The main goal of this chapter is to examine the role of cultural carriers (means through which culture is propagated) and other mechanisms that serve to sustain continuity of behavior across revolutions. These mechanisms result in deep-level similarity in behavior before and after regime change. Revolutions bring enormous varieties of surface changes, such as the titles of leaders, the names of places, clothing, and all varieties of speech. But these surface-level changes can hide deeper continuities, such as continuity in style of leader–follower relations. Most obviously, an anti-dictator revolution results in regime change, but a new dictator with a new title comes to power and the dictatorship continues with a new face – as happened after revolutions in France, Russia, China, Cuba, Iran, and a number of other important cases (the American Revolution is excluded, because it is interpreted as rebellion against a foreign power). The power of cultural carriers arises from them being woven into the fabric of everyday life, seemingly beyond politics.

Hardwiring inside individuals (almost exclusively in the brain) has been studied extensively in psychological science, but hardwiring outside individuals has received scant attention. Hardwiring outside individuals consists of the total ways of life of human beings, including the built environment, societal organization, and formal institutions, as well as informal culture, narratives, and all form of communications, leader–follower relations, and cultural carriers. As discussed in this chapter, this external hardwiring is already present when the individual comes into this world, and it continues (with some degree of change) after the individual has departed. Formal hardwiring such as blackletter law and constitutions often continue over centuries, with little change in key areas – for example, through originalist interpretations of constitutions. When revolutionary constitutions are introduced, there is often a huge gap between the aspirations of the constitution and the behavior of the population, which tends to continue as before. Cultural carriers are an important part of external hardwiring, sustaining continuity