While the relations between science and political systems is not always obvious, many writers on complexity point out connections between the emerging sciences and what is sometimes called the "new world disorder". But whether one sees current political trends as tending towards chaos or towards new forms of self-organization, it seems clear that some of the analytic concepts of the new sciences provide powerful heuristics for current political analysis.
For example, the problems of nationalism in Eastern Europe, or the problems of ethnic communities in cities like Los Angeles, exhibits scaling self-similarity. That is to say, the problems of minorities occur at multiple scales: Yugoslavia breaks into republics, republics break into smaller pieces, etc. The question of self-determination on ethnic grounds occurs at every scale. Chaos seems to loom around the corner. The speed at which this issue has erupted seems to tell us something about global dynamics at the edge of Chaos. At the same time, these developments may hold out the promise of emergent forms of self-organization. Complex systems exhibit diffusion of authority. (Casti cites democratic governments, labor unions, and universities as examples) They exhibit a social resiliency that comes from their capacity to absorb disruptions and environmental fluctuations. These may be understood as changes in the relation between local and global
The view of "spaceship" earth as seen by the Apollo astronauts, first made the Gaia hypothesis plausible.
The end of the Cold War system and the "Prisoner's Dilemma" Russian Catastrophe theory describes perestroika (metamorphosis) in mathematical terms while acknowledging that their successful study is undoubtedly a result of political perestroika .
For the relations between science and prestige, see big science.