Dr. Edward D. Lee
Edward D. Lee is a postdoc at the Complexity Science Hub, where he received the Austrian Science Fund ESPRIT Fellowship... (click to read more)
Complex systems Analysis of State Conflict And Democratic Erosion
(CASCADE)
Who we are
Our research network seeks to spark a paradigm shift for understanding, and ultimately explaining, global trends in autocratization.
Previous research has struggled to address democratic backsliding, largely because it has not adequately conceptualized or captured the underlying processes.
We focus on the interdependencies between actors and across states in space and time, modeling them as a dynamic network calibrated with real-world observations.
This approach allows us to apply advanced methods from complexity science and statistical physics to detect diffusion phenomena, identify critical points, and assess the risks of cascading effects.
Ultimately, our goal is to equip decision-makers with real and timely insights, enabling them to make informed choices and potentially alter the course of history.
Prof. Dr. Karoline Wiesner
Karoline Wiesner is Professor of Complexity Sciences in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Potsdam.
Prof. Dr. Kristian Gleditsch
Kristian Gleditsch is Regius Professor of Political Science in the Department of Government at the University of Essex.
Prof. Dr. Lars-Erik Cederman
Lars-Erik Cederman is Professor of International Conflict research at ETH Zürich.
Luc Girardin
Luc Girardin is a computer/data scientist with a foot in the social sciences, working at ETH Zürich.
Prof. Dr. Matthew Wilson
Matthew Wilson is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of South Carolina.
Niraj Kushwaha
Junior Researcher
Niraj Kushwaha is a junior researcher at the Complexity Science Hub and a PhD candidate at the University of Vienna.
Paula Pirker-Díaz
Junior Researcher
Paula Pirker-Díaz is a predoctoral researcher in the Complex Systems Research Group (Department of Physics and Astronomy) at the University of Potsdam.
Workshops
- Understanding Democratisation and Civil War with Statistical Physics (March, 2025)
- Complexity Science Approaches to Democracy Decline and Civil Conflict (August, 2025)
Publications by members of our network
- Kushwaha, N. et al. Common indicators hurt armed conflict prediction. arXiv (2025).
- Pirker-Diaz, P. et al. Scaling laws of political regime dynamics: stability of democracies and autocracies in the twentieth century. Royal Society Open Science (2025).
- Wiesner, K. et al. The principal components of electoral regimes: separating autocracies from pseudo-democracies. Royal Society Open Science (2024).
- Kushwaha, N. et al. Discovering the mesoscale for chains of conflict. PNAS Nexus (2023).
- Eliassi-Rad, T. et al. What science can do for democracy: a complexity science approach. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2020).
- Lee, E. D. et al. Scaling theory of armed-conflict avalanches. Phys. Rev. E (2020).
- Lee, E. D. et al. Emergent regularities and scaling in armed conflict data. arXiv (2019).
- Wiesner, K. et al. Stability of democracies: a complex systems perspective. European Journal of Physics (2018).
- Lee, E. D. et al. Collective memory in primate conflict implied by temporal scaling collapse. J. R. Soc. Interface (2017).