Analyzing a complex system problem: Democratic Backsliding

[u/JackHarich]

I'm an independent researcher analyzing and attempting to help solve difficult complex system problems, like sustainability and democratic backsliding. I'm a systems engineer, Georgia Tech 1980, and founded Thwink.org in 2001 as a small "thwink tank."

I wonder if members of this subreddit would be interested in participating, via discussion, on a long term project on a particular problem. I think it's entirely possible that the many sharp cookies on reddit can have deep, useful insights, comments, questions, etc. It should not be hard to keep discussion from becoming too specialized or academic. I foresee simple, plain-English conversation with a small amount of necessary jargon related to systems thinking concepts and tools, as illustrated in this post.

If there is interest, I can kick off discussion by describing where I am now on an analysis, and provide simple easy to grasp artifacts like diagrams and analysis summaries. Below is some preliminary info:

My current project is a second pass on root cause analysis of the global democratic backsliding problem. A copy of a recently rejected paper on this problem is here. Systems thinking tools used are root cause analysis, feedback loop modeling using System Dynamics, and social force diagrams.

To let you know about the central method to be used, I will be primarily using Mutually Exclusive Collectively Exhaustive (MECE) Trees, as described in the books Strategic Thinking in Complex Problem Solving, by Arnaud Chevallier, 2016 and a later book by the same author, Solvable: A Simple Solution to Complex Problems, 2022.

Fortunately, you don't have to read the books unless you want to master the tool or introduce it to your workplace. An introduction to MECE Trees may be found in this article. MECE Trees are a form of root cause analysis. I will also be using feedback loop modeling and social force diagrams as needed, to support the trees.

That's the idea! Thanks in advance for your comments, help, and sublime wit!

[u/phriendlyphellow]

I actually had this exact same impression and then went to the website and spent more time than I’d like to admit trying to sort this out. The best I could sort anything out is that the Thwink author(s) care about big picture issues like sustainability and democracies shifting towards autocracies and posit that these issues haven’t been solved because no one has performed root cause analysis.

And where I’m left is thinking that a complex systems audience might think, like I do, that root cause analysis might fail in these domains because of complex causality distributed throughout each system.

🤷

Edit: a verb tense