ABSTRACT
Why do human societies differ, and how do they change over time? These are among the most important questions mankind has ever asked. But to answer them we need to construct new models o f both human behaviour and institutional change, owing to the
failure o f deductive theory to encompass the world o f dynamics. To understand the forces driving the Ephemeral Civilisation we need to build existential models — models o f existence — rather than borrow models from other deductive disciplines. In Chapter 2 we build a model o f human behaviour centred on the attempt o f individuals to economise on intellectual processes through the well-documented response o f imitation. This involves a rejection o f the information-processing assumption o f both neoclassical and institutional economics, and o f the genetic assumption o f sociobiology. A nd in Chapter 3 we develop a new model o f institutional change based on the role o f strategic demand in generating changes in societal rules and organisations through a process o f strategic imitation. This new ‘strategic theory’, which is based on the historical studies in Part II, explodes the myth o f social evolution.
