Politics is fundamentally about aggregation. Organizing diverse elements into stable and enduring coalitions is a central concern of political activity. Political parties attempt to forge enduring coalitions of interests across multiple social cleavages. Nations pursue alliances for mutual security. Legislatures organize so as to facilitate the development of majority coalitions that can enact legislation. To date, however, separate theories of political aggregation have been developed for each of the various aspects of politics in which aggregation is of concern. This important research attempts to develop a general theory of aggregation which can account for the organizational dynamics of diverse social systems. Specifically, this research uses concepts from the physical sciences and biology to develop and test a formal model of aggregation called landscape theory. It seeks to develop a relatively simple model that has wide applications to a variety of aggregation problems including international alliances, coalitions of political parties, social networks, and social cleavages in democracies among many others. The research will proceed in phases. It will begin by elaborating the theory adding complexity and realism. It will proceed to distill general principles of aggregation from across the several applications. Finally, it will test the theory with data for each of the applications. When completed this research should greatly enhance our understanding of the dynamics of aggregation in politics.
