Presents a foundational mathematical approach to the modelling of social conflict. This book illustrates how theory and evidence can be mathematically deepened and how investigations grounded in social choice theory can provide the evidence needed to inform social practice.

The Values, World Society and Modelling Yearbook 2014 analyses contemporary world events, drawing on foundational ideas in various academic disciplines. The year 2014 was the centenary of the start of the First World War and the seventieth anniversary of the Normandy landings in the Second World War. The year saw violent conflict in Ukraine and the rise of the Islamic State in parts of Syria and Iraq. A referendum was held in Scotland to decide whether to stay in the UK. Centrist parties lost ground in the European Parliament elections and a general election was held in India, the biggest ever election in the world. Thomas Piketty sparked debate with his analysis of growing inequality in capitalist economies. Politicians in the UK talked about ‘British values’ and debated ‘is Britain Christian?’ The British Museum lent one of the Elgin Marbles to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and Putin made overtures to China. In California, Elliot Rodger went on the rampage, killing six people. Malala Yousafzay won the Nobel Peace Prize, Maryam Mirzakhani won the Fields Medal and Judit Polgar retired from international chess. Germany won the World Cup in Brazil. Echoes of the Big Bang confirmed the theory of how the universe began. The 2014 Yearbook discusses these events alongside a variety of other specific events and general issues. In addition, this book includes the speech given by Kevin Avruch when he was joint recipient of the Conflict Research Society Book of the Year Prize 2014 for his book Context and Pretext in Conflict Resolution.

The Values, World Society and Modelling Yearbook 2015, like the 2014 Yearbook, analyses contemporary world events with special attention to values, drawing on foundational ideas in a variety of academic disciplines. World society in 2015 exhibited economic, political and cultural tensions: growth and austerity; the Greek bailout referendum; the Paris attacks on the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists; the Christian south and Muslim north in the Nigerian elections; and religion and secularism in Ireland’s referendum on same-sex marriage. Demographics, austerity, migration and nationalism were all issues in the UK general election. There were debates about immigration into Europe and debates about Western military intervention. There were debates about the Enlightenment surrounding the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo. The year 2015 was the seventieth anniversary of the establishment of the United Nations, and the centenary of the birth of one of those who attended the San Francisco conference in 1945, namely John Burton, founder of the Conflict Research Society. Chapter Two of the Yearbook is “The John Burton Memorial Lecture 2015”, by Kevin Clements. Other guest contributors are Feargal Cochrane, Hugh Miall, Dennis Sandole and Rania Dimitraki. The modelling aspect of the Yearbook is strongly structured around the notions of space, time and value. Six of the chapters are about space – physical space, geographical space, psychological space, social space, political space and value space. Four of the chapters are about time: time series for human development and population; revisiting the Pinker debate about a decline in violence; physical and structural violence; the 1945–2015 UK decline in two-party and three-party politics; the flight from the centre and the rise of UKIP and Jeremy Corbyn. The chapter “Life is a Journey” discusses values in a qualitative way, then models of values are developed for particular topics and finally a systematic account is given of value spaces.

World events in 2017 have revealed the fundamental features of social systems and their trajectories. Is the world becoming a better place in terms of wellbeing, wealth, health, peace and the environment? The structure of power is changing, with the prominent roles played by Trump, Putin and Xi, and, while the West is growing and still dominant, the relative growth in the East is greater. Other cultural formations, such as languages, religions and political cultures, have also risen and fallen. How have different social groups related to one another, and how have social divisions manifested themselves in the different systems of society? An analysis of the surprising election in the UK here leads to a gravitational model of party trajectories in political space, while the fascinating 358-year trajectory of mathematical knowledge relating to Fermat’s Last Theorem and modularity is also presented. As such, this is a book about peace and conflict, politics, international relations, social science and quantitative methods.

Over the years, a considerable amount of work has been conducted in the field of peace studies, conflict management, peace science in economics, sociology, anthropology and management. This title presents research by scholars with an emphasis on theoretical and mathematical constructs in the area of peace economics and peace science.

This volume will improve our collective understanding of how to fight humanity’s persistent and tragic problems with conflicts, climate shocks and disasters. The authors of this volume will offer deep insights, from their research, into the nature of evolving challenges to both global and local sustainability.

This is the first book to explore the application of complexity theory to difficult practice issues in criminal justice and social work and brings together experts in this emerging field to address complexity theory from a range of perspectives, providing a detailed but accessible discussion of the key issues to whole systems approaches.

Comprehensive overview of the inroads made by Complexity Thinking approaches and ideas in the study and practice of world politics. Why are policymakers, scholars, and the general public so surprised when the world turns out to be unpredictable? World Politics at the Edge of Chaos suggests that the study of international politics needs new forms of knowledge to respond to emerging challenges such as the interconnectedness between local and transnational realities; between markets, migration, and social movements; and between pandemics, a looming energy crisis, and climate change. Asserting that Complexity Thinking (CT) provides a much-needed lens for interpreting these challenges, the contributors offer a parallel assessment of the impact of CT to anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric (post-human) International Relations. Using this perspective, the result should be less surprise when confronting the dynamism of a fragile and unpredictable global life.

Technology, Society, and Conflict comprehensively studies and systematically highlights technological inequalities as a source of conflict in digital development while developing an economic and legal approach to resolving them.

In order to use the perspective of emotions to explain conflict escalation and crises, a comparison to conceptions such as the pursuit of power or financial interests is warranted. These theoretical considerations are investigated within cases of civil wars and shown to be effective in explaining the origins but also the breakdown of conflicts.