Militias in the New Millennium: A Test of Smelser's Theory of Collective Behavior

In Militias in the New Millennium, Stan Weeber and Daniel Rodeheaver examine the state of the U.S. citizen militia movement in the new millennium. Using Smelser's theory of collective behavior, the authors examine the causes, belief systems, and electronic presence of militias, and the efforts of social control agents to contain them. Tested with 1196 internet communications and supplemented with interviews with militia members, Smelser's theory of the origins and direction of radical social movements, such as militias, is mostly confirmed by data analysis.