Complex Adaptive Systems and Comparative Politics: Modeling the Interaction between Institutions and Culture
Comparative politics aims to explain political, economic, and social patterns within and across countries. Two approaches dominate and divide the field. Rational choice approaches explain differences in accountability, equality, corruption, and growth as a function of institutional features. Cultural and historical approaches rely on thick descriptive accounts that consider the complex interplay between behavior, formal rules, informal norms, identities, and the weight of tradition and history. In this paper, we describe how a complex systems approach might build a bridge between these schema by embedding lean rational choice models within contexts that include cultural, social, and historical detail and generating testable propositions about their interdependence. We first describe some fundamental elements of the complexity approach for comparative politics. As proof of concept, we next describe a research agenda of the effect of culture on institutional performance. Our framework considers multiple institutions in force both simultaneously and in sequence. It allows for behavior to depend on context, on the set of existing institutions, and on individuals' behavioral repertoires. In the spirit of rational choice models, human behavior will be purposeful. In the spirit of thicker, descriptive accounts, it will be contingent on time and place. It may be used to understand some instances of cultural exceptionalism and to understand the efficacy of economic and political development projects.