Restorative forces

There is a corollary to yesterday's post on stability. When a stable system is perturbed, forces inherent in the system act to return it to equilibrium. In political systems, these forces are popular reactions against reform. Political systems differ from physical ones, in that the public responses are often delayed as a result of public perception, remoteness of experience, or initial misperception of the scope and purpose of the reform. The forces seeking equilibrium are present and relentless however, and eventually overcome the transient and artificial dispruptions imposed by authorities. This is why dictatorships fall, or stagnate, and why socialist utopias eventually encounter crises between promises and realities.