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The Complexity of Self Government: Politics from the Bottom Up
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 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.
216 pages, Hardcover
Published December 15, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 12, 2022
Edit (7/11/22): Changed to 1 star. The more I think about this book, the angrier I get. Don’t read it. Seriously. There is nothing of value here.
TL;DR
This book is not recommended. The initial premise, that democracy is not the ultimate system of governance, that self government is the next step in our societal evolution, is an interesting one. However, the book is confused and uncritical.
Truthfully, I could have written this review without finishing the book. One-star reviews should be reserved for books that are actively harmful. This work isn't harmful, but is definitely not worth your time. The reader is drawn in on page one with
It's hard to disagree with these statements, especially given current events. Yet what follows is a confusing series of "case studies." Some were about individuals that seized power for themselves, like Silvio Berlusconi and Robert Mugabe, for "corrupt and selfish purposes" (at least, that's how they are portrayed). Other case studies were of whole societies that are held together by unspoken rules that everyone knows, except outsiders, such as the marshes of Iraq and . Where does complexity come in? The phrases "complexity theory says" and "according to complexity theory" are inappropriately scattered throughout the book. Similar to how some popular science writers abuse "quantum mechanics" or "chaos theory." The author frequently references the work of Thomas Schelling, in particular Micromotives and Macrobehavior, and insists that "everything is a lattice." The lattice argument is totally unconvincing. In my review of Schelling's book, I note that the Schelling Segregation Model does not accurately describe real segregation because it neglects forcing by some agents.
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America is an excellent account of racial segregation in the United States. In fact, this would have been an excellent case study to explore because Rothstein points out that racist practices were sometimes upheld for political expediency rather than unfiltered racism.
The author's use of "complexity theory" really should be replaced by the specific tool of "agent-based modelling." However, Lane never expands on how agent-based modelling might be used in these contexts and gives no examples of results she obtained. There is a great talk about social inequality using agent based modelling by James Allen on YouTube if you want to see a more rigorous approach.
It's a very short book (< 200 pages) but it took a long agonizing time to read.
TL;DR
This book is not recommended. The initial premise, that democracy is not the ultimate system of governance, that self government is the next step in our societal evolution, is an interesting one. However, the book is confused and uncritical.
Truthfully, I could have written this review without finishing the book. One-star reviews should be reserved for books that are actively harmful. This work isn't harmful, but is definitely not worth your time. The reader is drawn in on page one with
[E]verywhere today citizens of long-standing and stable democratic countries are growing grouchier and grouchier about their governments. Even professional political scientists are in the process of deciding that democracies are actually oligarchies, a term the ancients invented to cover a small group of men governing a large group of other people for corrupt and selfish purposes.
It's hard to disagree with these statements, especially given current events. Yet what follows is a confusing series of "case studies." Some were about individuals that seized power for themselves, like Silvio Berlusconi and Robert Mugabe, for "corrupt and selfish purposes" (at least, that's how they are portrayed). Other case studies were of whole societies that are held together by unspoken rules that everyone knows, except outsiders, such as the marshes of Iraq and . Where does complexity come in? The phrases "complexity theory says" and "according to complexity theory" are inappropriately scattered throughout the book. Similar to how some popular science writers abuse "quantum mechanics" or "chaos theory." The author frequently references the work of Thomas Schelling, in particular Micromotives and Macrobehavior, and insists that "everything is a lattice." The lattice argument is totally unconvincing. In my review of Schelling's book, I note that the Schelling Segregation Model does not accurately describe real segregation because it neglects forcing by some agents.
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America is an excellent account of racial segregation in the United States. In fact, this would have been an excellent case study to explore because Rothstein points out that racist practices were sometimes upheld for political expediency rather than unfiltered racism.
The author's use of "complexity theory" really should be replaced by the specific tool of "agent-based modelling." However, Lane never expands on how agent-based modelling might be used in these contexts and gives no examples of results she obtained. There is a great talk about social inequality using agent based modelling by James Allen on YouTube if you want to see a more rigorous approach.
It's a very short book (< 200 pages) but it took a long agonizing time to read.
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February 2, 2018320.15 L2667 2017
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews