What you’ll learn in this post
- What entropy means in physics and why the idea of disorder applies to politics too.
- How political systems can “decay” or lose order over time.
- Why studying politics through entropy might help us design resilient systems.
Intro to Entropy
Entropy is most commonly found in the context of physics. It’s a measure of disorder, the inevitable tendency for systems to run down. But when we look into International Relations, similar patterns appear in politics. Political life, like the physical universe, is always struggling between order and disorder (Prigogine & Stengers, 1984).
This post is a reflection from a student still piecing these ideas together. I find it fascinating to imagine that understanding entropy might actually be part of the keys to a type of systemic balance in the world. If we can identify the “entropic” forces that destabilize societies, maybe we can also nurture the ectropic forces that bring renewal, cooperation, and coherence (Morin, 2007; Sital, 2025).
Political Entropy: When Order Decays
If entropy is the tendency of systems to drift toward disorder, then political entropy could describe the way governments, alliances, and even international norms can gradually weaken. Institutions that once felt solid start to lose coherence, public trust erodes, and cracks appear in the structures meant to hold societies together.
The classic example is the fall of the Roman Empire; a long, entropic decline marked by corruption and the weakening of civic loyalty (Tainter, 1988). In more recent times, scholars have described the breakdown of Yugoslavia in the 1990s in similar terms: ethnic polarization, economic crisis, and institutional fragility converging into systemic disintegration (Woodward, 1995).
We also see “micro” forms of entropy in modern democracies, where polarization acts like a disordering force. Instead of channeling disagreement into negotiation, polarization often corrodes shared norms, reducing the system’s capacity to adapt. This is why some political scientists argue that sustaining democratic resilience requires actively countering entropic forces before they cascade (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018).
From this perspective, entropy in politics is a description of how order breaks down. Recognizing decay points might be the first step in designing systems that can regenerate themselves.
Examples of Entropy in Politics
- The Soviet Union — decades of centralization eroded efficiency and legitimacy until the system unraveled.
- Weimar Germany — democratic norms weakened under economic and political pressure, opening the door to authoritarianism.
- Recent fragile states (Somalia, Syria, Israel/Palestine, Russia/Ukraine) — where disorder fills the institutional and communication gap.
Authors on Political Entropy
In his study of the collapse of complex societies, Tainter (1988) describes how civilizations can “unravel” due to accumulated stresses. This matches closely with the idea of entropy: as complexity grows, the cost of maintaining order becomes higher, and eventually the system reaches a breaking point. The failure to generate enough energy (material or social) to sustain the institutions leads to collapse.
Prigogine and Stengers (1984) make a similar point about natural systems: order requires energy, and without input, disorder grows. Applying this to politics, it suggests that governments and international systems are dynamic structure that must be constantly renewed.
Seen this way, political entropy is also about the energy cost of coherence. Nations, treaties, and even global institutions must spend resources to keep their agreements alive. When the costs become too high, or the flows of legitimacy and cooperation too low, disorder emerges.
Why You Should Care About Entropy in Politics
It might be tempting to shrug off entropy as just a metaphor or a complex idea, but if order really does require constant energy… politics is never “done.” Every society, from empires to small communities, must invest in renewing its institutions, rebuilding trust, and repairing the cracks that appear over time.
If we ignore entropy, we risk assuming that key rights or even democracy are permanent achievements. History shows they are not. Tainter (1988) reminds us that even the most complex societies can collapse under their own weight if they stop channeling enough resources into maintaining coherence. And as Prigogine and Stengers (1984) point out, disorder is the natural default, order must be actively created.
That’s why this matters today: thinking about political entropy is a way of seeing societal/governmental patterns of collapse. By noticing where disorder builds up (whether in polarization, institutional decay, or global mistrust) we give ourselves the chance to act before collapse. By strengthening negentropic or ectropic forces like education, dialogue, and cooperation, we can design systems that actually adapt instead of just survive.
Ultimately, paying attention to political entropy might be one of the keys to lasting stability; we need to understand the problem to be able to think about fixing it.
References for Entropy & Political Entropy
- Morin, E. (2007). On Complexity. Hampton Press.
- Prigogine, I., & Stengers, I. (1984). Order out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature. Bantam Books.
- Sital, K. (2025, March 19). Ectropic Action: A new physical quantity for information and self-organization [Preprint]. Zenodo.
- Levitsky, S., & Ziblatt, D. (2018). How democracies die. Crown.
- Tainter, J. A. (1988). The collapse of complex societies. Cambridge University Press.
- Woodward, S. L. (1995). Balkan tragedy: Chaos and dissolution after the Cold War. Brookings Institution.
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