I NEVER spend the money on these things. I’m the cheapskste who wanted to see IEEE journals for free, remember?

The American Union from 1787 to 1861.

The rest of the paper will probably cost money to read.

For example, the balance of power that dominated (and moderated) US-Soviet relations during the Cold War was not created or agreed to by either side. It just evolved naturally due to their opposing strengths and weaknesses cancelling out, and the destructive nature of nuclear weapons which limited the opportunities for total conflict.

At least, that’s how I interpret what he said, which is why I was droning on about Pop Systems Theory in my post of 15:34:22.

The man is a nutjob, though. Of the Goth Sociologist subspecies.

My main concern here is Negarchy, and what it means as described by the Wikipedia article:

A form of status quo maintained by the inter-relations of the power structure and authority that modern states hold in relation to each other which negate each other due to their respective affluence. The situation of this kind of power compromise results in putting limits upon and reining in the rule of all such states by reducing their individual power and potential affluence. Thus it is a rule of their own creation that they are also unwillingly subject to.

For me, I disagree with that last sentence – rulers can willingly subject themselves to this balance; most just choose not to.

Still, does such a balance exist in this world in this or any other time period; and if not, could it exist now or in the future?

“So, once and for all — what is a negarchy?”

“…We didn’t have a term that’s abstract like anarchy and hierarchy. I coined it to help register the liberal democratic forms in a way that can be said right along the realist and statist ones.”
-Prof Deudney

I tend to have the same kind of suspicion of people who throw around terms like “statist”.

I tend to have the same kind of suspicion of people who coin unnecessary new terms that I do of people who destroy useful old ones.

Here’s the introduction to his new book. I bogged down after two pages, but maybe you’ll get more out of it.

This kind of political and social equilibrium is inherently unstable, because conditions change randomly and it is unlikely that all the contending factions will respond to those changes in a way that tends to maintain the balance between them. Feedback mechanisms play a major role in the stability, as well as the breakdown, of these systems.

However, different forms of dynamic equilibrium may dominate for substantial periods of time. Things may remain static, or very gradually change, or oscillate about some mean, eiher regularly or erratically. Sometimes you even get semi-stable combinations of these.

Conversely, you may get also increasingly violent swings or oscillations, catastrophic crashes, exponential runs, and a variety of other kinds of instability.

Stars do this. Unless they go supernova.