(Toward an) Integrated Theory of Societal Dynamics

The lightbulb goes off, the idea drops from the sky. An Integrated Theory of Societal Dynamics. It struck me just now like a bolt of lightning — that’s the goal.

• Integrated: Consolidates insights from economics, political science, psychology, sociology, and the other social sciences into one parsimonious and systematic framework.
• Theory: Theoretical in the sense of a scientific theory — making testable predictions about yet-unobserved phenomena. Employs formal (including mathematical) analyses and models.
• Societal: Not just “social;” intended to account for society-as-unit (society, per Jervis, at the “system” level) as well as for lower level “social” interactions between individuals and small groups. Explains the interactions and interfaces between the two levels.
• Dynamics: Accounts for change in societies and interaction effects between societies in a rigorous and systematic way. Not an equilibrium theory, but subsumes equilibrium theory in the sense that it accounts for the appearance, maintenance, and disappearance of equilibria within the more general framework that describes change.

The beginning…