The Complexity of Self Government
Politics from the Bottom Up
Published on 7. December 2016
978-1-316-73043-0 (ISBN)
Description
The Complexity of Self Government represents a revolutionary approach to political science. Bottom-up theory turns political and social analysis upside down by focusing analytic attention not on vacuous abstractions but on the individual men and women who either consciously or inadvertently create the institutions within which they live. Understanding this practical level of human activity is made possible through complexity theory, recently developed in computer models, but of wider use in understanding everyday human behaviour. To this complexity framework, the book adds social science to give life and colour to the analytical picture: micro-sociology from Garfinkel and Goffman, anthropology from Bourdieu, and non-technical game theory based on Thomas Schelling's microanalytics, to give rigour and bite. Theoretical examples include India's Mumbai, Iran, the marshes of southern Iraq, Berlusconi's Italy, backcountry China, Zimbabwe, and Nelson Mandela's revolution in South Africa.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Cambridge University Press
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
File size
9,59 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-316-73043-0 (9781316730430)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
12/2016
Cambridge University Press
€91.00
Article not available at the moment
Person
Ruth Lane is an Associate Professor at the American University, Washington, DC, where she teaches methodology and comparative politics. Her research focuses on the computer modelling of bottom-up political processes.
Content
1. The simplicity of complexity; 2. The haecceity of politics; 3. The complexity of self organisation; 4. The social complexity of games; 5. The complexity of change; 6. The complexity of political intelligence; 7. The complexity of simplicity.
