WP35 Phase 1: literature review, novelty matrix, Crossref-verified reference list, frozen pre-registration (D-003)
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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configs/regions.yaml
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| 1 | +# Macro-regions for fixed effects / leave-region-out (fixed before analysis, 2026-11-01). | |
| 2 | +# Keys = the 42 `seshat_region` values of Polaris-2026 (Polities sheet). Grouping is geographic only. | |
| 3 | +macro_regions: | |
| 4 | + Europe: [Western Europe, Southern Europe, Central Europe, Northern Europe, Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, Pontic-Caspian] | |
| 5 | + Southwest_Asia: [Anatolia-Caucasus, Mesopotamia, Levant, Iran, Arabia] | |
| 6 | + Central_Asia: [Turkestan, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Siberia] | |
| 7 | + South_Asia: [North India, Southern India, Eastern South Asia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka] | |
| 8 | + East_Asia: [North China, South China, Northeast Asia] | |
| 9 | + Southeast_Asia_Oceania: [Mainland Southeast Asia, Maritime Southeast Asia, Polynesia, New Guinea] | |
| 10 | + North_Africa: [Northeast Africa, Maghreb, Sahel] | |
| 11 | + Sub_Saharan_Africa: [West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, Southern Africa] | |
| 12 | + North_America: [Mexico, Mississippi Basin, Western North America, East Coast, Caribbean] | |
| 13 | + South_America: [Andes, Amazonia] | |
| 14 | +era_blocks: # CE years, applied to the polity midpoint (start_year+end_year)/2 | |
| 15 | + - {name: "pre-1000BCE", max: -1001} | |
| 16 | + - {name: "1000BCE-0", min: -1000, max: 0} | |
| 17 | + - {name: "1-1000", min: 1, max: 1000} | |
| 18 | + - {name: "1001-1500", min: 1001, max: 1500} | |
| 19 | + - {name: "1501-1800", min: 1501, max: 1800} | |
| 20 | + - {name: "post-1800", min: 1801} | |
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docs/novelty_search_report.md
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| 1 | +# Novelty search report — verification pass of the 18 closest works (2026-11-01) | |
| 2 | + | |
| 3 | +Produced by a dedicated verification agent (Claude Code subagent) using WebSearch/WebFetch on Crossref, Europe PMC, | |
| 4 | +OSF, Dryad, IDEAS/RePEc and publisher pages. "Verified" = bibliographic record confirmed by Crossref/Europe PMC or a | |
| 5 | +publisher/repository page. [UNVERIFIED] items were not confirmed. Nothing here is invented; this file is the audit trail | |
| 6 | +behind `research/literature_review.md`. | |
| 7 | + | |
| 8 | +## 1. Shin, Price, Wolpert, Shimao, Tracey & Kohler (2020) | |
| 9 | +Citation (verified, Europe PMC PMC7224170): Nature Communications 11, 2394, DOI 10.1038/s41467-020-16035-9. | |
| 10 | +Claim: development proceeds in phases — scale growth, then information-processing/economic growth, then further scale; | |
| 11 | +a "Scale Threshold" (PC1 ≈ −2.5) and an "Information Threshold" (PC1 ≈ −0.5). Data: Seshat, 285 polities, 30 NGAs, | |
| 12 | +414 polity-centuries, nine CCs. Method: PCA; PC1 77.2% (loadings PolPop 0.93, PolTerr 0.85, CapPop 0.89, levels 0.90, | |
| 13 | +gvrnmt 0.88, infrastr 0.88, writing 0.87, texts 0.92, money 0.80); PC2 ≈ 6% opposes scale (negative loadings) to | |
| 14 | +information (positive). On instability: explicitly hypothetical — "mismatch among aspects of social development should | |
| 15 | +be considered as a generic cause of instability"; Seshat "too small" to test; "a topic for future research". | |
| 16 | +Relation: closest existing hypothesis; never operationalizes a mismatch index, never links to CrisisDB, no predictive test. | |
| 17 | + | |
| 18 | +## 2. Johnson (1982) | |
| 19 | +Citation (verified via library records; chapter not read): in Renfrew, Rowlands & Segraves (eds.), Theory and | |
| 20 | +Explanation in Archaeology, Academic Press, pp. 389–421, ISBN 0-12-586960-6. Content known through Alberti (2014, | |
| 21 | +PLoS ONE, PMC3953443) and annotations: scalar stress grows disproportionately with units per level; fission or added | |
| 22 | +hierarchy; modal ~6 units per level; Alberti estimates a fission threshold near 127 persons (Hutterites). Relation: | |
| 23 | +theoretical ancestor; no cross-polity instability test. | |
| 24 | + | |
| 25 | +## 3. Wright & Johnson (1975) | |
| 26 | +American Anthropologist 77(2), 267–289; DOI 10.1525/aa.1975.77.2.02a00020 (confirmed by Crossref in the main session). | |
| 27 | +State = administrative hierarchy of ≥ 3 decision levels; population growth and exchange rejected as sufficient causes | |
| 28 | +(Susiana survey data). Relation: definition of K; not about instability. | |
| 29 | + | |
| 30 | +## 4. Turchin et al. (2018) | |
| 31 | +PNAS 115(2), E144–E151, DOI 10.1073/pnas.1708800115 (verified). 414 polity-centuries, 30 regions, 51 variables → 9 CCs; | |
| 32 | +PCA with multiple imputation; PC1 ≈ 77%. Relation: D- and K-type variables share PC1 → mismatch is a residual. | |
| 33 | + | |
| 34 | +## 5. Turchin et al. (2022) | |
| 35 | +Science Advances 8(25), eabn3517, DOI 10.1126/sciadv.abn3517 (verified). Dynamical regression, 17 predictors, | |
| 36 | +>100,000 combinations; best: agricultural productivity × military technology. Relation: growth, not instability. | |
| 37 | + | |
| 38 | +## 6. Hoyer et al. (2023) and CrisisDB | |
| 39 | +6a. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 378(1889), 20220402, DOI 10.1098/rstb.2022.0402 (verified, PMC10505849); data Dryad | |
| 40 | +doi:10.5061/dryad.mkkwh715m; "over 150" crises (Fig. 1: n = 169); severity = additive count of 13 outcomes; no regression. | |
| 41 | +6b. Coding scheme (Dryad): 13 consequence variables (decline, collapse, epidemic, downward mobility, extermination, | |
| 42 | +uprising, civil war, century plus, fragmentation, capital, conquest, assassination, deposition); codes 1 / 0 / 1.inf / | |
| 43 | +0.inf / U.susp. The P/A/IP/IA/SU labels were not found in the Dryad file (they are the labels used in the Polaris-2026 | |
| 44 | +spreadsheet we hold; cite them as Polaris codes). | |
| 45 | +6c. Hoyer, Holder, Bennett, François, Whitehouse, Covey, Feinman, Korotayev, Vustiuzhanin, Preiser-Kapeller, Bard, | |
| 46 | +Levine, Reddish, Orlandi, Ainsworth & Turchin (2024). All crises are unhappy in their own way: the role of societal | |
| 47 | +instability in shaping the past. SocArXiv, DOI 10.31235/osf.io/rk4gd (verified via OSF API). 168 crises; consequences | |
| 48 | +variable, largely uncorrelated, and largely unpredictable from territorial size, religion or administrative complexity. | |
| 49 | +No journal version found as of 2026-11-01. Relation: partially contradicts a naive D/K story. | |
| 50 | +Other Seshat crisis outputs listed on seshatdatabank.info (not read): Orlandi et al. (2023) Qing; Hoyer et al. | |
| 51 | +"Flattening the curve" (OSF); Hoyer "Decline and fall, growth and spread, or resilience?" J. World History 34(4) [UNVERIFIED]. | |
| 52 | + | |
| 53 | +## 7. Lee & Zhang (2017) | |
| 54 | +Journal of Politics 79(1), 118–132, DOI 10.1086/688053 (verified; erratum DOI 10.1086/690691). Legibility via | |
| 55 | +age-heaping in censuses; higher legibility → higher tax contributions. Sample N in the 2017 paper not confirmed. | |
| 56 | + | |
| 57 | +## 8. Brambor, Goenaga, Lindvall & Teorell (2020) | |
| 58 | +Comparative Political Studies 53(2), 175–213, DOI 10.1177/0010414019843432 (verified with abstract). Information | |
| 59 | +Capacity Dataset, 85 polities, 1789–2015, five indicators (census, statistical agency, yearbooks, civil register, | |
| 60 | +population register); suffrage expansions associated with higher information capacity. | |
| 61 | + | |
| 62 | +## 9. Sng (2014) | |
| 63 | +Explorations in Economic History 54, 107–127, DOI 10.1016/j.eeh.2014.05.002 (verified; empirics read from the 2011 | |
| 64 | +working-paper PDF). Prefecture-level 1820 data (CHGIS v4): land tax per capita falls with distance from Beijing (1% | |
| 65 | +level); county density falls with distance; placebo capitals insignificant; IV with straight-line distance. | |
| 66 | + | |
| 67 | +## 10. Tainter (1988) | |
| 68 | +Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-34092-6 (verified via Crossref-indexed reviews in Antiquity 62(237) and American | |
| 69 | +Antiquity 55(2)); declining marginal returns to complexity; comparative cases; no statistical test. [secondary] | |
| 70 | + | |
| 71 | +## 11. Crémer, Garicano & Prat (2007) | |
| 72 | +QJE 122(1), 373–407, DOI 10.1162/qjec.122.1.373 (verified). Organizations choose a code of limited size; precise words | |
| 73 | +for frequent events; scope vs precision trade-off; manager as translator. Arrow (1974) introduced codes [secondary]. | |
| 74 | + | |
| 75 | +## 12. Chwe (2000, 2001) | |
| 76 | +Review of Economic Studies 67(1), 1–16, DOI 10.1111/1467-937X.00118 (verified); Rational Ritual, Princeton UP 2001 | |
| 77 | +(revised paperback 2013, ISBN 978-0-691-15828-0). Common knowledge is the bottleneck; rituals manufacture it. | |
| 78 | + | |
| 79 | +## 13. Bettencourt (2013); Ortman et al. (2014) | |
| 80 | +Science 340(6139), 1438–1441, DOI 10.1126/science.1235823 (verified; 10.1126/science.1235712 is wrong); PLoS ONE 9(2), | |
| 81 | +e87902, DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0087902 (verified). Superlinear outputs (~N^1.15), sublinear infrastructure (~N^0.85); | |
| 82 | +>1,500 archaeological settlements in the Basin of Mexico match modern cities. | |
| 83 | + | |
| 84 | +## 14. Miranda & Freeman (2020) | |
| 85 | +PLoS ONE 15(5), e0232609, DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0232609 (verified). 271 polities, ≥ 75% coded, datawig imputation; | |
| 86 | +sparse subspace + spectral clustering; silhouette 0.18; five subclusters in two superclusters; transitional cluster 2 | |
| 87 | +dwell ~200–500 years. | |
| 88 | + | |
| 89 | +## 15. Beheim et al. (2021) and reply | |
| 90 | +Nature 595(7866), E29–E34, DOI 10.1038/s41586-021-03655-4 (verified). 61% of moralizing-gods data points missing and | |
| 91 | +recoded as absent in Whitehouse et al. (2019, Nature 568, 226–229, DOI 10.1038/s41586-019-1043-4, retracted July 2021, | |
| 92 | +retraction DOI 10.1038/s41586-021-03656-3). Retake: Whitehouse et al. (2023) Religion, Brain & Behavior 13(2), | |
| 93 | +124–166, DOI 10.1080/2153599X.2022.2074085. | |
| 94 | + | |
| 95 | +## 16. Goldstone et al. (2010) | |
| 96 | +AJPS 54(1), 190–208, DOI 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2009.00426.x (verified). 1955–2003, 141 onsets, case-control conditional | |
| 97 | +logit; regime type dominates; >80% accuracy at two-year lead. | |
| 98 | + | |
| 99 | +## 17. Hanson & Sigman (2021) | |
| 100 | +Journal of Politics 83(4), 1495–1510, DOI 10.1086/715066 (verified). 21 indicators, 177 countries, 1960–2015, Bayesian | |
| 101 | +latent model; extractive, coercive, administrative dimensions. | |
| 102 | + | |
| 103 | +## 18. Institutions as compression — what exists | |
| 104 | +- No academic use of "Social Compression Hypothesis" or "social compression" + institutions was found (nearest named | |
| 105 | + construct: "social overload thesis", Shi & Shi 2023, Socius; unrelated). | |
| 106 | +- DeDeo (2017), Major transitions in political order, in From Matter to Life (CUP), pp. 393–428, DOI | |
| 107 | + 10.1017/9781316584200.016 (verified; arXiv 1512.03419): transitions driven by information-processing innovations; | |
| 108 | + coarse-graining via lossy compression as central mechanism; conceptual, no Seshat data, no instability test. | |
| 109 | +- Wolpert et al. (2017), The many faces of state space compression, same volume, DOI 10.1017/9781316584200.010 (verified; not read). | |
| 110 | +- Marzen & DeDeo (2017), J. R. Soc. Interface 14(130), 20170166, DOI 10.1098/rsif.2017.0166 (verified): rate-distortion | |
| 111 | + model with high-fidelity (cost linear in complexity) and low-fidelity regimes. | |
| 112 | +- Flack (2012) Phil. Trans. B 367(1597), 1802–1810, DOI 10.1098/rstb.2011.0214; Flack (2017) Phil. Trans. A 375(2109), | |
| 113 | + 20160338, DOI 10.1098/rsta.2016.0338; Daniels, Krakauer & Flack (2017) Nat. Commun. 8, 14301, DOI 10.1038/ncomms14301; | |
| 114 | + Krakauer et al. (2020) Theory in Biosciences 139(2), 209–223, DOI 10.1007/s12064-020-00313-7 (all verified). | |
| 115 | +- Not found: any paper that both defines institutions as codecs minimizing communication cost per coordinated task and | |
| 116 | + tests a demand/capacity mismatch against historical instability. A 2025 seminar abstract (Yin, Jinan University IESR) | |
| 117 | + on territorial penetration outpacing administrative capacity [UNVERIFIED]; an LSE eprint (114488) on bureaucracies | |
| 118 | + compressing reality [UNVERIFIED, not read]. | |
| 119 | + | |
| 120 | +## Ranking by overlap | |
| 121 | +1. Shin et al. 2020 — verbal mismatch-instability conjecture, untested. 2. Johnson 1982 — scalar stress. | |
| 122 | +3. Sng 2014 — distance/information cost, single polity. 4. Tainter 1988. 5. Crémer–Garicano–Prat 2007 / Arrow 1974 / | |
| 123 | +DeDeo 2017 — codes/compression micro-foundation. 6. Miranda & Freeman 2020. 7. Hoyer et al. 2024 preprint. | |
| 124 | +8. Bettencourt 2013 / Ortman 2014 — foil. | |
| 125 | + | |
| 126 | +## Could not verify or verified partially | |
| 127 | +Johnson 1982 chapter content; Lee & Zhang sample N; Sng 2014 published tables; Tainter 1988 pagination; Hoyer et al. | |
| 128 | +2024 journal version (none found); Hoyer J. World History 34(4); Yin 2025; LSE eprint 114488. | |
added
research/bib_overrides.csv
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| 1 | +key|doi|note | |
| 2 | +garicano2000|10.1086/317671|JPE 108(5) 874-904 (Crossref first match was the SSRN version) | |
| 3 | +acemoglu2001|10.1257/aer.91.5.1369|AER 91(5) (first match was NBER w7771) | |
| 4 | +dewan2008|10.1017/S0003055408080234|APSR 102(3) (first match SSRN) | |
| 5 | +dincecco2018|10.1146/annurev-polisci-050317-064428|ARPS 21 (first match SSRN) | |
| 6 | +turchin2015|10.21237/C7clio6127917|Cliodynamics 6(1) 77-107 | |
| 7 | +whitehouse2019|10.1038/s41586-019-1043-4|Nature 568 226-229 (retracted 2021; cited only with retraction note) | |
| 8 | +gavrilets2008|10.1371/journal.pone.0003293|Gavrilets, Duenez-Guzman & Vose, PLoS ONE 2008 3(10) e3293 (verified by DOI) | |
| 9 | +mace1994|10.1086/204317|Mace & Pagel 1994 Current Anthropology 35(5) | |
| 10 | +dow2007|10.1177/1069397107305452|Dow 2007 Cross-Cultural Research 41(4) | |
| 11 | +coppedge2020|10.1017/9781108347860|Cambridge UP book | |
| 12 | +chwe2001|10.23943/princeton/9780691158280.001.0001|Princeton Scholarship Online edition | |
| 13 | +greif1993|manual|AER 83(3) 525-548, JSTOR 2117532 (no DOI registered) | |
| 14 | +hayek1945|manual|AER 35(4) 519-530, JSTOR 1809376 (no DOI registered) | |
| 15 | +simon1962|manual|Proc. Am. Phil. Soc. 106(6) 467-482, JSTOR 985254 | |
| 16 | +johnson1982|manual|In Renfrew, Rowlands & Segraves (eds.), Theory and Explanation in Archaeology, Academic Press, pp. 389-421 | |
| 17 | +johnson1978|manual|In Redman et al. (eds.), Social Archeology: Beyond Subsistence and Dating, Academic Press, pp. 87-112 | |
| 18 | +turchin2009gavrilets|manual|Turchin & Gavrilets 2009 Social Evolution & History 8(2) 167-198 | |
| 19 | +marschak1972|manual|Yale University Press (book) | |
| 20 | +schelling1960|manual|Harvard University Press (book) | |
| 21 | +boyd1985|manual|University of Chicago Press (book) | |
| 22 | +yates1989|manual|Johns Hopkins University Press (book) | |
| 23 | +chandler1977|manual|Harvard University Press / Belknap (book) | |
| 24 | +eisenstadt1963|manual|Free Press (book) | |
| 25 | +weber1922|manual|Weber 1978 [1922] Economy and Society, University of California Press (book) | |
| 26 | +turchin2016|manual|Beresta Books (book) | |
| 27 | +turchin2023|manual|Penguin Press (book) | |
| 28 | +hidalgo2015|manual|Basic Books (book) | |
| 29 | +fukuyama2011|manual|Farrar, Straus and Giroux (book) | |
| 30 | +graeber2021|manual|Farrar, Straus and Giroux (book) | |
| 31 | +koyama2022|manual|Polity Press (book) | |
| 32 | +arrow1974|manual|W. W. Norton (book) | |
| 33 | +williamson1985|manual|Free Press (book) | |
| 34 | +tainter1988|manual|Cambridge University Press 1988 (book; guessed DOI resolved to another title and was discarded) | |
| 35 | +mann1986|10.1017/CBO9780511570896|Cambridge UP vol. 1 (first match was a review) | |
| 36 | +scott1998|manual|Yale University Press (book) | |
| 37 | +goldstone1991|manual|University of California Press (book) | |
| 38 | +tilly1992|manual|Blackwell (book) | |
| 39 | +beniger1986|manual|Harvard University Press (book) | |
| 40 | +innis1950|manual|Oxford University Press / University of Toronto Press (book) | |
| 41 | +lewis1969|manual|Harvard University Press (book) | |
| 42 | +mokyr2016|10.1515/9781400882915|Princeton UP | |
| 43 | +cumming2017|drop|year wrong and not needed | |
| 44 | +cox2019|drop|placeholder | |
| 45 | +dedeo2017|10.1017/9781316584200.016|DeDeo 2017 'Major transitions in political order', in From Matter to Life (CUP) — added after novelty search | |
| 46 | +marzen2017|10.1098/rsif.2017.0166|Marzen & DeDeo 2017 J R Soc Interface — added after novelty search | |
| 47 | +flack2012|10.1098/rstb.2011.0214|Flack 2012 Phil Trans B — added after novelty search | |
| 48 | +hoyer2024|10.31235/osf.io/rk4gd|Hoyer et al. 2024 SocArXiv preprint 'All crises are unhappy in their own way' — no journal version found 2026-11-01 | |
| 49 | +wolpert2017|10.1017/9781316584200.010|Wolpert 2017 'The many faces of state space compression' (same volume) | |
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