A Landscape Theory of Aggregation

政治从根本上讲是关于聚合的。 组织多样 将这些元素纳入稳定和持久的联盟是一个核心问题 政治活动。 政党试图建立持久的 跨越多个社会分裂的利益联盟。国 为了共同安全而寻求联盟。 立法机构组织起来， 以促进多数联盟的发展， 立法 然而，到目前为止，不同的政治理论 已经为每个不同的方面开发了聚合， 政治中的聚集是一个问题。 这一重要 研究试图发展一种一般的聚集理论， 可以解释不同社会的组织动态， 系统. 具体来说，这项研究使用的概念，从物理 科学和生物学，开发和测试一个正式的模型， 所谓的景观理论。 它旨在发展一个 相对简单的模型，具有广泛的应用，以各种 包括国际联盟、联合 政治党派、社交网络和社会分裂 民主国家，以及其他许多国家。 这项研究将在 阶段。它将开始阐述理论增加复杂性 和现实主义 它将继续提炼一般原则， 跨多个应用程序的聚合。 最后将 用每个应用的数据来检验理论。 这项研究完成后，将大大提高我们的 理解政治中聚集的动力学。

Politics is fundamentally about aggregation. Organizing diverse elements into stable and enduring coalitions is a central concern of political activity. Political parties attempt to forge enduring coalitions of interests across multiple social cleavages. Nations pursue alliances for mutual security. Legislatures organize so as to facilitate the development of majority coalitions that can enact legislation. To date, however, separate theories of political aggregation have been developed for each of the various aspects of politics in which aggregation is of concern. This important research attempts to develop a general theory of aggregation which can account for the organizational dynamics of diverse social systems. Specifically, this research uses concepts from the physical sciences and biology to develop and test a formal model of aggregation called landscape theory. It seeks to develop a relatively simple model that has wide applications to a variety of aggregation problems including international alliances, coalitions of political parties, social networks, and social cleavages in democracies among many others. The research will proceed in phases. It will begin by elaborating the theory adding complexity and realism. It will proceed to distill general principles of aggregation from across the several applications. Finally, it will test the theory with data for each of the applications. When completed this research should greatly enhance our understanding of the dynamics of aggregation in politics.