WEBINAR The Election And Complexity Science: Insights for Collection Action and Governance
Gain new insights that reframe your thinking, specific tools to advance current projects, and perspectives to set new directions.
Friday 22 November
2:00 pm EST/5:00 pm UCT on Zoom
The results of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election will send shockwaves through political, social, and economic systems, exposing deep vulnerabilities in society and governance structures worldwide. But what does Complexity Science reveal about the dynamics driving these outcomes, their causes, and broader implications?
In this webinar, Dr. Yaneer Bar-Yam, founder of the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) and co-founder of the World Health Network (WHN), will analyze the election through the lens of complexity science, offering critical insights into the systemic issues underlying today’s governance challenges.
Emergent behaviors in complex social systems, including voter behavior, media influence, and disinformation.
•Feedback loops and tipping points that drive polarization and destabilize governance.
•The structural inadequacy of traditional governance: Why existing systems are fundamentally incapable of managing the complexity of modern society, and why simply changing individuals in positions of power cannot resolve these systemic failures.
•New models for governance: How decentralized, adaptive, and networked approaches can better address the evolving challenges of governance in a complex world.
•The role of collective action and public engagement: Strategies for building societal capacity to address crises, from pandemics to economic hardship and political instability.
Attendees will learn how complexity science provides a framework for understanding governance drivers and failures, including economic and power dynamics, and practical tools for developing effective systems.
About the Speaker
Professor Yaneer Bar-Yam is co-founder of the World Health Network and founder of the New England Complex Systems Institute. He is a pandemic expert who has advised the UN, WHO, the US NSC, CMS, and CDC. He has warned about global pandemics for 15 years and contributed outbreak response protocols for stopping Ebola in Africa in 2014, which succeeded. He is an MIT-trained physicist, and complexity scientist. Since the late 1980s, Bar-Yam has contributed to founding the field of complexity science, introducing fundamental mathematical rigor, real-world application, and educational programs for new concepts and insights of this field. His work quantitatively analyzes the origins and impacts of market crashes, social unrest, ethnic violence, military conflict and pandemics, and the structure and dynamics of social networks.