Locating Legitimacy in Territorial Space
Renert, Joey
2004
- Submitted in partial fulfillment of the degree Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Abstract: When human governing systems are compared to those of the natural world, the natural world appears very stable by comparison. The rise and fall of civilizations, empires and states is at the same time accompanied by unmovable forests, oceans and rivers in which ... read morevast numbers of living things interact and maintain themselves without any guidance or direction from a central authority. When looked at closely, natural systems are in fact very complex entities with many different species interacting that are constantly changing and adapting, but somehow, the system as a whole remains stable. What is it about the dynamics of nature that allows it to look like a static governing system while human dynamics produce unstable governing systems? Is there some natural characteristic that results in natures stable systems that can be replicated to better create more stable human governing systems? This paper proposes the idea that, like natural systems, human governance systems can be defined as Complex Adaptive Systems, and that the key feature distinguishing human rule making from nature is legitimacy. Legitimacy itself will be shown as an emergent property of the human governance system and it is generated through the physical interaction of people in geographic space.read less
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- 1v53k8211
- Component ID:
- tufts:UA015.012.DO.00149
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