TY - JOUR
T1 - Dealing with femtorisks in international relations
AU - Frank, Aaron Benjamin
AU - Collins, Margaret Goud
AU - Levin, Simon Asher
AU - Lo, Andrew W.
AU - Ramo, Joshua
AU - Dieckmann, Ulf
AU - Kremenyuk, Victor
AU - Kryazhimskiy, Arkady
AU - Linnerooth-Bayer, Joanne
AU - Ramalingam, Ben
AU - Roy, J. Stapleton
AU - Saari, Donald G.
AU - Thurner, Stefan
AU - Von Winterfeldt, Detlof
PY - 2014/12/9
Y1 - 2014/12/9
N2 - The contemporary global community is increasingly interdependent and confronted with systemic risks posed by the actions and interactions of actors existing beneath the level of formal institutions, often operating outside effective governance structures. Frequently, these actors are human agents, such as rogue traders or aggressive financial innovators, terrorists, groups of dissidents, or unauthorized sources of sensitive or secret information about government or private sector activities. In other instances, influential "actors" take the form of climate change, communications technologies, or socioeconomic globalization. Although these individual forces may be small relative to state governments or international institutions, or may operate on long time scales, the changes they catalyze can pose significant challenges to the analysis and practice of international relations through the operation of complex feedbacks and interactions of individual agents and interconnected systems. We call these challenges "femtorisks," and emphasize their importance for two reasons. First, in isolation, they may be inconsequential and semiautonomous; but when embedded in complex adaptive systems, characterized by individual agents able to change, learn from experience, and pursue their own agendas, the strategic interaction between actors can propel systems down paths of increasing, even global, instability. Second, because their influence stems from complex interactions at interfaces of multiple systems (e.g., social, financial, political, technological, ecological, etc.), femtorisks challenge standard approaches to risk assessment, as higher-order consequences cascade across the boundaries of socially constructed complex systems. We argue that new approaches to assessing and managing systemic risk in international relations are required, inspired by principles of evolutionary theory and development of resilient ecological systems.
AB - The contemporary global community is increasingly interdependent and confronted with systemic risks posed by the actions and interactions of actors existing beneath the level of formal institutions, often operating outside effective governance structures. Frequently, these actors are human agents, such as rogue traders or aggressive financial innovators, terrorists, groups of dissidents, or unauthorized sources of sensitive or secret information about government or private sector activities. In other instances, influential "actors" take the form of climate change, communications technologies, or socioeconomic globalization. Although these individual forces may be small relative to state governments or international institutions, or may operate on long time scales, the changes they catalyze can pose significant challenges to the analysis and practice of international relations through the operation of complex feedbacks and interactions of individual agents and interconnected systems. We call these challenges "femtorisks," and emphasize their importance for two reasons. First, in isolation, they may be inconsequential and semiautonomous; but when embedded in complex adaptive systems, characterized by individual agents able to change, learn from experience, and pursue their own agendas, the strategic interaction between actors can propel systems down paths of increasing, even global, instability. Second, because their influence stems from complex interactions at interfaces of multiple systems (e.g., social, financial, political, technological, ecological, etc.), femtorisks challenge standard approaches to risk assessment, as higher-order consequences cascade across the boundaries of socially constructed complex systems. We argue that new approaches to assessing and managing systemic risk in international relations are required, inspired by principles of evolutionary theory and development of resilient ecological systems.
KW - Complex adaptive systems
KW - Contagion
KW - Resilience
KW - Risk analysis
KW - Systemic risk
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84917692939&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84917692939&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1073/pnas.1400229111
DO - 10.1073/pnas.1400229111
M3 - Article
C2 - 25404317
AN - SCOPUS:84917692939
SN - 0027-8424
VL - 111
SP - 17356
EP - 17362
JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
IS - 49
ER -