Modeling Revolutionary Violence through Nonlinear Dynamics and Fluid Mechanics

Heng-Fu Zou ()

No 770, CEMA Working Papers from China Economics and Management Academy, Central University of Finance and Economics

Abstract: This paper presents a mathematically rigorous and historically informed the ory of violent revolutions, treating them as nonlinear dynamical systems governed by fluid dynamics, energy dissipation, and structural feedback. Revolutionary processes-across France, Russia, China, and Cambodia-are modeled through continuity equations, Navier-Stokes dynamics, and vorticity flows, cap turing ideological momentum, factional swirl, and collapse. We analyze shocks, turbulence, energy cascades, and boundary-layer separation to explain how rev- olutions detach from elite control and enter hysteresis, where irreversible po litical and institutional deformation occurs. The framework culminates in a Hamiltonian phase-space model of revolution, illustrating trajectories through attractors, bifurcations, and limit cycles. By unifying physics and political his- tory, this model offers predictive insight into the life cycles of revolutions-and the irreversible scars they leave behind.

Keywords: revolution; fluid dynamics; nonlinear systems; hysteresis; phase space; political instability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2025-05-17
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cuf:wpaper:770

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