A Landscape Theory of Aggregation

政治从根本上讲是关于聚合的。将不同因素组织成稳定和持久的联盟是政治活动的核心问题。政党试图建立跨越多个社会分裂的持久利益联盟。各国为了共同安全而结成联盟。立法机构的组织是为了促进能够制定立法的多数联盟的发展。然而，到目前为止，对于政治中令人关注的聚合的各个方面，都发展了不同的政治聚合理论。这项重要的研究试图发展一种能够解释不同社会制度的组织动态的一般聚集理论。具体地说，这项研究使用物理科学和生物学的概念来开发和测试一个被称为景观理论的正式聚集模型。它寻求开发一个相对简单的模型，该模型可广泛应用于各种聚合问题，包括国际联盟、政党联盟、社会网络和民主国家的社会分裂等。这项研究将分阶段进行。它将从阐述增加复杂性和现实主义的理论开始。它将继续从几个应用程序中提取聚合的一般原则。最后，它将用每个应用程序的数据来验证该理论。这项研究完成后，应该会极大地增强我们对政治中聚集的动态的理解。

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.