Domestic Socio-Political Change: Dominant Relations

Social and political change occurs on three dimensions (social characteristics or individual life conditions, values, socio-political institutions and process). Although GDP per capita is strongly correlated with all dimensions of change, it might be more appropriate to conceptualize a syndrome or complex of developmental change than to portray an economically-driven process.

For causal diagram see Socio-Political Flow Charts Overview.

For equations see, for example, Socio-Political Equations Overview.

Key dynamics are directly linked to the dominant relations:

• The model computes some key social characteristics/life conditions, including life expectancy and fertility rates in the demographic model, but the user can affect them via multipliers (mortm, tfrm). Literacy rate is an endogenous function of education spending, which the user can influence (via gdsm).
• The model computes value or cultural change on three dimensions: traditional versus secular-rational, survival versus self-expression, and modernism versus postmodernism, which the user can affect via additive factors (tradsrateadd, survseadd, matpostradd).
• Freedom, democracy (the POLITY measure), autocracy, economic freedom, and the status of women are all computed endogenously but can all be shifted by the user via multipliers (freedomm, democm, autocm, econfreem, gemm)

Domestic Socio-Political Change: Selected Added Value

The larger socio-political model provides representation and control over government spending on education, health, the military, R&D, foreign aid, and a residual category. Military spending is linked to interstate politics, both as a driver of threat and as a result of action-and-reaction based arms spending. The sub-model provides aggregated indicators of the physical quality of life and the human development index.