Apparent Strength Conceals Instability in a Model for the Collapse of Historical States

Daniel John Lawson and Neeraj Oak

PLOS ONE, 2014, vol. 9, issue 5, 1-10

Abstract: An explanation for the political processes leading to the sudden collapse of empires and states would be useful for understanding both historical and contemporary political events. We examine political disintegration across eras, cultures and geographical scale to form a simple hypothesis that can be expressed verbally yet formulated mathematically. Factions within a state make choices described by game-theory about whether to accept the political status quo, or to attempt to better their circumstances through costly rebellion. In lieu of precise data we verify our model using sensitivity analysis. We find that a small amount of dissatisfaction is typically harmless to the state, but can trigger sudden collapse when there is a sufficient buildup of political inequality. Contrary to intuition, a state is predicted to be least stable when its leadership is at the height of its political power and thus most able to exert its influence through external warfare, lavish expense or autocratic decree.

Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0096523 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 96523&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0096523

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0096523

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().