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NOTES:
Just finished highlighting, cut the last two cards next
Collin, I merged your complexity work in here, change anything you like
Need answers to and overviews next
Look to UTNIF2012 SimCity for more defense and extensions, also Michigans predictions K
I want to combine this with existential risk bad stuff and our big impacts framework
The alternative is still up in the air, probably localism so we only have one advocacy
Read Heiss 9 from localism file
Unsure how util works with this, or if its just incompatible

Sub-point a) Plan Meets Advantage

Evaluate the future locked in by the affirmatives- they frame each of their
impact scenarios as Rube Goldbergs final event- as if dropping the marble
in the machine will guarantee a desirable outcome. The race car track, the
dominos, the isolated causations are all part of their link chain and so we all
pretend that the 1AC already knows exactly how those cards will be played,
but these are the systemic effects that can take the marble off course. This
is the folly of status quo policymaking- risk cannot be seen as a flash of
instability to be predicted and controlled the instability is inherent and
constant enthropy.
Mangalagiu, 11 [Diana Mangalagiu, Prof of Strategy at Smith School of Enterprise and Environment-University of Oxford
Risk and resilience in times of globalization An emerging research program for Global Systems Science: Assessing the state of
the art, 10/4/11, http://www.gsdp.eu/ //AC]
The recent financial crisis highlights the challenges of, and the potential of catastrophic impacts from the failure to

was neither prevented, nor effectively anticipated,

by the hosts of experts in risks and futures employed by the industry. Despite the sophisticated strategic
planning and risk management approaches adopted by individual banks and regulators, the lack of
reflexivity in anticipatory knowledge processes, coupled with overconfidence in calculable and
manageable risks, contributed to the denial, dismissal and ignorance of new forms of vulnerability and, in particular,
systemic risk (Wilkinson and Ramirez, 2010; Selsky et al, 2008). It also highlights that risk management approaches that
address global, systemic and long term risks. The crisis

focus on stress testing the parts (e.g. individual banks, companies, governments, cities etc.) of a system are no longer enough.
The notion of systemic risk and practices of systemic risk management are being influenced by multiple traditions in scholarship
(e.g. complexity science, resilience concepts), contesting theories of risk (e.g. social, mathematical, psychological) and the
practical experiences harvested through professional bodies focused on risk management in banking and financial services,
environmental management, urban planning, insurance and reinsurance, etc. In this WP, we focus on identifying and comparing
how risk management, the search for resilience and their respective approaches to strategic foresight and anticipatory
knowledge might be better related and more effectively practiced in a range of different contexts such as at the organizational,
sectoral-, national- and international-systems levels. Our first year deliverable is the state of the art concerning risk, systemic
risk and resilience in times of globalization. The conventional risk management paradigm assumes that a loss

event is relatively limited, specific and isolated and with proper analysis can be anticipated and thus,
avoided or contained and mitigated. In the conventional risk management paradigm the default is to forecast the future - or a
probabilistic analysis i.e. the assumption that the future is knowable. Formal interest in risk and risk management originates
from the fields of engineering and epidemiology in the 20th century (Kates & Kasperson, 1983) and from interdisciplinary studies
of natural hazards (White & Haas, 1975). Since then the social sciences created significant independent contributions to risk
research (Golding, 1992). Krimsky (1992) summarized the roles theory can take in risk analysis, which are quantitative laws,
taxonomic frameworks, models, functionalist explanations, cognitive explanations, or analogical models and interpretive

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representations. Beck (1992, 1994) and Giddens (1991, 1999) pointed to the elaborate role risk plays in the macro organizational
levels of modern society. Societies are self-reflective in the sense that they seek to govern their

own behavior to avoid catastrophic consequences. As such, the concept of risk is also politically relevant
(Lupton, 1999). Providing an overview of the different perspectives on risk research, Renn (1992) distinguishes the technical
perspective on risk (expected or modeled value, probabilistic risk assessment), economic perspectives (risk-benefit analysis),
psychological perspectives (psychometric and cognitive analyses), sociological perspectives (plurality of approaches), and
cultural perspectives (grid-group analysis).

CONTINUED

Another stream of literature focuses on the perception and social construction of systemic risk. First, studies look into the
paradoxical situation of policy makers to stimulate innovation but also to regulate risks arising from accelerating innovation. This
argument is put forward to support post-normal science and decision-making as the appropriate approach to modern (systemic)
risk management situations. Then, risk perception biases for catastrophic risk have been examined

and ultimately, the classic reductionist treatment of risk management was held responsible for rising
occupation with risk in society. Public actors play a paradoxical role in the relationship
between risk and innovation, between the interests of the public and private actors (Ravetz, 2003). Ravetz sees
accelerating innovation as a necessary tool for private companies to compete in a globalizing knowledge economy and the role
of the public to ensure an environment in which speedy innovation can take place. On the other hand, public actors need

to ensure the safety of new technologies and innovation acting as an agent for their
citizens, remaining the source of public trust and safety provider for citizens. Besides this
paradoxical role, technological innovation threatens the global environmental system; so,
how much technological innovation is desirable and how much risk in it acceptable?
Ravetz argues that finding appropriate answers to this question can only be found in a
policy-making process that involves the public in dialogues about scientific findings and by
disclosing ambiguities in scientific finding, thus embracing policy principles for a postnormal world of science.
CONTINUED
An initial review of the literatures relating to resilience reveals a fragmented field. In social ecology, resilience is concerned with
the longer-term survival and functioning of ecosystems species, populations and services in a changing or fluctuating operating
environment. The social ecology approach introduced by Holling (1973) argues ecological systems are non-deterministic because
of inherent complexity. characterizes the ecosystem as complex set of elements and parts existing in dynamic interrelationship
and interdependency. The key contribution of the ecological view of resilience is to provide a focus on the systemic nature of the
problems and on the longer-term demands on policy and management. It emphasizes the need to keep options open, while
appreciating heterogeneity and keeping a broader than local view organization this is in contrast to dominant management
approaches which are concerned with compartmentalizing issues, limiting change to the margins and views of the future rooted
in attempt to preserve the present. The critical distinction is that between resilience and stability.

The stability/equilibrium paradigm approaches the future with the aim of strengthening
the status quo by making the present system resilient to change and aiming to achieve stability
and constancy. In the management literature, the focus when using the resilience concept is on the persistence and survival of
individual businesses and institutions in face of change. A bulk of the management literature on organizations focuses on the
strategies for individual businesses to be resilient to change -- on innovation, experimentation and leadership to ensure survival
and growth of a specific institution/business -- however the ecosystem perspective requires us to think about the health and of
the forest and the services its provides rather than the role of individual species! What are the sources of resilience in the system
and or an organization? The process of increasing resilience is different from optimization and
improving system performance in existing conditions what organizational characteristics build resilience. Successful adaptation
requires for individual organizations, agents and businesses to continue to full fill their own goal and function but must also
include measures of promoting adaptive capacity of the system. Despite the richness in conceptual thinking underpinning the
concept of resilience, there is limited evidence of how groups, organizations are societies are translating the notion of resilience
into practice. The constructivist tradition in social theory argues that social response is non-

deterministic because of plural perception and the negotiations of values, cultures,

choices and epistemologies. The managers are part of the system that is being managed
and define the system and its characteristics in different ways. Understanding the loss,
creation and maintenance of resilience through the process of co-discovery scientists,
policy makers, practitioners, stakeholders and citizens is at the heart of building the
capacity to deal with whatever the future might bring. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some societies
are organizing for resilience. For example, both the governments of Canada and Singapore have resilience as the goal of their
national strategic plans. There is a nascent literature emerging, as yet unmapped, on operationalizing resilience beyond the
organizational level. For example, in an approach to adapting an urban delta to uncertain climate change, Wardekkar et al.
(2009) identify five options for resilience: (1) homeostasis: incorporation of feedback loops; (2) omnivory: having several
different ways of fulfilling needs; (3) flatness: preventing a system from becoming too top heavy enables more effective

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localized responses, self-reliance and self-organization; (4) buffering: the ability to absorb disturbances to a certain extent and
(5) redundancy: having multiple options routes, supply chains, etc so that if one fails, others can be used. The

resilience frame opens the opportunity to think in terms of nonlinear and nondeterministic futures and, in doing so, to displace practices in probable futures with
plausible and preferable futures. The resilience frame also invites attention to realizing transformation, rather than
future proofing of established structures, identities and values. It invites consideration of the
uncertainty as irreducible and inherent, going beyond the lack of knowledge and
encompassing ambiguity and ignorance.

Black Swans events that have major effects and are yet unpredictable
are ignored by the affirmatives. They ignore the intuition of the
unpredictable events that we experience every day and that we have
empirically observed in history.
Hansson, 5 [Sven Ove; Professor- Department of Philosophy and the History of Technology
at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden; The Epistemology of
Technological Risk Techn: Research in Philosophy and Technology, Volume 9, Winter 2005
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/v9n2/hansson.html //AC]
We therefore need criteria to determine when the possibility of unknown dangers should be taken seriously and
when it can be neglected. This problem cannot be solved with probability calculus or other exact
mathematical methods. The best that we can hope for is a set of informal criteria that can be
used to support intuitive judgment. The following list of four criteria has been proposed for this purpose.
(Hansson 1996) 1. Asymmetry of uncertainty: Possibly, a decision to build a second bridge between
Sweden and Denmark will lead through some unforeseeable causal chain to a nuclear war.
Possibly, it is the other way around so that a decision not to build such a bridge will lead
to a nuclear war. We have no reason why one or the other of these two causal chains
should be more probable, or otherwise more worthy of our attention, than the other. On the other hand, the
introduction of a new species of earthworm is connected with much more uncertainty than the option not to introduce the new
species. Such asymmetry is a necessary but insufficient condition for taking the issue of unknown

dangers into serious consideration. 2. Novelty: Unknown dangers come mainly from new and untested phenomena. The
emission of a new substance into the stratosphere constitutes a qualitative novelty, whereas the construction of a new bridge
does not. An interesting example of the novelty factor can be found in particle physics. Before new and more powerful particle
accelerators have been built, physicists have sometimes feared that the new levels of energy might generate a new phase of
matter that accretes every atom of the earth. The decision to regard these and similar fears as groundless has been based on
observations showing that the earth is already under constant bombardment from outer space of particles with the same or
higher energies. (Ruthen 1993) 3. Spatial and temporal limitations: If the effects of a proposed measure are

known to be limited in space or time, then these limitations reduce the urgency of the
possible unknown effects associated with the measure. The absence of such limitations
contributes to the severity of many ecological problems, such as global emissions and the
spread of chemically stable pesticides. 4. Interference with complex systems in balance: Complex
systems such as ecosystems and the atmospheric system are known to have reached some
type of balance, which may be impossible to restore after a major disturbance. Due to
this irreversibility, uncontrolled interference with such systems is connected with a high
degree of uncertainty. (Arguably, the same can be said of uncontrolled interference with economic systems; this is an
argument for piecemeal rather than drastic economic reforms.) It might be argued that we do not know that these
systems can resist even minor perturbations. If causation is chaotic, then for all that we
know, a minor modification of the liturgy of the Church of England may trigger a major
ecological disaster in Africa. If we assume that all cause-effect relationships are chaotic,
then the very idea of planning and taking precautions seems to lose its meaning. However, such a
world-view would leave us entirely without guidance, even in situations when we
consider ourselves well-informed. Fortunately, experience does not bear out this pessimistic worldview.
Accumulated experience and theoretical reflection strongly indicate that certain types of influences

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on ecological systems can be withstood, whereas others cannot. The same applies to
technological, economic, social, and political systems, although our knowledge about their resilience
towards various disturbances has not been sufficiently systematized.

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Sub-Point B) Collapsability

The 1AC addresses only a narrow field of possibilities determined by a

supposedly predictable and exclusive link chain. They offer one plausible
scenario, but without a holistic analysis of the systemic problems inherent
in the status quo, they cannot prove that their particular link chain is the
most probable of all the possibilities. Systemic effects can mutate the
affirmatives link chain because they evaluate it with tunnel vision. This
makes voting aff inherently dangerous because it is unpredictable.
Ramalingam, 11 [Ben Ramalingam -Senior Research Associate at the Overseas Development Institute The
globalization of vulnerability http://aidontheedge.info/2011/01/11/the-globalisation-of-vulnerability/ //AC]
in the face of the global financial crisis a number of developing countries have proven to be remarkably resilient if judged
purely in terms of economic growth. At the same time, it appears that the burden of coping has been borne disproportionately by
poor and vulnerable people. This reality is poorly understood (emphases added) In fact, much work on vulnerability has

been traditionally undertaken in disciplinary silos in highly specialised ways which are often in
isolation from each other. Environmental vulnerability is assessed by the climatologists, nutritional vulnerability by
the food security experts, market vulnerability by the economists, disease vector vulnerability by epidemiologists, and so on.

The precise nature of vulnerability is often also heavily debated, leading to differences
within the silos. The gap between this stove-piped understanding and multi-faceted
reality becomes heightened when one considers the number of ongoing global crises. The
financial crisis is just one of a number of global trends (that we currently know about) which are interacting and impacting
on the lives of poor and vulnerable people. To take another example, the 2010 World Disasters Report focused on
urbanisation, and found that a high proportion of this urban growth is in cities at risk from the increased frequency and
intensity of extreme weather events and storm surges that climate change is bringing or is likely to bring. Along similar
lines, the global food system is showing signs of strain once again. Work done during the last upswing in prices in 2008 suggested
that a key requirement was better monitoring and anticipation of future bubbles. Unfortunately anticipation has not led to
preventative action. All the signs are that environmental disasters - driven by climate change - and a growing speculative bubble
in commodities driven partly by changing investor patterns in the wake of the financial crisis - are pushing the world into a new
food price crisis. In the face of these trends and shocks, there is a slowly growing recognition that vulnerability itself

has become globalised. Interestingly this insight has not come from within the aid sector but from organisations such as
the World Economic Forum, whose Global Risk Report 2010 shows that like the world economy vulnerabilities are now tightly
interconnected. Global shocks and stresses have multiple, unpredictable effects and

increasingly demand but do not always trigger diverse responses at the local level. As recent research indicates,
employing language which Aid on the Edge regulars will recognise: Cause and effect in global systems is
distinctly nonlinear. Inputs and outputs may not be proportional: a cause with ever-so-slightly different parameters than
the previous instance might result in a wildly different effect. Additionally, systems and their component sub-systems
interact to produce feedback loops that can either amplify or stabilize resulting effects. Feedbacks blur the
line of what is cause and what is effect. The global system is characterised by various
sizes and degrees of complexity combined into a tangled and heaving mass of interdependent actions. Despite
these shifts in the nature of vulnerability, international aid policy and practice are still
dominated by narrow, parochial approaches. Take for example the findings of a report on chronic
vulnerability in Africa which found that much of the analysis undertaken by international agencies did not
examine root causes and tended to divide vulnerability into immediate and structural
issues. The agencies then focused their efforts on the immediate issues, allowing the structural issues to be largely ignored.
By contrast, the reality of vulnerability for most poor people was found to be complex and
nuanced vulnerability can be influenced by gender, ethnic group and generation issues, and by contemporary and historical
social processes that are often not analysed and not explained. (emphasis added) It would seem that it is only after things go
seriously wrong that the inter-relationships between the key drivers of vulnerability become of importance to international
agencies. To cite one prominent and very current example, the densely urban population in Port-Au-Prince was up until January
2010 experiencing high levels of vulnerability and multiple climactic shocks. It was only after the 12 January earthquake that aid
agencies became sensitive to this interconnected reality, by which time it was already too late for many in Haitian population. As
one satirical headline put it at the time: Massive earthquake reveals poor country called Haiti to the world.

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Complexity is an inevitable byproduct of adaptation policy. Moderate

policies only make small changes to variables but these same variables are
subject to the small initial changes that create massive unpredictable
effects later on that is guaranteed by the definition of complexity systems
such as ecological, meteorological and economic systems. We only become
less able to manage complexity as we try to ignore its systemic risks. Thus,
even the slightest increase in complexity pushes us closer to an
unpredictable existential brink.
Tamming and Petrov, 9 [Chaos and Order: A Breakpoint for the Global Monetary System, Financial Sense
Editorials, http://www.financialsensearchive.com/editorials/petrov/2009/0112.html, 10/12/12//CC]
Let's take a look at history. The Roman Empire was in steadily in decline for a couple

of centuries it was
a nation of consumers, ran significant fiscal and trade deficits, a corrupt senate taxed and looted
the people, and the imperial military was overstreched just like modern-day America. Its economic decline and
weakness was challenged by various barbarian tribes eager for a big slice of the Roman pie. The empire had to either
restructure its economy and military or face defeat. It ended defeated and destroyed.Much later, the
feudal age collapsed from its own internal contradictions, but humanity did not return to the Stone Age; instead
its collapse gave birth to a qualitatively different economic system known today as capitalism , gave
birth of modern banking in Italy, and revived science, culture, and art during the Renaissance.More recently, at the
beginning of World War II, Japan was at peace, but nevertheless prepared for war. The Japanese economy was
choking under the ever dwindling supplies of oil that were vital for the development of its military .
The critical point was reached when the Americans cur off a vital source of oil supply in 1941 . Without oil,
Japan had literally two options either suffer economically and abandon militarization or strike back and declare war.
The fateful decision was to strike Pearl Harbour and the rest is history.We can similarly view the
development of the economic and political system. As complexity rises and the current institutional and
regulatory framework cannot cope with internal disorder, the breakpoint is typically reached with
the eruption of an economic crisis; this usually leads to social chaos, revolution, social and
economic re-engineering, and qualitative jumps in development. The crisis causes either the system to
collapse or brings about progress. Crisis should bring hope, like the crisis in Zimbabwe today, but
unfortunately the reality is not that simple crises cause an uncountable suffering and death, yet
the outcome is far from clear.With rising social confusion and system entropy, the system becomes
increasingly uncertain and unpredictable. It is quite unclear which way it will swing.

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EXTENSIONS
Moderate policymaking is no longer sufficient for addressing these systemic
impacts- thats is an internal link to dedev DA.
Wilkinson, 12 [Cathy Wilkinson, urban spatial planning at Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Socialecological resilience: Insights and issues for planning theory Planning Theory May 2012 vol. 11 no. 2 148-169 //AC]
In the USA, two Long Term Ecological Research Network urban projects, in Baltimore and Phoenix, are grappling with how to
make analysable a linked social-ecological system (SES). The difficulty of establishing a strong cross-disciplinary theoretical
basis or research agenda for coupling nature and human systems is recognized by scholars involved in this project (Redman et
al., 2004) who acknowledge that standard ecological theories are insufficient to address the complexity of human culture,
behaviour, and institutions (Grimm and Redman, 2004: 13 as summarized in Evans, 2011: 228). How does this relate to the way
planning theory conceptualizes humannature relations? Issues of humannature interaction are central to the very process of
human settlement, urbanization and well-being. Ever since the establishment of the very first permanent settlements
following the shift from nomadic to agrarian-based living, ecosystem services have been

critical to the capacity of those settlements to survive and indeed thrive (Daily, 1997; Redman,
1999). Access to fresh water, reliable food and energy sources, and construction materials
has been essential. Yet archaeology reveals repeated examples of urban civilizations
exceeding the limits of accessible ecosystem services. Among the more severe human-induced
environmental impacts are those associated with ancient urban societies, whose dense populations,
rising rates of consumption, and agricultural intensification led to regional degradation so
extreme that cities were abandoned and the productive potential of entire civilizations
was undermined to the point of ruin. (Grimm et al., 2000 : 572) It is not surprising therefore that there are well-known
and established bodies of research exploring humannature relations in and of cities, from disciplines including geography,
history, archaeology and of course planning. Indeed, there is a long history of attention to humannature relations through design
and planning practice. Since the emergence of town planning as a discipline, humannature relations have been highlighted
through the Chicago School of planning, the early British town planners such as Ebenezer Howard (18501928), Patrick Geddes
(18541932) and his influence on Lewis Mumford and later on through more detailed practice-based attention of how to design
with nature (McHarg, 1969). From the 1970s, environmental planning emerged as a sub-discipline (Slocombe, 1993). More

recently this relationship is explored through the sustainability discourse (e.g. Owens and
Cowell, 2002; Rydin, 2010) and emergence of climate change. However, when attention is turned to the
planning theory literature per se, there is arguably minimal attention to the implications of ecological
considerations as a primary concern. This is not to say that these issues havent been dealt with at all, but that contributions
seem to be limited compared to the extensive focus on the trajectory of planning theories from rationalist and critical through to
collaborative and post-positivist. Areas where planning theory has specifically taken up matters of humannature relations regard
environmental ethics and political ecology. In addition, in relatively recent years increasing attention is being paid to what a
relational understanding of social-ecological processes means for planning theory (e.g. Hillier, 2007; Swyngedouw, 2010).
Environmental ethics is of import for planning theory because it critically informs the difficult choices and tradeoffs society must
make to address serious environmental problems (Beatley, 1989; Jacobs, 1995). It is not suggested that planners be the ones to
decide what the morally correct or ethical environmental decision is, but that they are certainly in a position to put forth, and
cause to be considered, key questions in arriving at an environmental ethic (Beatley, 1989: 26). Some of these issues are taken
up in brief by subsequent planning theorists. For example, Healey (1997: 164) raises the issue of moral responsibilities for those
who cannot speak for themselves, other species and future generations and Wilson and Piper (2010: 120) suggest that climate
change radically extends attention to the longer-term future at the same time as throwing into greater relief the problems of
ensuring equitable outcomes of plans and planning decisions both now and in the future . Political ecology is

relevant for planning theory because society must consider the environmental crisis as
one of ideological and political as well as ethical and moral origins (Harrill, 1999: 68). From this
perspective, it is argued that a progressive or radical form of planning is required in order to
transform the social and political structures hindering sustainability (Harrill, 1999: 72). This
transformation must occur in spite of the very present risk that as economic conditions decline so does the capacity to negotiate
sustainable development gains, including ecological outcomes (Davoudi et al., 2009; Rydin, 2010) and in face of the systematic
depoliticization of social-ecological governance (Swyngedouw, 2010). In an insightful piece in Ashgates most recent Research
Compendium to Planning Theory, Swyngedouw (2010: 31214) urges that planning intervention be seen as irredeemably violent
engagements that re-choreograph socio-natural relations and assemblages and as such must be accompanied by democractic
agonistic struggle over the content of socio-ecological life, struggles he argues are being replaced by techno-managerial
planning, expert management and administration.

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Policies exist within chaotic systems, those characterized by big changes

due to small adjustments in initial conditions, conditions which cannot be
remade and whose effects are long since unpredictable.
Peat, 8 [Non-Linear Dynamics (Chaos Theory) and its Implications for Policy Planning,
http://www.fdavidpeat.com/bibliography/essays/chaos.htm, 10/12/12//CC]
Let us examine specific ways in which non-linearities can frustrate an attempt at policy
planning.
i. Butterfly effects
It may not always be possible to pin down a system exactly. There may be, for example,
certain unknown or uncertain factors. The boundary to a system may not be well defined or
the very act of observation and measurement may introduce uncertainties. To give a
technical example, B. Mandelbrot has pointed out that the distribution and number of
weather stations has a "lower fractal dimension" than that of any real weather system.
This means that, in principle, we can never gather sufficient information to characterize
the world's weather. A tiny degree of uncertainty in a linear system does not really matter-it simply results in a small degree of uncertainty in its future. But for some non-linear systems
these uncertainties can increase exponentially; such systems are infinitely sensitive to their
initial conditions so that the smallest initial fluctuation soon swamps the system. Other
systems may be infinitely sensitive to externalities -- the butterfly effect - so that a tiny
fluctuation or perturbation arising in some nearby system will swamp the system. Another
aspect of the butterfly effect is that a small periodic effect, operating over a long enough
time, may end up dominating the system while large external "shocks" are damped out. Not
only will the future of such systems be uncertain but attempts at control or corrective
measures will give unpredictable results.
ii. Sudden changes
Non-linear systems are characterized by having "bifurcation-points", regions where the
system sits on a knife edge, as it where, and may suddenly change its qualitative behavior.
A system that has been well behaved for a long period may suddenly act erratically. A
company that has been growing steadily for several years may unexpectedly enter a
period of uncontrolled oscillations of its economy. Other systems may become selforganized and settle down into a relatively stable period of well defined economic behavior.
Attempts to steer this behavior into new directions during this period will be surprisingly
difficult. Over its life, a non-linear system can enter a series of quite different economic
regimes and behaviors. And, it must be stressed, these changes need not always be the
result of external perturbations or "shocks" but are the natural unfolding of the internal
dynamics of the system. Policy makers would therefore have to take into account that a
system may, at one time, be insensitive to control, and at another infinitely sensitive and
that major changes in a system may not always be the result of external factors for an
apparently negligible effect may, given time, swamp the behavior of the system.
iii Exogenous or Endogenous Change?
When a system, steered by a particular policy, undergoes a sudden dramatic change one
normally looks for some external cause. Has something changed in its environment, has
some unforeseen demand surfaced, or is it the result of the development of a new
technology? But what if this major fluctuation or qualitative change has nothing to do with
external circumstances but is endogenous - the result of purely internal dynamics? A small
regular, periodic internal fluctuation can suddenly swamp the system; and the iteration of
an output into the next cycle will, in time, result in qualitatively new behavior. It is of
obvious importance to be able to distinguish endogenous from exogenous factors.
iv Chaotic behavior

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Systems sometimes enter regions of highly erratic and chaotic behavior. In such cases it
becomes impossible to predict the future behavior of the system even when based on its
entire past history. From moment to moment the system jumps violently in its behavior,
moreover, it may be infinitely sensitive to any external change of fluctuation.But is a chaotic
system totally devoid of order? A chaotic system appears totally unpredictable in its behavior,
moreover its behavior may be impervious to corrective measures. But scientists are now
finding that what is called "deterministic chaos" exhibits certain regularities. For example,
erratic swings, while entirely unpredictable, may nevertheless be confined to a particular
limited region -- called a chaotic or strange attractor. So while the moment to moment
behavior of the system is unpredictable, uncovering the geometry of the strange attractors
give information about the overall range of behavior. It is also a matter of debate as to
whether a chaotic system should be spoken of as totally devoid of any order, or as exhibiting
a highly complex and subtle order.Moreover such systems may also exhibit "intermittency",
periods of simple order which emerge again and again out of chaos. When faced with the
alternation of order and chaos one may ask: "Does this represent a break down of good
order, a failure of policy? Or is the order itself a temporary breakdown of a more general
chaos - or infinite complexity of behavior?"That there can be order within chance can be
seen in the following way: Suppose someone has tossed ten "heads" in a row. Most people
would bet that the next throw must be tails. But knowing that the system is truly random
indicates that there is a 50:50 chance that the next throw will be "heads". In this way an
experienced gambler will, on the average, win over a gullible opponent. In a similar fashion,
knowing the range of chaotic behavior enables one to hedge policy bets and come out
marginally ahead over a long period of time.
v Self similarity
Chaotic systems have much in common with fractals, indeed their strange attractors have a
fractal structure. Likewise there may be detailed fractal patterns in their dynamics that
repeat at different scales of time. Having knowledge of such patterns would make it possible
to, on the average, make better micropredictions. I.e. one computer analysis of stock
market data suggests that there are self-similar patterns at 14, 5 and 2 yr. periods and in
5 month periods and that the same patterns may be present within each day.
vi Feedforward
Where two or more products compete for a given market a process of feedforward takes
place. The effect of a tiny initial fluctuation may cause one particular product to
eventually dominate the market. An example of this is the competition between VHS and
Betamax videocassettes.

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Since the only predictable feature of these systems is their irregular and
sporadic behavior, the entirety of the affs solvency mechanism comes into
question. Ultimately, they can offer only momentary, short-term and
probably unreliable solutions to the problems they identify.
Levy 03 [Applications and Limitations of Complexity Theory in Organization Theory and
Strategy, University of Massachusetts Boston,
http://www.faculty.umb.edu/david_levy/complex00.pdf, 10/12/12//CC]
A. Long-Term Planning Is Impossible. Chaos theory has demonstrated how small
disturbances multiply over time because of nonlinear relationships and feedback effects.
As a result, such systems are extremely sensitive to initial conditions, making their future
states appear random. Networks, even when in the ordered regime, are subject to
perturbations from external influences, which sometimes cause substantial, though
unpredictable reconfigurations. Forecasting is particularly difficult in systems that never
approach a stable equilibrium state. The traditional approach to understanding the
influence of industry structure on firm behavior and competitive outcomes has been derived
from microeconomics, with its on comparative statics and equilibrium. Even the most
complex game theoretic models are only considered useful if they predict an equilibrium
outcome. By contrast, chaotic systems do not reach a stable equilibrium; indeed, they can
never pass through the same exact state more than once. Organizations wander the shifting
terrain of fitness landscapes on infinite journeys. Industries might reach some temporary,
relatively stable pattern, but this is likely to be short lived. Endogenous change, due to
corporate decisions to enter or exit the market or to develop new technologies, shifts the
fitness landscape and the attractors in a system. Industries are subsystems of larger
economic and social structures, which themselves are complex dynamic systems unfolding
in unpredictable ways. Stacey (1995) relates this coevolution to Giddens's (1984) concept of
structuration, in which the decisions and actions of agents change institutions, and these
institutions in turn constrain and condition the behavior of individual agents. Formulating a
long-term plan is clearly a key strategic task facing any organization. People involved in
planning have always known that models are simplified representations, that forecasts are
uncertain, and that uncertainty grows over time. Nevertheless, our conventional
understanding of linear models suggests that better models and a more accurate specification
of starting conditions would yield better forecasts, useful for months if not years into the
future. Complexity theory suggests otherwise; the payoff in terms of better forecasts from
building more complex and more accurate models may be small. Meteorologists can
improve their models by using more terrestial observations and dividing the atmosphere into a
great many small interacting units of analysis; despite the application of successively more
powerful computers, the accuracy of forecasts still falls off very rapidly after 3 or 4 days.
Similarly, we cannot learn much about the future by studying the past: If history is the
sum of complex and nonlinear interactions among people and nations, then history does
not repeat itself. Concerning urban planning, Cartwright (1991) has noted that we have to
acknowledge that "a complete understanding of some of the things we plan may be beyond all
possibility." Stacey (1996: 187) concluded that though short-term behavior might be
predictable, "members of an organization, no matter how intelligent and powerful, will be
unable to predict the specific long-term outcomes of their actions." How long is the long
term? Many discussions of complexity avoid this critical issue. For the weather, it is clear that
more than 5 days is long-term forecasting. For biological evolutionary systems. the time
frame might be miilions of years. For firms and industries, the relationship between
uncertainty and time is less clear; businesses have traditionally developed strategic plans for
3 or 5 years, though many companies also attempt to predict major technological trends over

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10- and 20-year horizons. B. Dramatic Change Can Occur Unexpectedly. Traditional
paradigms of economics and strategy, built upon simplified assumptions of cause and
effect, would suggest that small changes in parameters should lead to
correspondingly small changes in the equilibrium outcome. Complexity theory forces us to
reconsider this conclusion. Large fluctuations can be generated internally by
deterministic chaotic systems, and small perturbations to networks, even when in the ordered
state, can sometimes have major effects. Just as population levels of a species can crash as
a result of ecosystem dynamics, economic systems can enter depressions and stock
markets can crash even in the absence of external shocks. The size of fluctuations from
one period to the next in chaotic systems has a characteristic power law probability
distribution. Under this distribution, large fluctuations occur more frequently than under the
normal distribution, suggesting that managers might underestimate the potential for large
changes in industry conditions or competitors' behavior. Small exogenous disturbances to
complex systems can also cause unexpectedly large changes. The implication for business
strategy is that the entry of one new competitor or the development of a seemingly minor
technology can have a substantial impact on competition in an industry. The development of
transistors, for example, originally appeared to be merely an incremental improvement
over vacuum tubes. Similarly, the deal between IBM and Microsoft in 1980 to develop an
operating system for their personal computer has profoundly shaped the software and
hardware market since that time.

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In-round impacts and shit, cut it

Sil and Katzenstein, 10 [Rudra and Peter, Sil is an Associate Professor of Political
Science at the University of Pennysylvania while Katzenstein is a Professor of International
Studies at Cornell, Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics: Reconfiguring
Problems and Mechanisms across Research Traditions, part of UPenn articles collection,
http://www.polisci.upenn.edu/faculty/RSEclectic2010.pdf //AC]
Analytic eclecticism does not constitute an alternative model of research. It is an intellectual
stance a researcher can adopt when pursuing research that engages, but does not fit neatly
within, established research traditions in a given discipline or field. We identify analytic
eclecticism in terms of three characteristics that distinguish it from conventional scholarship
embedded in research traditions. First, it proceeds at least implicitly on the basis of a
pragmatist ethos, manifested concretely in the search for middle-range theoretical arguments
that potentially speak to concrete issues of policy and practice. Second, it addresses
problems of wide scope that, in contrast to more narrowly parsed research puzzles designed
to test theories or fill in gaps within research traditions, incorporate more of the complexity
and messiness of particular real-world situations. Third, in constructing substantive arguments
related to these problems, analytic eclecticism generates complex causal stories that forgo
parsimony in order to capture the interactions among different types of causal mechanisms
normally analyzed in isolation from each other within separate research traditions. This is not
the first call for something resembling eclec-ticism. In addition to Lindblom and Cohen,
numerous scholars have issued pleas for a more practically useful social scienceor, following
Aristotle, a phronetic social scienceoriented more toward social commentary and political
action than toward inter-paradigm debates.3 In international relations, prominent scholars,
some even iden-tified with particular research traditions, have acknowledged the need for
incorporating elements from other approaches in order to fashion more usable and more
comprehensive forms of knowledge. For example, Kenneth Waltz, whose name would become
synonymous with neorealism, argued in his earlier work: The prescriptions directly derived
from a single image [of international relations] are incomplete because they are based upon
partial analyses. The partial quality of each image sets up a tension that drives one toward
inclusion of the others . . . One is led to search for the inclusive nexus of causes.4 An ardent
critic of realist theory, Andrew Moravcsik, would have to agree with Waltz on this point: The
outbreak of World Wars I and II, the emergence of international human rights norms, and the
evolution of the European Union, for example, are surely important enough events to merit
comprehensive explanation even at the expense of theoretical parsimony.5 Similarly, in an
important symposium on the role of theory in comparative politics, several prominent
scholars emphasized the virtues of an eclectic combination of diverse theoretical
perspectives in making sense of cases, cautioning against the excessive sim-plifications
required to apply a single theoretical lens to grasp the manifold complexities on the ground.6
As far as programmatic statements go, these views are all consistent with the spirit of
analytic eclecticism. Whether these positions are readily evident in research practice, however, is quite another matter. For the most part, social sci-entific research is still organized
around particular research traditions or scholarly communities, each marked by its own
epistemic commitments, its own theoretical vocabulary, its own standards, and its own
conceptions of progress. A more effective case for eclectic scholarship requires more than
statements embracing intellectual pluralism or multi- causal explanation. It requires an
alternative understanding of research practice that is coherent enough to be distinguishable
from conventional scholarship and yet flex-ible enough to accommodate a wide range of
problems, con-cepts, methods, and causal arguments. We have sought to systematically
articulate such an understanding in the form of analytic eclecticism, emphasizing its
pragmatist ethos, its orientation towards preexisting styles and schools of research, and its

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distinctive value added in relating academic debates to concrete matters of policy and
practice.

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Butterflies are beautiful, cut it

Kissane, 7 [Dylan Kissane, assistant dean at the Centre d'Etudes Franco-Americain de
Management, lecturer at the University of South Australia, PhD from the University of South
Australia in International Relations theory The possibility for theoretical revolution in
international politics, http://works.bepress.com/dylankissane/16 //AC]
The butterfly effect - in reality just the popular name for the more correct 'sensitive
dependence on initial conditions' - suggests that it is possible that the flutter of a butterfly's
wings in Beijing can be responsible for producing a hurricane in South America (Thietart and
Forgues 1995, 21). This sensitive dependence on initial conditions is common to all chaotic
systems, being found everywhere from meteorology to economics and political science to
physics (Lorenz 1963; Brock et al 1991; Richards 1993; Reinhardt 1997). Chaotic systems
derive their variety from this sensitive dependence and, as a result, are largely unpredictable
long-term. A related element of chaotic systems is the importance of unit or individual unit
events to have wide- ranging effects on the wider system. Interactions, even those limited to
just two primary units, can and do affect all other units in the system. However, although we
know it is possible for such unit level effects to have significant system level impacts, it is
either impractical or impossible to collect and analyse such data. In effect, our models are
never truly complete and, therefore, never truly correct (Justan 2001). However, the
importance of such unit level events on the wider system should not be overemphasised. As
has been argued elsewhere: ...not every butterfly creates a distant storm every time it moves
from flower to flower. Should this be the case then there would be no stability at all within
the climatic system and even short-term predictions - for example, the likelihood of rain
tomorrow - would become impossible. Thus, it should be noted, that just as these small
events can impact on the wider system in significant ways, they could also not impact on the
system in significant ways. There is no compulsion implied, only possibility which, in turn,
ensures that the chaotic system is sometimes driven by these tiny events and, at other times,
does not react at all, despite being faced with perhaps millions of such small interactions at a
time (Kissane 2006,95). Chaotic systems may not seem chaotic. To the observer or analyst
they may appear stochastic or even cyclical; indeed, some systems, which were previously
thought to be linear or cyclical, have since proved chaotic upon closer study (Gleick 1987,
315-316). It is the argument of this paper that the widely assumed anarchy of the
international system can also be considered another misinterpretation of a chaotic system.
The fact that there is no overarching authority in the system may make the system anarchic
by definition, but it does not exclude the possibility that it is actually chaotic. It might be
said that whereas in an anarchic system nobody is in control, in a chaotic system everyone is
in control and - in effect - nobody seems to be in control. This is more than a semantic
difference - indeed, as the structure of a chaotic international system is outlined in the
following section it will become clear that this difference between anarchy and chaos is what
provides the chaotic theory with its explanatory edge.