Cultural Sociology – Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences
University of Amsterdam
Bio:
Human history from a network perspective.
Topic:
“States make war and war makes states” (C.Tilly). To explain how, an actor based model (Turchin e.a. 2013) replicates 3000y of history fairly well, based on detailed geographic data and with variables (1) inclusive institutions (opposite to extractive), (2) weapons, and (3) army size. Another (sandpile) model (Cederman 2003) correctly predicts the slope of the power law of war sizes; it has variables 2 and 3 in common with the former model, features (4) spatial autocorrelation of war, but has has no institutions, and abstracts away from all geographic detail except surface area. Can these two models be unified into one with explanatory power beyond the two separate models?