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Published in 1995 by The University of Michigan
Press (Ann Arbor).
From the book jacket:
. . . For decades, social
scientists have worked with models that have sought to quantify and explain
human behavior. The common foundation for nearly all of these mathematical
applications is the assumption of linear progression, equilibrium, and
stability. Serpents in the Sand: Essays on the Nonlinear
Nature of Politics and Human Destiny not only argues that in fact
political life is fundamentally nonlinear, but investigates, estimates,
and thoroughly analyzes specific instances of extreme nonlinearity in
politics. By doing so, Courtney Brown offers a guide to the reader on
how to apply nonlinearity, including chaos theory, to real-world situations.
The author develops his argument by in-depth analyses of four examples
covering a broad spectrum of political life. He considers, first, the
relationship between individual rationality and the influence of a voter's
political milieu. He then turns to look at the dynamics behind the Johnson
vs. Goldwater landslide presidential election of 1964. The fall of the
Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazi Germany provide a third case study,
followed, fourth, by an analysis of the relationship between democratic
electoral politics and the ecological environment. Throughout, Courtney
Brown employs the evidence of these cases to demonstrate the essentially
nonlinear nature of human political behavior. Highly original in its findings,
Serpents in the Sand resembles no other work on politics. It
is the first study of nonlinearity in political behavior to base its argument
on specific examples rather than on analogies to physical and ecological
systems. Substantively, the book draws provocative conclusions from the
test cases, examining, for instance, the potential for disaster in the
oscillatory relationship between the way presidents are elected in the
United States and the management of the country's environment. In the
end, Serpents in the Sand extends its argument to the philosophy
of human existence, showing that human behavior is as nonlinear as all
other processes in the universe.
Table of Contents
- Nonlinear Politics
- The Structure of Nonlinear Time
- Individual Voter Rationality and the Influence of Context: The Relationship
Is a Catastrophe
- The Anatomy of a Landslide: Johnson and Goldwater in 1964
- Nonlinear Catastrophe Superstructures and the Fall of the Weimar Republic
- Politics and the Enviroment: Nonlinear Instabilities Dominate
- Toward a General Theory of Nonlinear Political Evolution
Appendix
Notes
References
Index
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Read Reviews of This Book:
American
Political Science Review
Americal
Journal of Sociology
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