Related papers: Application of Statistical Physics to Politics
The stability of a leadership against a growing internal opposition is studied in bottom-up hierarchical organizations. Using a very simple model with bottom-up majority rule voting, the dynamics of power distribution at the various…
The drastic effect of local alliances in three-party competition is investigated in democratic hierarchical bottom-up voting. The results are obtained analytically using a model which extends a sociophysics frame introduced in 1986…
A most debated topic of the last years is whether simple statistical physics models can explain collective features of social dynamics. A necessary step in this line of endeavour is to find regularities in data referring to large scale…
The Hotelling-Downs model considers parties changing policy to maximise their vote-share. Where policy position lies on a left-right axis, it describes a tendency for political parties to move towards centrist platforms. This is in contrast…
With the help of a smooth scaling and coarse-graining approach of observables, developed recently by us in the context of so-called fluctuation operators (inspired by prior work of Verbeure et al) we perform a rigorous renormalisation group…
The challenge of understanding the collective behaviors of social systems can benefit from methods and concepts from physics [1-6], not because humans are similar to electrons, but because certain large-scale behaviors can be understood…
Political moderation, a key attractor in democratic systems, proves highly fragile under realistic information conditions. We develop a stochastic model of opinion dynamics to analyze how noise and differential susceptibility reshape the…
It is shown that a paradigm of classical statistical mechanics --- the thermalization of a Brownian particle --- has a low-dimensional, deterministic analogue: when a heavy, slow system is coupled to fast deterministic chaos, the resultant…
We investigate majority rule dynamics in a population with two classes of people, each with two opinion states $\pm 1$, and with tunable interactions between people in different classes. In an update, a randomly selected group adopts the…
In physics one attempts to infer the rules governing a system given only the results of imperfect measurements. Hence, microscopic theories may be effectively indistinguishable experimentally. We develop an operationally motivated procedure…
The renormalization group has played an important role in the physics of the second half of the twentieth century both as a conceptual and a calculational tool. In particular it provided the key ideas for the construction of a qualitative…
May's Theorem (1952), a celebrated result in social choice, provides the foundation for majority rule. May's crucial assumption of symmetry, often thought of as a procedural equity requirement, is violated by many choice procedures that…
A plausible physical interpretation of the renormalizability condition is given. It is shown that renormalizable quantum field theories describe such systems wherein the tendency to collapse associated with vacuum fluctuations of attractive…
Coordinated human behaviour takes place within a diverse range of social organisational structures, which can be thought of as power structures with "managers" who influence "subordinates". A change in policy in one part of the organisation…
How often will elections end in landslides? What is the probability for a head-to-head race? Analyzing ballot results from several large countries rather anomalous and yet unexplained distributions have been observed. We identify tactical…
We employ the machinery of smooth scaling and coarse-graining of observables, developed recently by us in the context of so-called fluctuation operators (inspired by prior work of Verbeure et al) to make a rigorous renormalisation group…
Defying the median voter theorem, party polarization has spread globally, especially in the United States. As concerns grow over its risks to democracy, political science has probed its causes, revealing two paradoxes: while polarization…
Equilibrium statistical mechanics is intended to link the microscopic dynamics of particles to the thermodynamic laws for macroscopic quantities. However, the modern statistical theory is faced with significant difficulties, as applied to…
Elections constitute a paradigm of decision-making problems that have puzzled experts of different disciplines for decades. We study two decision-making problems, where groups make decisions that impact only themselves as a group. In both…
Research on the causes of political polarization points towards multiple drivers of the problem, from social and psychological to economic and technological. However, political institutions stand out, because -- while capable of…