This paper argues that revolutionary waves and social movements share similar dynamics to sand sliding down the edges of a pile. On this basis, the paper develops a theoretical model in which contention arises endogenously through discontent and social imitation as the social system self‐organizes into a state of criticality over time. Revolts and collective actions are thus understood as subsequent reorganizing cascades once the system has reached such a critical state. Although taken by themselves the properties and timings of these cascades are entirely chaotic, at the aggregate level the cascades’ properties follow regularities that are impervious to the individual characteristics of individuals but are affected by the intrinsic structure of social networks.

中文翻译：

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论革命波与滑坡动力学

本文认为，革命性的波浪和社会运动与沙子沿桩边缘滑落具有相似的动力学。在此基础上，本文建立了一种理论模型，其中随着社会体系随着时间的推移自组织进入临界状态，竞争会通过不满和社会模仿而内生地产生。因此，将叛乱和集体行动理解为一旦系统达到这种临界状态，便会进行后续的级联重组。尽管这些级联的性质和时间本身是完全混乱的，但从总体上看，级联的性质遵循规律，这些规律不能渗透个人的个体特征，但会受到社交网络的内在结构的影响。