Democracy is a quintessential complex system: citizens’ decisions shape each other’s in nonlinear and often unpredictable ways; the emergent institutions exert top-down regulation on the individuals and orgs that live together in a polity; feedback loops and tipping points abound. And so perhaps it comes as no surprise in our times of turbulence and risk that democratic processes are under extraordinary pressure from the unanticipated influences of digital communications media, rapidly evolving economic forces, and the algorithms we’ve let loose into society.

In a new special feature at PNAS co-edited by SFI Science Board Member Simon Levin, fifteen international research teams map the jeopardy faced by democracies today — as Levin and the other editors write in their introduction to the issue, “the loss of diversity associated with polarization undermines cooperation and the ability of societies to provide the public goods that make for a healthy society.” And yet humankind has never been more well-equipped to understand the problems that we face. What can complex systems science teach us about this century’s threats to democracy, and how to mitigate or sidestep them? How might democracy itself transform as it adapts to our brave new world of extremist partisanship, exponential change, and epistemic crisis?

Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we’ll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.

This week on Complexity, we speak with SFI External Professor Tina Eliassi-Rad, Professor of Computer Science at Northeastern University, about her complex systems research on democracy, what forces stabilize or upset democratic process, and how to rigorously study the relationships between technology and social change.

If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe to Complexity Podcast wherever you prefer to listen, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts, and/or consider making a donation at santafe.edu/give. Please also be aware of our new SFI Press book, The Complex Alternative, which gathers over 60 complex systems research points of view on COVID-19 (including those from this show) — and that PhD students are now welcome to apply for our tuitionless (!) Summer 2022 SFI GAINS residential program in Vienna. Learn more at SFIPress.org and SantaFe.edu/Gains, respectively. Thank you for listening!

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Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.

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Related Reading & Listening:

Tina’s Website & Google Scholar Page

“What science can do for democracy: a complexity science approach”
Tina Eliassi-Rad, Henry Farrell, David Garcia, Stephan Lewandowsky, Patricia Palacios, Don Ross, Didier Sornette, Karim Thébault & Karoline Wiesner

“Stability of democracies: a complex systems perspective”
K Wiesner, A Birdi, T Eliassi-Rad, H Farrell, D Garcia, S Lewandowsky, P Palacios, D Ross, D Sornette and K Thébault

“Measuring algorithmically infused societies”
Claudia Wagner, Markus Strohmaier, Alexandra Olteanu, Emre Kıcıman, Noshir Contractor & Tina Eliassi-Rad

1 - David Krakauer on The Landscape of 21st Century Science
7 - Rajiv Sethi on Stereotypes, Crime, and The Pursuit of Justice
35 - Scaling Laws & Social Networks in The Time of COVID-19 with Geoffrey West
38 - Fighing Hate Speech with AI & Social Science (Garland, Galesic, Olsson)
43 - Vicky Yang & Henrik Olsson on Political Polling & Polarization: How We Make Decisions & Identities
51 - Cris Moore on Algorithmic Justice and The Physics of Inference

“Stewardship of global collective behavior” - Joe Bak-Coleman et al.

Michelle Girvan - Harnessing Chaos & Predicting The Unpredictable with A.I.

Transmission T-015: Anthony Eagan on Federalism in the time of pandemic
Transmission T-031: Melanie Moses and Kathy Powers on models that protect the vulnerable

Also Mentioned:

Simon DeDeo
Elizabeth Hobson
Danielle Allen
Alexander De Tocqueville
Stewart Brand
Safiya Noble
Filippo Menczer
Jessica Flack
Rajeev Gandhi
Scott Adams
David Brin