ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes how the mapping exercise of previous chapters highlights the numerous challenges that an effective system of democratic/global governance faces in the complex security environment of the twenty-first century. The chapter presents 3D models that combine all the relationships examined previously to help the reader envision the full complexity of the communication nexus between controller and controlled. It also explores the vertical or hierarchical dimension within the controllers and the controlled, as well as the temporal dimension related to structural change over time. Finally, the chapter examines the issue of how democratic governance can function within complex adaptive systems of state and nonstate actors. Using the national and global efforts to control or prevent terrorism and violent extremism as a case study of how this complexity plays out across a broad spectrum of policy domains, the framework presented in this volume represents a kind of unified field theory for understanding the spatiotemporal dimensions of social, economic, and political life. The framework presented here provides the reader with a tool for maintaining situational awareness locally, nationally, regionally, and internationally.
