Why does history surprise us?

Abstract

The Russian military aggression against Ukraine in February 2022 unveiled the illusory nature of our faith in the stability of the global political system. This belief was largely rooted in our short-term observations and naive expectations that political structures and social relationships were fixed points in the evolution of history. However, the reality is that we cannot assume the socio-political order we know to be the sole possible state, nor should we expect the transition to new solutions to occur smoothly. This study presents three agent-based models demonstrating how changes in socio-political structures can exhibit a discontinuous nature. These models include a social impact model with a strong leader, a model of interactions among competing social groups, and a model of structural balance dynamics. The discontinuous changes observed stem from the multistability of multiagent models, and the resulting transitions are both irreversible and exhibit hysteresis behaviour. All the transitions considered correspond to tipping points and the critical parameter values calculated through analytical approaches agree with the results of agent-based numerical simulations. The outcomes of these models exhibit qualitative agreement with historical data, particularly concerning the causes of the First World War and Adolf Hitler’s ascent to absolute power in Germany, while also complementing observed variations in connection density within echo chambers formed by conservative and liberal communities in U.S.