Do political systems shape citizens, or do citizens construct political systems? This question rests just under the surface of many political analyses. Ruth Lane has provided an insightful and useful argument for increased attention to a bottom-up approach—beginning with individuals in a family, community, and society—and examining the formation and impact of their political behaviors. Lane provides a broad introduction to complexity theory, game theory, and social psychology as perspectives on the construction and maintenance of political systems.

Lane’s core argument is that complexity theory—expressed in the form of game theory—provides an important method for political scientists to conceptualize and assess political behaviors and the extension of those behaviors into more formal structures and systems of political decision making. It is an argument for a micro perspective on politics rather than a macro perspective, to borrow an economic metaphor. Through the skillful discussion of a series of examples ranging from Plato to Nelson Mandela, Lane argues that politics originate at the micro level and drive the macro level. She also acknowledges that macro-level political systems may influence individual choices and behaviors, creating a system with multiple feedback loops.

In her introductory chapter, Lane acknowledges that complexity theory—a term that she uses frequently throughout the book—is “best described as a method rather than an actual theory” (p. 21). Lane uses the concept of a lattice as the foundation for complexity theory and provides a helpful introduction to early scholarship in this arena and in game theory. For readers who encountered the work of Conway, Epstein, Axtell, and Schelling in graduate school a few decades ago, Lane provides a readable and refreshing summary and integration of the foundations of game theory and its extension into complexity theory. No mathematics is needed to follow her basic arguments.

In chapters 4 and 5, Lane distinguishes between the processes of governing one’s self and engaging in group activities that may constitute self-government in a small group or community context. Building on the work of Berger and Luckmann (Peter F. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise on the Sociology of Knowledge, 1967), Goffman (Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959), and Garfinkel (Martin Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology, 1967), Lane discusses the formation of individual political skills, values, and objectives. She is influenced by Goffman’s work and integrates his ideas into game theory, focusing on the interactive nature of individuals and groups in the political process.

Lane then links the work of Almond and Verba (Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations, 1963) on the formation of political cultures to micro-level processes that become useful in contemporary discussions of complexity theory and game theory. Through a set of descriptions and discussions of individuals and movements, she reformulates the development of political cultures into game theory, emphasizing the complexity of these processes. Bourdieu’s definition of “social capital” (Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, 1990) is expanded to illustrate the complex nature of the creation of political cultures. A linkage to James Coleman’s use of the social capital construct would have enriched this discussion, but Lane relies heavily on the European literature in this area.

In her concluding chapter, Lane returns to “government of the self by the self, and government of a whole by self-governed individuals” (p. 24). Going back to Berger and Luckmann’s argument that everyday knowledge is socially constructed, Lane argues,

This concluding discussion is especially helpful in understanding the interaction between micro-level individual behaviors and system-level consequences, as well as the cyclical influence of each on the other over time. More discussion of the parallel interactions between microeconomics and macroeconomics, however, would have provided a richer context for her argument.

Lane suggests that far too much political theory has been and continues to be rooted in institutions and organizations at the macro level. She is convinced that there is too little awareness of micro-level processes and their importance. Some readers will agree with Lane, and others may argue that there has been and continues to be a substantial amount of work that focuses on the importance and influence of micro-level activities and processes. The significant postwar growth of survey research in the United States and most European countries provides a rich data resource for analysts and theorists to study micro-level processes. The growing field of political psychology is rooted in micro-level examinations of individual attitudes, behaviors, and engagement, and that literature supports Lane’s emphasis on the importance of individual political learning and of the simultaneous constrictions generated by larger political systems and structures.

Even with the caveat that there is a good deal of micro-level work in place, Lane’s admonishment to think about the formation of individual values and expectations as an interactive part of the construction and operation of macro-level groups and institutions is timely and should be considered carefully. Just as economists have learned that it is useful to understand both micro-level and macro-level economic behavior, Lane provides a timely reminder to political scientists and political theorists that we need to think about the symbiotic relationship between individual socialization and political learning as the roots of our polarizing political system and then to think about the inducements and constraints that polarization, as one example, puts on individual behaviors and choices. Lane’s clear descriptions and interesting examples will provide food for thought throughout the discipline. If he could have gotten through the vocabulary of complexity theory and game theory, Tip O’Neill would have liked this book.