Counting on Democracy: Scenarios of Democratic Policymaking with Francesco Coghi & Bennett Iorio (GIEF)

Super exciting.

And I feel like we're not going to talk a bit more about the article and what you find, but this concept of tipping points, which is like very, very close to, I mean, there was a speech, I think maybe three or four years ago at one of the Munich security conferences about, was the German chancellor at the time, Olaf Scholz, that came up with this idea of the Zeitenwende, this idea that there would be a moment of turning of the times, literally, so like when the time turns to another era.

And actually, I really loved how you explained the concept of tipping points.

So we would think of big political moments as being the moment in which democracy deteriorated or the moment in which the Western society fell or the moment in which democracy was lost in the East, for example, the idea of democracy, the wish for democracy was lost in the East.

But actually, you're making a much broader point, and I would then ask you to talk about your methodology and the thoughts behind the data that then you collected and studied and put in a concrete and coherent kind of path.

is that it's not really the point, it's a series of inflections and events that kind of lead to that point and we should not focus on the point only.

So how did you understand how to apply the tipping point theory, which is very much a physical theory, to the movements of society and the free choice of societies to determine what kind of regime they want to follow and be led from?

OK. that question has got a very complicated answer so i'll try

and and and make it easy even for me i don't understand um so first let me let me let me let me say one thing um this as as as far as i know or at least i'm not an expert in the field um the connection between democracies going through rough times and never being able to recover.

And the theory, the mathematical theory of tipping points is not so well developed, at least at the best of my knowledge.

In particular, there's actually The theory of tipping points is very well developed when it comes to, for instance, climate systems.

Here in Leicester, we have a world leading expert in the mathematical theory of tipping points.

And I was reading about it at the time, I was discussing with Ben, and I thought that maybe we could try and understand if we could find some indicators

that

would explain the role of technology and how the technology would be driving something away from its, say, stable behavior.

At the time, we were thinking about something else.

We were thinking about technology, AI, and it was not clear yet what we wanted to understand specifically.

It was Dan Vann who proposed this polarization and the role of polarization and technology in democratic stability.

So this is just one preamble.

We don't yet have a theory that can explain that.

But

before moving to the theory, anyway, science would like to have some data.

And so that's where we started.

We started with a bunch of data that Ben thought would be useful for the specific project.

And then we tried to understand how say, understand the instability of these democracies from the data.

Super exciting.

And I feel like we're not going to talk a bit more about the article and what you find, but this concept of tipping points, which is like very, very close to, I mean, there was a speech, I think maybe three or four years ago at one of the Munich security conferences about, was the German chancellor at the time, Olaf Scholz, that came up with this idea of the Zeitenwende, this idea that there would be a moment of turning of the times, literally, so like when the time turns to another era.

And actually, I really loved how you explained the concept of tipping points.

So we would think of big political moments as being the moment in which democracy deteriorated or the moment in which the Western society fell or the moment in which democracy was lost in the East, for example, the idea of democracy, the wish for democracy was lost in the East.

But actually, you're making a much broader point, and I would then ask you to talk about your methodology and the thoughts behind the data that then you collected and studied and put in a concrete and coherent kind of path.

is that it's not really the point, it's a series of inflections and events that kind of lead to that point and we should not focus on the point only.

So how did you understand how to apply the tipping point theory, which is very much a physical theory, to the movements of society and the free choice of societies to determine what kind of regime they want to follow and be led from?

OK. that question has got a very complicated answer so i'll try

and and and make it easy even for me i don't understand um so first let me let me let me let me say one thing um this as as as far as i know or at least i'm not an expert in the field um the connection between democracies going through rough times and never being able to recover.

And the theory, the mathematical theory of tipping points is not so well developed, at least at the best of my knowledge.

In particular, there's actually The theory of tipping points is very well developed when it comes to, for instance, climate systems.

Here in Leicester, we have a world leading expert in the mathematical theory of tipping points.

And I was reading about it at the time, I was discussing with Ben, and I thought that maybe we could try and understand if we could find some indicators

that

would explain the role of technology and how the technology would be driving something away from its, say, stable behavior.

At the time, we were thinking about something else.

We were thinking about technology, AI, and it was not clear yet what we wanted to understand specifically.

It was Dan Vann who proposed this polarization and the role of polarization and technology in democratic stability.

So this is just one preamble.

We don't yet have a theory that can explain that.

But

before moving to the theory, anyway, science would like to have some data.

And so that's where we started.

We started with a bunch of data that Ben thought would be useful for the specific project.

And then we tried to understand how say, understand the instability of these democracies from the data.