The quantum-like description of the dynamics of party governance in the US political system
arXiv:1206.2888
Abstract
This paper is devoted to the application of the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics to social (political) science. By using the quantum dynamical equations we model the process of decision making in US elections. The crucial point we attempt to make is that the voter's mental state can be represented as a superposition of two possible choices for either republicans or democrats. However, reality dictates a more complicated situation: typically a voter participates in two elections, i.e. the congress and the presidential elections. In both elections he/she has to decide between two choices. This very feature of the US election system requires that the mental state is represented by a 2-qubit state corresponding to the superposition of 4 different choices (e.g. for republicans in the congress; for the president as a democrat). The main issue of this paper is to describe the dynamics of the voters' mental states taking in account the mental and socio- political environment. What is truly novel in this paper is that instead of using Schrödinger's equation to describe the dynamics in an absence of interactions, we here apply the quantum master equation. This equation describes quantum decoherence, i.e., resolution from superposition to a definite choice.
26 pages, 4 figures