And this idea provoked years and years of experimentation and argumentation in the field.
Islamists won a 1991 election in Algeria, Tunisia's neighbour, but the army annulled the result, provoking years of conflict.
His death in Deptford in May 1593, aged 29, has provoked years of speculation, from the Queen ordering his assassination because of his atheism, to his being killed by a love rival.
One former senior British military commander told me recently he believed the 2003 invasion was the "original sin" that has provoked years of violence, Sunni-Shia sectarian war, and the emergence of Islamic State.
That failure provoked years of political and economic chaos in the country, which to this day is cut off from international capital markets and struggles with inflation and other woes.
But this is as nothing compared with the outrage she provoked 500 years ago when Geoffrey Chaucer first put her on the literary map.
Two such challenges were successful and provoked, after years of vigorous debate, a piece of reform legislation: this summer's USA Freedom Act, which shut down the phone records program two and half weeks ago.
The split provoked several years of bloody gangland warfare in the state, which cost hundreds of lives and left all four Beltrán Leyva brothers dead or in prison, and many more old resentments to fester.
His decisions, which he described as mere common sense, provoked a year of intellectual and institutional squabbling.
(According to the team, that show provoked the year's second-highest number of complaints to Ofcom).
