Tag Archives: ideal-type

2012 EVT – Scenario 2 – Panglossy: Same Old, Same Old

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Last weeks’ summary: In 2012 EVT, Everstate (the ideal-type corresponding to our very real countries created to foresee the future of governance and of the modern nation-state) knows a rising dissatisfaction of its population. Everstate is plagued by a deepening budget deficit and an increasing need for liquidity, with a related creeping appropriation of resources while the strength of central public power weakens to the profit of various elite groups. An outdated world-view that promotes misunderstanding, disconnect and thus inadequate actions presides to its destiny. Henceforth, the political authorities are increasingly unable to deliver the security citizens seek. Risks to the legitimacy of the whole system increases. Alarmed by the rising difficulties and widespread discontent, the governing authorities decide to do something. Of the three potential scenarios or stories that follow, we now start the second, “Panglossy: Same Old, Same Old,”* after having seen the end of “Mamominarch: Off with the State.”

(The reader can click on each picture to see a larger version in a new tab - a navigating map of posts is available to ease reading).

In 2012 EVT, as Everstate’s governing authorities and more specifically national representatives start thinking they should do something to face the various difficulties they meet and notably the rising discontent, a new period of elections opens up. Thus, what matters to the national representatives now is to win the elections for a new term. It is not anymore a fear of losing power because their legitimacy as efficient rulers (being able to deliver what they have been elected for) is questioned. They need now to convince citizens that they are the best to represent the nation and govern it and that they are better than their usual competitors.

As political parties are built around a programme and according to specific lines of thoughts, the rationale of the electoral competition asks them to follow the core of those programmes to demarcate themselves from their adversaries. When each party was formed, this formation led to the construction of a unique program upon which various national representatives and parliamentary groupings agreed. This program was also built to allow for the mobilization of electors needed to see the representatives elected. However, as with the way ideological and normative belief systems and socio-political models are constructed, this mobilisation was done in the past. The problems it sought to answer are past challenges. Furthermore, it could only be built according to the socio-political model and normative framework of that time. Over time, with each election, each of the two programmes has evolved but could do so only within relatively tight boundaries. Hence, the two main parties about to dispute the elections in Everstate are both abiding by the modernizing norm, constructed around materialistic improvement, each representing, as in most of the liberal world, two ends of the same spectrum, one of social-democrat inspiration, the other with a more conservative stance.

Thus, now, if the real severe problems faced by the nation must be considered, solutions can nevertheless only be envisioned within the framework of those existing programmes, as well as within the existing socio-political model and norms. For the two major classical parties, trying to change their framework and their programme in a very substantial way would mean risking changing the existing mobilisation forces and upsetting existing parliamentary groupings, thus risking losing the elections, which, ultimately would imply not being in power.

Battles are thus pitched on relatively minor points, when seen from the point of view of the huge challenges the nation must face. From the point of view of many people who are not only electors, but also those very people who seek security, experience pressures in their everyday life and are increasingly dissatisfied, such battles contribute to further de-legitimise whoever will become the nation’s representatives, thus the government, and indeed the existing parties’ system.

Meanwhile, a combination of apparent renewed optimism, notably expressed through better statistics, for example a slightly rising consumers’ spending, especially abroad, through bullish financial markets  and stock exchanges worldwide, a slow down of protests both within Everstate and worldwide, with a fear that those protests could start again, tends to comfort the potential nation’s representatives in the validity of their old aims and programmes and in their wish to come back to the situation ante, i.e. before everything started to unravel. Chief among those aims, Everstate must obtain economic growth again. The crisis is severe, indeed, but it is certainly temporary as those optimistic signs show. Unfavourable, negative trends are still at work, and those must be faced and stopped. But the goal is clear and the framework for doing so is pristine, and it may only work, as it has always worked since the parties were created.

The rise of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), prompted by the current modernising and materialistic paradigm, only fuels this vision. Be they upheld as a threat against which one must struggle or as new partners with whom one must cooperate, their recent success is one more evidence of the correctness of the existing system. As a result, the awareness of the new pressures that had started to emerge recedes and those are considered as not really important or, if they are, their timing is uncertain, thus, if ever such threats materialise, it will be later.**

Hence, nothing fundamentally changes. On the contrary, habits and the existing system, once the new national representatives are elected and the new government starts ruling are even more entrenched, almost ossified. 

Yet, something unexpected, dismissed by observers, is also happening during the months leading to the election. To be continued…

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* The name for this scenario, Panglossy, comes from the famous character Pangloss in Voltaire‘s work Candide ou l’Optimisme (Candid : or, All for the Best – 1759). Candide is an attack on Leibniz’s optimism, seen as absurd in the light of the many ills of the world. The absurdity of optimism is notably conveyed through the explanations for the series of  catastrophes met that Pangloss, Candide’s preceptor, gives and that always emphasise that “all is for the best.”

** Note that the absence of interest existing on timing and the sparse research on this factor may only ease the ability to deny reality.

Images

A frontispiece of Voltaire’s Candide (Paris : Sirène, 1759). It reads, “Candide, or the Optimism. Translated from the German by Dr. Ralph.” [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

This file comes from the website of the President of the Russian Federation. Kremlin.ru [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

2018 – 2023 EVT – A Polity in Shambles (Mamominarch)

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Post updated 10 May 2012. Last weeks’ summary: In 2012 EVT, Everstate (the ideal-type corresponding to our very real countries created to foresee the future of governance and of the modern nation-state) knows a rising dissatisfaction of its population. To face the various difficulties and widespread discontent, in a first scenario, Everstate’s governing bodies implement the Mamominarch programme of drastic reduction of state’s spending over five years through devolution, privatisation and outsourcing. By 2018 EVT, besides a generalised rising insecurity for most Everstatans, the now fragile state cannot efficiently manage the complex catastrophes that start hitting Everstate in May. Further pressures and perceptions of the way they are answered lead to radicalisation and polarisation along three lines: local independence with direct membership to the Regional Union – with now a battle over Trueland – renewal of a strong central Everstate, and, finally, continuing support to the Mamominarch system.

(The reader can click on each picture to see a larger version in a new tab – a navigating map of posts is available to ease reading – Research note at the bottom of the post, including assessed global impact of scenario on development).

As the Renewers ask for the resignation of Everstate’s government and the end of the Mamominarch system, the government is almost ready to give in. It is, indeed, confronted to an intractable situation, without hardly any means of action and thus completely overwhelmed. However, the traditional elite groups cannot accept to see the end of the Mamominarch system, which would also mean the end of their power. As their coercive power is, actually, now truly in the hands of Novstate, they thus start a series of discussions with Novstate’s CEO and its board of directors. The process is eased by the fact that many of the most powerful people in Everstate are also part of Novstate’s board of directors. Their objective of the elite is to convince Novstate to repress as harshly as necessary the Movement for the Renewal of Everstate. The various movements for independence are seen as less of a threat as they are not united and could probably be handled through some measures of autonomy. The international situation seems to be as favourable as possible to endeavour any kind of represssion as the international society is busy with other pressing matters.

The Renewers, strong of the support the IT world grants them, and wary of the old elite groups’ responses, manage to enter the communication’s and IT systems of Novstate and of the old classical parties. They almost instantaneously start spreading records of the discussions held between Novstate and the elite, underlying the violence of the elite groups, which does not fit well with the still pregnant norms of peace, democracy and respect of human rights. Novstate becomes worried to lose its international standing and thus its lucrative contracts. Furthermore, Novstate reflects that it will still sell the same contracts and services to the Renewers, if those are coming to power, as they will have no other choice. Novstate, thus, abandons the old elite groups that brought it to power, and changes its board of directors.

In the meantime, taking advantage of the situation, both domestic and international, the leaders of the Movement for the Independence of Trueland declare independence unilaterally, if a referendum to be organised soon confirms this wish. A few cities follow immediately. The Renewers are taken by surprise and can only bow to the future results of the referendum. Only the Movement for the Independence of the Whole Trueland – the  Continental South-East – not only strongly protests, but also refuses to acknowledge what it considers as treachery and spoliation. Knowing that it cannot count on Novstate, it ends all its contracts with the company and its friends businesses, and decides to start creating its own army and police forces. In the meantime, groups of hastily created militia carry small incursions in the New Trueland territory, burning a house here, stealing weapons from understaffed small police stations there, and declaring each time that they fight for the Whole Trueland and against traitors.

The international society cannot do anything, as it is involved elsewhere. Moreover, it does not want to handle the problem, as its members meet problems that are very similar to those faced by Everstate, although under different guises and at different stages according to the path each country has chosen. The Regional Union, so dependent upon the power of its members on the one hand, having seen its own resources dwindle with the repeated crises, cannot either afford to get involved. It merely acknowledges the decisions taken and hopes for the best.

A low-level intensity conflict settles in the South-East of Everstate, while, elsewhere, the situation of ordinary citizens has not improved, on the contrary. All energies and power had to be used to start reconfiguring the political system, condition sine qua non for a stabilizing situation, as the old system and its offspring, Mamominarch, repeatedly showed their inability to ensure security.

Thus ends the Mamominarch system, while the potential new model of socio-political order that should follow is still only potentially emerging and, hence, unclear. This new system will not only have to tackle the problems that existed in 2012 EVT, but also cope with the aftermath of Mamominarch. The heightened tension, and the uncertainty generated by the political upheaval first, and, second, the novelty, have frightened most economic agents, notably foreigners, and economy is at its worst. Everstate has also to face the loss of part of its territory, related income and resources, while it has to accommodate those Western refugees that were still in the South-East when the latest political turmoil exploded and were thus expelled, as well as all those who did not want to live under the new Independences. In summary, security needs have multiplied and now must be tackled anew.

Compared with what could have happened had other decisions been taken in 2012 EVT, is the aftermath of Mamominarch a too heavy liability that will delay, if not obliterate, any chance to create and implement a new functioning system, or an opportunity, as the old has already been partly discarded?

To start answering this question, let us now examine the second scenario that could have taken place in 2012 EVT, Panglossy.

To be continued….

Further Research

It would be particularly interesting to construct many similar models for other real and ideal-type countries, to map their interactions and assess impacts for the International Society and for any type of Regional Union. The evolution of each country would also influence the international and systemic level. This would allow us anticipating much better various scenarios including variables related to international pressures on the country analysed (here Everstate) and consequences, thus identifying better the cone of plausibility, or assessing other futures on issues of interest.

For example, if we use the Chronicles of Everstate and Mamominarch to evaluate impacts in terms of International Development, then we can deduce what follows. If, in the current and foreseeable global conditions, donour countries embark on a “programme of drastic reduction of state’s spending over five years,” then, in the medium term,

  • Those states will fragilise;
  • A large part of their population will become increasingly vulnerable, with rising malnutrition and generalised adverse impacts on the Human Development Indices, swelling progressively the mass of the global poor.
  • Those countries’ aid and cooperation programmes and related contributions will dwindle, if not disappear, according to cases.
  • In turn, assuming the current system is not changed, all international organisations will be impacted and see a drastic lowering of their budget. More particularly, it will be impossible for affected donour countries to respect pledges; IDA money risks to plummet, as member states contributions will be lowered.
  • All MDGs will consequently be adversely affected.

2018 – 2023 EVT – Escalation (Mamominarch)

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Last weeks’ summary: In 2012 EVT, Everstate (the ideal-type corresponding to our very real countries created to foresee the future of governance and of the modern nation-state) knows a rising dissatisfaction of its population. To face the various difficulties and widespread discontent, in a first scenario, Everstate’s governing bodies implement the Mamominarch programme of drastic reduction of state’s spending. By 2018 EVT, the result is involution, with a rising insecurity for most Everstatans. The now fragile state cannot efficiently manage the complex catastrophes that start hitting Everstate in May. As a result, tension rises relatively uniformly while grievances increase heterogeneously. Inability to answer this multiform situation leads to a new political mobilisation, besides the classical old parties, proponents of Mamominarch: movements for local independence and direct membership in the Regional Union, including a powerful Movement for the Independence of the Trueland on the one hand, and a Movement for the Renewal of Everstate on the other.

(The reader can click on each picture to see a larger version in a new tab – a navigating map of posts is available to ease reading).

News of the terrorist attack on Novcybio International abroad, which had first gone viral among Renewers, lead to a sudden awareness that Everstate could be impacted. What if some of the last genetically modified seeds received by Novcybio Everstate for testing that have already been planted include the dangerous gene engineered by the terrorists? How can Everstatans know? What if, one day, terrorists were to conduct such an attack directly in Everstate?

In August, as soon as Novcybio International had become aware of the threat, its security service had immediately acted, while its PR team started a reassuring campaign, explaining that everything was under control, that the police force had recovered the stolen deadly pathogens and that all potentially dangerous seeds had been identified, and most of them traced and recalled. Now, only a few of them are still missing, but Novcybio International headquarters’ security is working hand in hand with its branches and the authorities of the various countries potentially impacted. Unfortunately, Everstate is on the list of those countries. Soon, Everstate’s central government, the local authorities of the Continental South-East and Novcybio Everstate issue a joint statement asserting that the incriminated seeds have been found, that none of them has thus been planted and that they have now been destroyed.

However, investigations carried out by Renewers point out that one month elapsed between the terrorist attack on Novcybio International and the Everstatan joint statement. The Movement thus accuses the involved actors of complacency, which threatens the security of all Everstatans. This, added to the fresh memories all Everstatans have of the way the complex catastrophes of the Spring were mishandled, implies that few Everstatans fully believe the official joint-statement. People ask for evidence and for the resignation of all political actors involved. Rumours start spreading. This is an impact of the degraded legitimacy presiding over Everstate. The local authorities, seeing their authority imperilled and their power threatened, start distancing themselves from the central authorities, accusing them of inefficiency and saying they did not provide all necessary help. They turn to the Regional Union to ask for further test and control of Novcybio Everstate.

They also try to join the Movement for the Independence of the Trueland, arguing that Trueland covers the whole South-East, and not solely its maritime façade. However, the Truelanders’ leaders reject the idea, as they see the Novcybio affair and the continuing rumors as one more reason to distance themselves from the rest of the country, for the security of real Truelanders. The local authorities of the Continental South-East, as their position is directly threatened on the one hand, as they feel rejected and cornered on the other, then become even more virulent than other proponents of the various local movements for independence, while also starting a campaign explaining that the Trueland cannot be divided between a maritime and continental part.

By StMH (Own work), GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0, via Wikimedia Commons

One night Novcybio Everstate is burnt to the ground with the test crops planted on its land. Immediately, the Regional Union and various countries appeal to Everstate’s central government to put its house in order, while Novcybio International asks for compensation. When central officers are sent to the site of the arson to investigate, they are denied entry by angry citizens. As they ask for police support, local authorities refuse it, arguing that they will deal with the problem, which does not concern in any way central authorities.

Everstate’s central political authorities should answer to this direct denial of their power by imposing their will, sending the army if need be. However, considering the highly tense situation, they hesitate, afraid of the consequences. Furthermore, Novstate, which provides both some of the police forces of the Continental South-East and many of the Everstatan armed forces, does not favour seeing its men fighting each other.

The new episode of the global financial crisis that starts in October lessens the international political pressure put on Everstate to remedy to its internal disorder. Other countries, as well as the Regional Union, are now focused on other more important matters. For Everstate, the new general break on liquidity that ensues, as the country is still as dependent as ever on international borrowing, means that it must face new difficulties to pay its remaining central civilian and military staff. Local authorities are also impacted, however in various ways according to the situation of each city and region. Everstate does not participate in the international discussions trying to deal with the global financial disorder, except through Novstate, which is present along other powerful private sector’s representatives.

Italian sphere of influence in Turkey according to the agreements of 1917 in Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne by Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

When a new conflict starts in the Middle East, Everstate, which used to be an important player in this region, is not even invited to the summits that take place to try bringing back peace. The Renewers then judge that the country is falling apart, has lost a tremendous amount of crucial international influence and is falling prey to parochial problems that not only do not address the initial real challenges and pressures that endanger the lives of all Everstatans, but, on the contrary, aggravate them. The Renewers thus ask for a resignation of Everstate’s government and for the end of the Mamominarch system.

To be continued…

Creating Evertime

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As underlined in Everstate’s characteristics, time in strategic foresight and warning is a crucial problem that still needs much effort and research before we obtain proper and actionable timelines – and this without even considering timeliness.

For the Chronicles of Everstate, I have been struggling with the best way to present time in our very imperfect knowledge and understanding context.

One of the solutions was to locate the Chronicles in a very distant time, which is what I suggested in Everstate’s characteristics. However, considering the unconscious or conscious mental associations that will be made by readers for years so far away as 5230, this was unsatisfactory. To use a less precise timeline such as the Near Future and the Far Future was also disappointing as we would then lose a temporal outline – however imperfect – that is crucial in terms of policies and responses.

The solution* that seems to be the best is to remain true to our methodology. As we created an imaginary modern nation-state, let us create the corresponding imaginary time, Evertime: a time that mirrors our own as if in a parallel dimension. We shall thus starts the Chronicles of Everstate in 2011 EVT (EVT being the acronym for Evertime).

Using years mirroring ours will also help us identifying, in the future, and thus with hindsight, what needs to be improved and why in terms of methodology and research, and thus will contribute to improve our analysis.

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*This solution was found during a brainstorming with a graphic designer, artist, author and game designer, Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli, to whom I am truly indebted for helping this idea to emerge. This underlines, once more, the value of brainstorming involving people coming from very different and diverse backgrounds.

 

Creating a Foresight or Warning Model: Mapping a Dynamic Network (I)

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Map, graph or network as model:

Once an initial question is defined – in our case, what will be the future of the modern nation-state for the next twenty years – most strategic foresight and warning methods start with building a model that will describe and explain the issue or question at hand. In other words, we construct our underlying model for understanding. As Epstein underlines, making explicit models is nothing else than explicating the hidden model we, as human beings, are using when thinking. Furthermore, in terms of analysis and more specifically intelligence analysis, making the model explicit will help first identifying various unconscious biases, thus allowing minimising them. It will then help defining areas of uncertain understanding, which can then be marked for further research.

What is a map, graph or network?

Most futures or foresight methods start looking for variables (also called factors or drivers) that are part of their model. A variable is a symbol or symbolic name that stands for a value that may vary. Some methodologies then link those variables. The link between two variables represents an influence (A influence B), most often causality. For example, in a model on demographics, one might have as variables birth rate and total population, and a link from birth rate to total population.

Whatever the question at hand, the construction of the model must be grounded in science, i.e. accumulated knowledge and understanding. Brainstorming sessions are crucial but should not dispense with using what others have understood beforehand, even if debates exist. Ideally the model should also be regularly updated to consider new findings.

One may see such maps, for example, in the British foresight product, Dimensions of Uncertainty done by the Foresight department of the Government Office for Science (2010?), notably Annex A.

Actually, maps are nothing else than graphs or networks – in our case directed graphs - and thus will benefit from the long scientific history that is attached to them, from Graph Theory, as graphs started being studied in mathematics with Euler in 1735 to the more recent Network Science. The development of the field has seen the emergence of new tools, such as network visualization software that greatly facilitate working with and on networks. Gephi, open source software, has been used here for the development of the underlying model, considering both its ease, its flexibility and yet its power.

The map and its use

Once the model is built, it is used to develop the scenarios that will constitute the history of Everstate, notably thanks to ego networks as will be explained in a few weeks. It will also give the indicators that are necessary for warning. Were capabilities available, it could be a step towards developing proper simulations that could then be mixed with the narratives.

The map itself, if it is seen as a whole by neophytes, may appear as complicated and difficult to use. It is however not so. It is just a tool and as all tools it demands understanding and training. Computers or mobile phones are far from being simple and yet they are now almost universally used. Once mastered, working with networks greatly facilitates the task of the analyst. It can be used as reference and give support to analytical conclusion, as statistics, trends or indications do. It is indeed one of the purposes of the Chronicles of Everstate to show how simple using a map for strategic foresight and warning is.

In terms of analytical management, a map is an investment. Indeed, once a graph has been properly built for a specific issue, it will most likely remain valid for a large period of time, especially if it is regularly updated with scientific findings. It can thus be used again each time the issue it covers comes into play. For example, if one wanted to do some foresight and warning on pandemics, the future of nuclear energy, of weapons of massive destruction (WMD), or cybersecurity, then at one stage or another the dynamics linked to state and government would have to be introduced and thus the map constructed here for the future of the state could and should be used again.

Constructing the initial model

The core ideal-type model

Rather than attempting to build from scratch the overall graph in all its complexity, it is easier to start building a minimalist core ideal-type model. This core graph will allow understanding the fundamental dynamics at work and then will be used as basis for developing the full model.

In the case of the future of the nation-state, I have started from Weber’s ideal-type, which gives the following graph.

This approach to understanding politics, which, obviously must include the population, a variable so often forgotten, would have helped understanding the 2011 uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East as well as the more recent protests in Europe and the Americas. We may only assume, with hindsight, that, had it been applied to classical F&W countries’ analysis, the likelihood to have been able to foresee the events would have been greatly heightened.

Including dynamics

As the graph shows, s0 (“step 0”) and s1 (“step 1”) have been added to variables, so as to include a dynamic dimension. Indeed as the model was being constructed, tested and revised, it appeared that using uniquely broad static conceptual variables was inadequate. The system constituted by the polity evolves; each action has consequences; the aggregation of all actions, reactions and consequences, as well as creativity, lead to evolution and change…. Read more next post.

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Image: The Seven Bridges of Königsberg, by Bogdan Giuşcă (Public domain (PD), based on the image, GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Creating a Foresight or Warning Model: Mapping a Dynamic Network (II)

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[From Part I: Including dynamics

As the graph shows, s0 (“step 0”) and s1 (“step 1”) have been added to variables, so as to include a dynamic dimension. Indeed as the model was being constructed, tested and revised, it appeared that using uniquely broad static conceptual variables was inadequate. The system constituted by the polity evolves; each action has consequences; the aggregation of all actions, reactions and consequences, as well as creativity, lead to evolution and change.]

Actually, any SF&W model as it primarily deals with time should be a dynamic network. How can we expect obtaining any potential outline for the future if our model for understanding is static?

Our map thus aims at representing the potential dynamics of polities. We shall notably use Ertman’s work on past state-building, but making it adaptable to present and future conditions.

Steps s0 and s1 will be used for the initial, simpler model. Then, what happens during s0 and s1 leads to the “evolution of society,” which thus starts the second step, s2. The hypothesis here is that we have a successful political organisation that provides the necessary security to the people. As a result, various developments take place, notably involving creativity, innovations, etc. The variable “evolution of society” (in red in the graph) is thus a cluster variable for all those developments that are not included in the graph. With s2, we shall build a more advanced model, representing the modern state. However, s2 will not display potential domestic escalation and stabilization. The underlying hypothesis for s2 is that at the end of s2 the overall socio-political model has not changed but starts showing signs of increasing inadequacies.

For s3 (step 3), we shall have the same model as for s2, but here we shall include variables related to potential domestic escalation or stabilization. Indeed, if the existing socio-political organization finally proves itself to be adequate or if it is changed in a timely fashion, then it will be possible to stop escalation, solutions can be found and finally there are possibilities to stabilize the situation.

Finally, s4 will focus on a potential failure of the s2s3 type of socio-political organisation. Actually, with s4 we shall also change scale as not all variables existing in s2 and s3 are replicated, for the sake of simplicity and clarity.

Ideally, if we had a simulation in mind, or if we wished to insert agent based modelling inside our larger conceptual framework, then n steps should be included and all variables used for each step.

Furthermore, network software give us the possibility to add a time component to a graph, as time can be attributed to each link between two variables.

The possibility to work in this direction is a very promising way forward to improve SF&W analysis and sufficient interest and funding should be made available to allow including this component. However, social science in general, international relations and political science in particular have not focused upon time. Effort should thus be made here, explicating the time factor when it is there, complementing existing findings when it has not been considered to allow for the proper, scientific inclusion of the time factor.

Adding nodes and sub-graphs

Having now our core fundamental model on the one hand and our broad dynamic structure on the other, we must progressively add the variables or groups of variables that are missing. For example, the core interactions take place within a milieu and against a normative backdrop that must both be considered. We now obtain the following graph, which is still considerably simple, with the nodes representing the milieu in green and the normative variables in violet.

One may also realise that some variables are actually generic and represent cluster of variables. For example, the variable “ruler,” which was indeed very convenient when starting our model, needed to be developed to be representative of our current polities. Thus for s2 and s3, to be as accurate as possible, the ruler was replaced with its corresponding nodes, using notably Susan E. Scarrow’s work, which gave the following subgraph.

There is no best or easiest way to add nodes, sub-graphs or develop a cluster: variables existing in both core graph and subgraph will serve as pivot and care will be taken not to have twice the same variable, then all links and dynamics must be rechecked.

Decision to detail or not a node will remain with the foresight analyst and depend upon the question as well as upon the resources available. A map that is too simplistic will lead to erroneous foresight and thus should not be favoured. A map that would take too long to construct would also deny foresight. Thus a middle ground must be found.

Considering potential structural changes in the future

It is now time to envision what might happen to the ideal-type model of polity with time, and why, as this is the purpose of foresight.

Scientific historical knowledge tells us that war and the timing of its onset were some of the major causes for changes that led to state-building and, if we take the case of the fall of the Roman Empire, to collapse. However, political history, international relations and security studies have generally tended to focus on external military threats, while as a pendent, in the state security apparatus, security has by and large be seen as equal to external military threats.

Now, if we want to be able to envision the future as well as possible, we need to consider not only conventional variables but also unconventional ones. To be able to determine those supplementary variables, we need first to understand what they cover. Here, starting from the importance of war and its onset for prompting change, we may deduce that any type of pressure threatening the security of the polity will be cause for change, as, indeed, the society and its political authorities must adapt to face those pressures. Capability to adapt or not, which will vary according conditions, will lead to one or another type of outcome or plausible future. Using imagination, research, horizon scanning and, in a collaborative setting, brainstorming, will allow identifying various types of pressures that will then be included in the graph as new nodes. For example, the variable “evolution of society,” which starts s2, as seen previously, is a first intrinsic cause of pressure on the polity, as new phenomena must be integrated. The pressure is increased because evolution goes in the direction of an increasing complexity that political authorities must learn to harness. Each pressure identified is a cluster variable or group node that could – and ideally should – become a graph. Here, as our focus is the nation-state, we shall leave them as such.

Now, we also need to introduce the possibility for the appearance of new variables. For example, if we consider complexity theory, we know that complex systems generate emerging properties. Something that did not exist in the past emerges. For example, if we follow the modernist school of thoughts on nation and nationalism, as is done here, nationalism and nations in their current acceptance are a modern phenomenon that did not exist previously.

Such novelties correspond to a change of structure for a map. If the possibility for such new variables were not included, then the map created would most probably fail to envision some plausible futures. Only changes happening while the structure is fixed could be foreseen. For example, any foresight done during the Cold War – a stable period structurally – which would have focused only on Cold War related variables would have been unable to foresee the end of the Cold war and potential post Cold War futures. Indeed, if it had not included those “new variables” and processes, then it would have been unable to foresee changes once the structure changed. This is why it is much easier to practice foresight – and warning – when the structure is stable than when it is in transition as now.

How can we introduce the possibility for structural changes? One way is to add a node labelled along the line of “other types of,” then to explain the type of variable one refers to, and to fully include it within the map, with all necessary linkages. This generic variable may then be refined and divided into various more specific variables, still always allowing for something we did not think of at the time of the design of the graph and that may appear later, in one day, one month or one year, or that may be found somewhere else in the world.

In our case, we thus have a model that evolves under different kinds of pressures: previous pressures, cumulated and acting from a global level, new external military threats, new unconventional threats (those direct threats that have already been identified, such as cyber threats or bio weapons of mass destruction), cumulated/global unconventional threats (those unconventional threats that act at a global level), other kinds of pressure for survival (direct potential pressures that are generally not yet accepted or even identified). Known pressures such as peak oil (the end of cheap oil), global warming, biodiversity loss, etc. are covered by the cluster nodes. If need be, they can be detailed as subgraphs and the linkages previously identified for the initial cluster node will help integrating the subgraph into the overall map.

The potential for various changes of structure must be permanently kept in mind when constructing the map.

Conclusion

The overall dynamic map that is progressively constructed is the foundation for the entire strategic foresight and warning analysis and conditions the success of the next steps, and the quality of the various products that will be delivered.

In our case, the dynamic map looks as follows, and we shall see with the next posts how to work with it.

References

Epstein, Joshua M. “Why Model?” Santa Fe Institute Working Papers, 2008

Ertman, Thomas. Birth of the Leviathan : Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Zellman, Ariel Review: Birth of the Leviathan by Thomas Ertman, 2008.

Scarrow, Susan E. “The nineteenth-century origins of Modern Political Parties: The Unwanted Emergence of Party Based Politics,” in Richard S. Katz, William Crotty (eds), Handbook of Party Politics, London, Sage, 2006.

Creating Everstate

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Everstate is an imaginary state in our contemporary world of the beginning of the 21st century created to identify and imagine various futures. It will be used to represent all states and each state. Everstate is thus an ideal-type state and a shorthand for the model that was constructed to represent the dynamics and processes underlying the evolution of a state, as political form, a dynamic map or network, as will be explained in detail this week in a second and third post.

However, even if we work with an ideal-type, events do not unfold in a vacuum but are dependent and constrained by a host of specific factors, most notably geography, the ecological milieu and history.

Thus to make our foresight at once realistic, replicable, as well as adaptable to specific, existing countries, some criteria need to be initially identified and then specified, i.e. we shall give them values for Everstate. For example, if geography is selected as a criteria, then you may give as value: land in the tropical belt in South Asia, or land in Northern America, then determine if your country is small or large, etc. Those initial characteristics will also influence what happens. To identify which criteria we need, we shall use a “revisited influence analysis“ that will be posted on 4 December. Then, we shall explain how to attribute values for each criterion, in the specific case of dynamic networks, on 18 December, as well as post those selected criteria and their values.

We shall then explain how we shall proceed with the map to construct the narrative through use of ego networks, and apply it immediately to articulate how those values set the stage for Everstate.  For the New Year – posting on Monday 2 January as an exception, we shall thus start really telling the story of Everstate, while, in the meantime, showing how to do it.

You can imagine changing those criteria to see if the stories change, to get potential futures that are closer to those countries that interest you or apply real criteria to identify plausible futures for real countries.