Methodologically

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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).