Political Process as Complex Dynamical System: Chaos and Emergence

Jeffrey Broadbent, University of Minnesota

Why do sociopolitical processes emerge, evolve, and produce specific outcomes? Addressing this question requires theoretical insight, yet the vast diversity of theories presents a significant challenge. To assess their relative explanatory validity, I conducted 2.5 years of fieldwork in a rural Japanese prefecture, analyzing a political struggle over environmental pollution. Drawing on 500 interviews, I examined power relations among organizational actors, such as government agencies and social movements. Using this empirical material, I systematically coded the types of micro-power relations in hundreds of actor dyads that constituted the sociopolitical process. To utilize this micro-level data for evaluating the explanatory power of multiple theoretical perspectives, I developed the Integrated Structurational Analysis (ISA) method. This conceptual framework identifies 24 theoretical types, each positing a distinct core causal factor that manifests in reality as a corresponding micro-relational mode of power. Each of these 24 theory-factor-mode sets adopts two fundamental axioms about underlying social operating principles. These axioms are organized along two dimensions: the media through which power operates—material, social, or cultural, and the structurational source of power—structural, interactive, or agentic. These dimensions encapsulate foundational debates in social theory. My previous research tracked the transforming relative causal weight of validated theories, classified into six media categories, across the 27-year case duration and at four critical phases. The present study extends this analysis by examining all 24 theoretical categories, in their relative causal weights and synergies at each phase, phase transitions and overall process. If insignificant initial factors magnify to dominate the process (chaos), or new causal factors emerge (complexity), this indicates a complex dynamical system (CDS). The ISA method with the CDS model provides a novel analytical approach, enabling a more precise and comprehensive understanding of the full causal ontology of sociopolitical processes.

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 Presented in Session 217. Beyond Models and Archives: Reconstructing Historical Complexity through Methodological Innovations