The following is an excerpt from the Abstract of “A Complexity Theory of Power”, an essay I published in the Journal on Policy and Complex Systems (Fall 2018, Volume 4, Number 2)

A complexity theory of power combines power theory and complexity theory in an effort to develop a framework for the empirical analysis of political power conflicts. The proposed theory correlates the power to dominate (Dahl, 1957; Lukes, 1974) with disorganized complexity (Weaver, 1948) and the power to collaborate (Arendt, 1969, 1986; Parsons, 1963) with self-organized complexity. In this view, power exercised by one party to dominate another is a disorganizing process and power exercised by different parties to collaborate with one another is a self-organizing process. This perspective makes it possible to interpret a wide variety of power conflicts as instances of political complexity.