Provides an account of how decisions are taken by the state at the level of locality. The author seeks to examine and analyse the importance of party discipline, the relationship between the Labour group of councillors and the party outside the council, the power of the committee chairmen, and the openness of the local policy-making process.

Provides overviews of complexity in several applied areas, including parallel computation, control systems, neural systems and ecosystems.

This book explores the concept of dual phase evolution, focusing on the relationship between dual phase evolution and other phase transition phenomena and the advantages of dual phase evolution in evolutionary computation and complex adaptive systems.

Power and Party in an English City provides an account of how decisions are taken by the state at the level of locality. More specifically, it is an account of the private policy-making activities of a ruling Labour group of councillors in the major English city of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. Despite the fact that local government in most of the towns and cities of England is one-party government, very little is known abotu the private behaviour of ruling party groups. In this book David Green provides a penetrating empirical study of the realities of local government. The author seeks to examine...

Why do things go wrong? Why, despite all the planning and care in the world, do things go from bad to worse? This book argues that it is because we are like the ants. Just as ants create an anthill without being aware of it, unintended side effects of human activity create all manner of social trends and crises. The book traces the way these trends emerge and the role they play in some of the major issues of our time. One of the greatest challenges today is the complexity of our social and economic systems. Every action has side effects that people often ignore or fail to see. The book...