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Why Do Societies Collapse?

A Theory Based on Self-Organized Criticality

The oldest answered question in the social sciences is ‘Why do societies collapse?’. I advance a theory of the collapse of societies that is based on self-organized criticality, which is a nonlinear process that produces sudden shifts and fractal patterns in historical time series. More generally, I conjecture that weak, self-organized criticality is ubiquitous in human systems. If this conjecture is correct, it would not only explain the source of total societal collapses but the pattern of most other sorts of human calamities and even the frequency distribution of many mundane day-to-day events.

Key Words: nonlinear dynamics • self-organized criticality • societies • theories of history • time series

Journal of Theoretical Politics, Vol. 14, No. 2, 195-230 (2002)
DOI: 10.1177/095169280201400203


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