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Entrenched time delays versus accelerating opinion dynamics: are advanced democracies inherently unstable?

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  • Claudius Gros

    (Institute for Theoretical Physics, Goethe University Frankfurt)

Abstract

Modern societies face the challenge that the time scale of opinion formation is continuously accelerating in contrast to the time scale of political decision making. With the latter remaining of the order of the election cycle we examine here the case that the political state of a society is determined by the continuously evolving values of the electorate. Given this assumption we show that the time lags inherent in the election cycle will inevitable lead to political instabilities for advanced democracies characterized both by an accelerating pace of opinion dynamics and by high sensibilities (political correctness) to deviations from mainstream values. Our result is based on the observation that dynamical systems become generically unstable whenever time delays become comparable to the time it takes to adapt to the steady state. The time needed to recover from external shocks grows in addition dramatically close to the transition. Our estimates for the order of magnitude of the involved time scales indicate that socio-political instabilities may develop once the aggregate time scale for the evolution of the political values of the electorate falls below 7–15 months.

Suggested Citation

  • Claudius Gros, 2017. "Entrenched time delays versus accelerating opinion dynamics: are advanced democracies inherently unstable?," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 90(11), pages 1-8, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:eurphb:v:90:y:2017:i:11:d:10.1140_epjb_e2017-80341-y
    DOI: 10.1140/epjb/e2017-80341-y
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Robert J. Shiller, 2012. "The Subprime Solution: How Today’s Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do about It: With a new preface by the author," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9853.
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    Cited by:

    1. Lukas Schneider & Johannes Scholten & Bulcsú Sándor & Claudius Gros, 2021. "Charting closed-loop collective cultural decisions: from book best sellers and music downloads to Twitter hashtags and Reddit comments," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 94(8), pages 1-13, August.
    2. Claudius Gros, 2021. "Collective strategy condensation: When envy splits societies," Papers 2101.10824, arXiv.org.

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    Keywords

    Statistical and Nonlinear Physics;

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