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An Application of the Theory of Open Quantum Systems to Model the Dynamics of Party Governance in the US Political System

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Abstract

The Gorini-Kossakowski-Sudarshan-Lindblad equation allows us to 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 the voter 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. The main issue is to describe the dynamics of the voters’ mental states taking into account the mental and political environment. What is novel in this paper is that we apply the theory of open quantum systems to social science. The quantum master equation describes the resolution of uncertainty (represented in the form of superposition) to a definite choice.

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Notes

  1. See A. Plotnitsky [26, 27] for an analysis of the inter-relation between classical and quantum probability.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management and Institute of Finance, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

    Polina Khrennikova & Emmanuel Haven

  2. International Center for Mathematical Modeling, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden

    Andrei Khrennikov

Authors
  1. Polina Khrennikova
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  2. Emmanuel Haven
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  3. Andrei Khrennikov
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Correspondence to Andrei Khrennikov.

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Khrennikova, P., Haven, E. & Khrennikov, A. An Application of the Theory of Open Quantum Systems to Model the Dynamics of Party Governance in the US Political System. Int J Theor Phys 53, 1346–1360 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10773-013-1931-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10773-013-1931-6

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