Cover of Variety Dynamics: Strategy and Power in Asymmetric, Hyper-Complex Situations by Terence Love

Terence Love
Praxis Education, 2026. First edition. Open access.

Strategy and power rarely play out between two equal sides. In real situations many actors hold unequal power, alliances change, and the situation itself keeps changing. In these hyper-complex situations, systems methods and causal analysis lose their footing, and human intuition fails once two or more feedback loops interact, however expert the people involved.

Variety Dynamics offers a different approach. It analyses power through the options, or variety, that each actor holds and the transaction costs associated with using them, rather than through chains of cause and effect.

Its sixty-six axioms, each with an explanation, examples and implications, give direct guidance on which interventions are likely to change the balance of power, far faster than conventional methods allow.

The book sets out the framework, a practical method for applying it, and five case studies: British rule in 1920s Iraq, Tamerlane's campaigns of 1370 to 1405, detached youth work and service design, community participation in urban planning, and shadow banking and regulatory variety asymmetry, together with a full Variety Dynamics analysis of shadow banking and national economic stability.

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How to cite

Love, T. (2026). Variety Dynamics: Strategy and Power in Asymmetric, Hyper-Complex Situations. Praxis Education. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23940845

The permanent archived copy is held on Zenodo.