ABSTRACT
The most efficient systems find an optimum balance between regulation and self-organization. Occasionally, systems do experience an un - expected shock, such as a stock-market crash, that can be seen as ‘chaos’. There is evidence that the Earth’s climate has changed abruptly in the past; societal systems have also experienced rapid transitions, like the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union around 1989 and the economic crises which started in 1929 and 2007-8. Rather than explain - ing these events as chaotic breakdowns, complex - ity theory assumes that a shift in total interactions within the system is responsible for the system’s starting to operate – perhaps temporarily – in a new way. In some cases, the effect might be to accelerate a disturbance already underway and create a new order. But minor changes do not usually propagate throughout the system. It is more likely that change in one area will be damped out by other parts of the system through a process of self-organization.
