146 research outputs found
Application of Statistical Physics to Politics
The concept and technics of real space renormalization group are applied to
study majority rule voting in hierarchical structures. It is found that
democratic voting can lead to totalitarianism by keeping in power a small
minority. Conditions of this paradox are analyzed and singled out. Indeed
majority rule produces critical thresholds to absolute power. Values of these
thresholds can vary from 50% up to at least 77%. The associated underlying
mechanism could provide an explanation for both former apparent eternity of
communist leaderships as well as their sudden collapse.Comment: Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop, Budapest (May
1999) Eds: A. Gadomski et a
The September 11 Attack: A Percolation of Individual Passive Support
A model for terrorism is presented using the theory of percolation. Terrorism
power is related to the spontaneous formation of random backbones of people who
are sympathetic to terrorism but without being directly involved in it. They
just don't oppose in case they could. In the past such friendly-to-terrorism
backbones have been always existing but were of finite size and localized to a
given geographical area. The September 11 terrorist attack on the US has
revealed for the first time the existence of a world wide spread extension. It
is argued to have result from a sudden world percolation of otherwise
unconnected and dormant world spread backbones of passive supporters. The
associated strategic question is then to determine if collecting ground
information could have predict and thus avoid such a transition. Our results
show the answer is no, voiding the major criticism against intelligence
services. To conclude the impact of military action is discussed.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure
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