IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/eurphb/v90y2017i11d10.1140_epjb_e2017-80341-y.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • 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
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1140/epjb/e2017-80341-y
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1140/epjb/e2017-80341-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    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.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    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.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tamer Khraisha & Keren Arthur, 2018. "Can we have a general theory of financial innovation processes? A conceptual review," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 4(1), pages 1-27, December.
    2. Darrell Jiajie Tay & Chung-I Chou & Sai-Ping Li & Shang You Tee & Siew Ann Cheong, 2016. "Bubbles Are Departures from Equilibrium Housing Markets: Evidence from Singapore and Taiwan," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(11), pages 1-13, November.
    3. Diks, Cees & Wang, Juanxi, 2016. "Can a stochastic cusp catastrophe model explain housing market crashes?," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 68-88.
    4. Liu, Dan & Jin, Yanhong & Pray, Carl & Liu, Shuang, 2020. "The Effects of Digital Inclusive Finance on Household Income and Income Inequality in China?," 2020 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, Kansas City, Missouri 304238, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    5. Baruník, Jozef & Kočenda, Evžen & Vácha, Lukáš, 2016. "Asymmetric connectedness on the U.S. stock market: Bad and good volatility spillovers," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 55-78.
    6. Coskun Yener & Jadevicius Arvydas, 2017. "Is there a Housing Bubble in Turkey?," Real Estate Management and Valuation, Sciendo, vol. 25(1), pages 48-73, March.
    7. George Akerlof, 2021. "Грехи Упущения И Практика Экономической Науки [Sins of Omission and the Practice of Economics]," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 1, pages 104-123, February.
    8. Tomás M. Bañegil-Palacios & M. Isabel Sánchez-Hernández, 2018. "The Challenge to Foster Foreign Students’ Experiences for Sustainable Higher Educational Institutions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-16, February.
    9. Maximilian Groh, 2014. "Strategic Management In Times Of Crisis," American Journal of Economics and Business Administration, Science Publications, vol. 6(2), pages 49-57, June.
    10. Casarin, Roberto & Costola, Michele & Yenerdag, Erdem, 2018. "Financial bridges and network communities," SAFE Working Paper Series 208, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2018.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Statistical and Nonlinear Physics;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:eurphb:v:90:y:2017:i:11:d:10.1140_epjb_e2017-80341-y. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.