I didn’t end up putting this in my coalitional agency post, but at one point I had a note discussing our terminological disagreement:
I don’t like the word hierarchical as much. A theory can be hierarchical without being scale-free—e.g. a theory which describes something in terms of three different layers doing three different things is hierarchical but not scale-free.
Whereas coalitions are typically divided into sub-coalitions (e.g. the “western civilization” coalition is divided into countries which are divided into provinces/states; political coalitions are divided into different factions and interest groups; etc). And so “coalitional” seems much closer to capturing this fractal/scale-free property.
I didn’t end up putting this in my coalitional agency post, but at one point I had a note discussing our terminological disagreement:
Whereas coalitions are typically divided into sub-coalitions (e.g. the “western civilization” coalition is divided into countries which are divided into provinces/states; political coalitions are divided into different factions and interest groups; etc). And so “coalitional” seems much closer to capturing this fractal/scale-free property.