”Economic Policy Making in Evolutionary Perspective,”
Journal of Evolutionary Economics 13, no. 2 (2003). Shona Brown
and Kathleen Eisenhardt, ”The Art of Continuous Change: Linking
Complexity Theory and Time-Paced Evolution in Relentlessly Shifting
Organizations,” Administrative Science Quarterly 42, no. 1
(1997). we will adopt the institutional evolutionary approach as a
vehicle for resolving some of the main conceptual and theoretical
debates in the field. 66Lustick, ”Taking Evolution Seriously:
Historical Institutionalism and Evolutionary Theory.”; Orion Lewis and
Sven Steinmo, ”How Institutions Evolve: Evolutionary Theory and
Institutional Change,” ibid.44, no. 3 (2012). Mahoney and Thelen,
”Preface,” xi. Williamson Murray, ”Innovation: Past and Future,” in
Military Innovation in the Interwar Period , ed. Williamson
Murray and Allan Millett(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
In the next section we will analyze the global ascendance of Special
Operations Forces from their debut in the spring of 1940s to their
current prominence77Max Boot, ”The Evolution of Irregular War
Insurgents and Guerrillas from Akkadia to Afghanistan,” Foreign
Affairs 92, no. 2 (2013); Linda. Robinson, ”The Future of Special
Operations,” ibid.Web, no. Web (2012). by using the prevailing
concepts and frameworks in the literature in comparison to the
institutional evolutionary one….88Max Boot, ”The
Evolution of Irregular War Insurgents and Guerrillas from Akkadia to
Afghanistan,” ibid.92, no. 2 (2013); Linda. Robinson, ”The Future of
Special Operations,” ibid.Web, no. Web (2012). Scholars of military
transformations disagree on the appropriate terminology that should be
applied for labelling the phenomena.99See: Grissom, ”The Future
of Military Innovation Studies.” Much like the comparative politics
literature,1010Mahoney and Thelen, ”Preface,” xi. ”A Theory of
Gradual Institutional Change,” 1. which for a long period of time
focused mainly on revolutionary changes and emphasized the term
‘critical junctures’,1111Ruth Berins Collier David Collier,
Shaping the Political Arena : Critical Junctures, the Labor
Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1991). Giovanni Capoccia and R. Daniel
Kelemen, ”The Study of Critical Junctures: Theory, Narrative, and
Counterfactuals in Historical Institutionalism,” World Politics
59, no. 03 (2007) Hillel David Soifer, ”The Causal Logic of Critical
Junctures,” Comparative Political Studies 45, no. 12 (2012).
scholars of security studies paid particular attention to large scale,
abrupt and transformative changes to which they referred as
‘innovations’.1212Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military
Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars (1984);
Michael Horowitz, The Diffusion of Military Power: Causes and
Consequences for International Politics(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 2010); Deborah D. Avant, Political
Institutions and Military Change: Lessons from Peripheral Wars,
Cornell Studies in Security Affairs (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1994); Matthew Evangelista,
<IT>Innovation and the Arms Race: How the
United States and the Soviet Union Develop New Military
Technologies</IT> (1988).
Like critical junctures the term military innovations suffers from
conceptual discrepancies. Definitions rely on different criteria. Some
consider an innovation as a technological change,1313Stephen Peter
Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern
Military, Cornell Studies in Security Affairs (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1991). others see it as structural or
organizational reform1414Matthew Evangelista, Innovation and
the Arms Race: How the United States and the Soviet Union Develop New
Military Technologies(Ithaca: Cornell University Press Ithaca, 1988).
Cited by Grissom (2006) p. 906 note 6 while a third group emphasizes
strategic shifts.1515Kimberly Zisk, Engaging the Enemy:
Organization Theory and Soviet Military Innovation,
1955-1991(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). Cited by
Grissom (2006) p. 906 note 6 James A. Russell, ”Innovation in War:
Counterinsurgency Operations in Anbar and Ninewa Provinces, Iraq,
2005–2007,” Journal of Strategic Studies 33, no. 4 (2010):
596. In addition, multiple definitions offer a combination of two or
more criteria.1616Adam Grissom, ”The Future of Military Innovation
Studies,” ibid.29, no. 5 (2006): 906. Osinga Frans, ”The Rise of
Military Transformation,” in A Transformation Gap: American
Innovations and European Military Change, ed. Theo Farrell, Terry
Terriff, and Osinga Frans(Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2010).
Cohen, ”A Revolution in Warfare.” Jeffrey Isaacson, Christopher Layne,
and John Arquilla, ”Predicting Military Innovation,” in
Predicting Military Innovation (Santa Monica, CA: RAND
Corporation, 1999). While the gathering of more than one indicator
under a broad conceptual umbrella seems like a promising way to refine
and clarify the concept, it can also cause more ambiguity. To
illustrate, the adoption of new technologies is likely to precede and
actually cause strategic and organizational reforms.1717See:
James. Fleck, ”Learning by Trying - the Implementation of
Configurational Technology,” Research Policy 23, no. 6 (1994).
Thus, these three indicators represent distinctive phenomena that effect
one another and thus should not be gathered under the same
construct.1818The debates regarding the idea of Revolution in
Military Affairs (RMA) and more specifically the opposing views
regarding the interaction between technologies, doctrines and
structures serves as an indication that these concepts should not be
considered as representatives of the same concept but rather as
distinctive variables. Biddle, Military Power: Explaining
Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle; Eliot Cohen, ”Stephen Biddle on
Military Power,” Journal of Strategic Studies 28, no. 3 (2005).