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The fatigue of high office

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  • Ramsden, Jeremy J.
  • Naran, Deven

Abstract

The word frequencies of the speeches of some contemporary politicians have been determined over a decade of office. By fitting Mandelbrot's simple canonical law (a development of Zipf's law) to the data, the average cybernetic temperature θ was determined for each year of office. Two contrasting cases were examined. The first, that of the British Prime Minister Tony Blair, showed a steady decline of θ punctuated by partial recovery following certain key events such as re-election. The second, that of the Australian Prime Minister John Howard, showed a more uniform temperature. It is suggested that the first case is an example of the phenomenon of fatigue or habituation, inevitable in any complex system rich in equilibrium states, and the partial de-habituation observed is a consequence of a sharp disturbance to the system. Given the relative ease of carrying out the analysis, it could become a routine tool regularly applied to holders of high office to determine their continuing fitness to occupy the office.

Suggested Citation

  • Ramsden, Jeremy J. & Naran, Deven, 2007. "The fatigue of high office," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 376(C), pages 601-608.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:376:y:2007:i:c:p:601-608
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2006.10.076
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Ramsden, J.J. & Kiss-Haypál, Gy., 2000. "Company size distribution in different countries," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 277(1), pages 220-227.
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