This paper integrates scaling theory with variation in systems of governance to help explain cross-cultural differences in the energy use of human polities. In both industrial and pre-industrial polities, systems of governance moderate the scaling of population and energy use. Polities with more inclusive governance systems display, on average, lower energy use per agent. However, as populations increase in size, the energy consumed by polities with more inclusive governance increases faster than among polities with less inclusive governance. These results support the hypothesis that more inclusive governance systems help generate a virtuous cycle of increasing trust, larger-scale cooperation, and more productive economies; however, a byproduct of this process is an expanding network–energy throughput tradeoff: Good governance empowers individuals and firms to connect and cooperate. At the same time, similar to Jevons’ classic efficiency paradox, scaling-up this empowerment requires a system, as a whole, to consume ever greater amounts of energy and materials from the earth’s ecosystems.
BeckermanS.LizarraldeR. (2013). The ecology of the Barí: Rainforest horticulturalists of south America. University of Texas Press.
4.
BlantonR.FargherL. (2008). Collective action in the formation of pre-modern states. Springer Science & Business Media.
5.
BlantonR.FeinmanG.KowalewskiS.PeregrineP. (1996). A dual-processual theory for the evolution of mesoamerican civilization. Current Anthropology, 37(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1086/204471
6.
BohannanP.BohannanL. (1968). Tiv economy. Northwestern University Press.
7.
BrownJ. H.BurgerJ. R.BurnsideW. R.ChangM.DavidsonA. D.FristoeT. S.HamiltonM. J.HammondS. T.Kodric-BrownA.Mercado-SilvaN.NekolaJ. C.OkieJ. G. (2014). Macroecology meets macroeconomics: Resource scarcity and global sustainability. Environmental Entomology, 65, 24–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoleng.2013.07.071
8.
BrownJ. H.GilloolyJ. F.AllenA. P.SavageV. M.WestG. B. (2004). Toward a metabolic theory of ecology. Ecology, 85(7), 1771–1789. https://doi.org/10.1890/03-9000
BurgerJ. R.WeinbergerV. P.MarquetP. A. (2017). Extra-metabolic energy use and the rise in human hyper-density. Scientific Reports, 7(1), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep43869
11.
BurnsideW. R.BrownJ. H.BurgerO.HamiltonM. J.MosesM.BettencourtL. M. A. (2012). Human macroecology: Linking pattern and process in big-picture human ecology. Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 87(1), 194–208. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-185x.2011.00192.x
12.
CashdanE. (2001). Ethnic diversity and its environmental determinants: Effects of climate, pathogens, and habitat diversity. American Anthropologist, 103(4), 968–991. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.2001.103.4.968
DeLongJ. P.BurgerO. (2015). Socio-economic instability and the scaling of energy use with population size. Plos One, 10(6), Article e0130547. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0130547
DunbarR. I. M. (2011). Constraints on the evolution of social institutions and their implications for information flow. Journal of Institutional Economics, 7(3SI), 345–371. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1744137410000366
FordhamD. A.SaltréF.HaythorneS.WigleyT. M.Otto-BliesnerB. L.ChanK. C.BrookB. W. (2017). Paleoview: A tool for generating continuous climate projections spanning the last 21 000 years at regional and global scales. Ecography, 40(11), 1348–1358. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.03031
22.
FreemanJ. (2012). Crop richness in human subsistence agricultural systems: A test of macroecological and economic determanents. Global Ecolology and Biogeography, 21(4), 428–440. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1466-8238.2011.00687.x
23.
FreemanJ. (2016). The socioecology of territory size and a” work-around” hypothesis for the adoption of farming. Plos One, 11(7), Article e0158743. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0158743
24.
FreemanJ.AnderiesJ. M. (2015). The socioecology of hunter–gatherer territory size. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 39, 110–123. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2015.03.002
25.
FreemanJ.BaggioJ.MirandaL. (2022). people3k/CCR-Population-Governance-Energy: Data for ”Infrastructure and the energy use of human polities” published in Cross-Cultural Research. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7316975
26.
FreemanJ.ByersD. A.RobinsonE.KellyR. L. (2018). Culture process and the interpretation of radiocarbon data. Radiocarbon, 60(2), 453–467. https://doi.org/10.1017/rdc.2017.124
27.
FreemanJ.RobinsonE.BeckmanN. G.BirdD.BaggioJ. A.AnderiesJ. M. (2020). The global ecology of human population density and interpreting changes in paleo-population density. Journal of Archaeological Science, 120, 105168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2020.105168
28.
FukuyamaF. (2014). Political order and political decay: From the industrial revolution to the globalization of democracy. Macmillan.
29.
GraeberD. (2012). Debt: The first 5000 years. Penguin UK.
30.
GrälerB.PebesmaE.HeuvelinkG. (2016). Spatio-temporal interpolation using gstat. The R Journal, 8(1), 204–218. https://doi.org/10.32614/rj-2016-014
31.
HamiltonM.BurgerO.WalkerR. (2012). Human ecology. In SiblyR. M.BrownJ. H.Kodric-BrownA. (Eds.), Metabolic ecology: A scaling approach (p. 67—87). John Wiley and Sons.
32.
HamiltonM. J.BurgerO.DeLongJ. P.WalkerR. S.MosesM. E.BrownJ. H. (2009). Population stability, cooperation, and the invasibility of the human species. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106(30), 12255–12260. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0905708106
33.
HamiltonM. J.LoboJ.RupleyE.YounH.WestG. B. (2016). The ecological and evolutionary energetics of hunter-gatherer residential mobility. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 25(3), 124–132. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21485
34.
HamiltonM. J.MilneB. T.WalkerR. S.BrownJ. H. (2007). Nonlinear scaling of space use in human hunter-gatherers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104(11), 4765–4769. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0611197104
35.
HamiltonM. J.WalkerR. S.BuchananB.SandefordD. S. (2020). Scaling human sociopolitical complexity. Plos One, 15(7), Article e0234615. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234615
36.
HammelE. A. (2005). Kinship-based politics and the optimal size of kin groups. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102(33), 11951–11956. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0504647102
37.
HausmannR.HidalgoC. A.BustosS.CosciaM.SimoesA.YildirimM. A. (2014). The atlas of economic complexity: Mapping paths to prosperity. Mit Press.
38.
HenrichJ. (2020). The weirdest people in the world: How the west became psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
39.
HillK. R.WalkerR. S.BožičevićM.EderJ.HeadlandT.HewlettB.HurtadoA. M.MarloweF.WiessnerP.WoodB. (2011). Co-residence patterns in hunter-gatherer societies show unique human social structure. Science, 331(6022), 1286–1289. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1199071
40.
HillK. R.WoodB. M.BaggioJ.HurtadoA. M.BoydR. T. (2014). Hunter-gatherer inter-band interaction rates: Implications for cumulative culture. Plos One, 9(7), e102806. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0102806
41.
IEA (2016). World energy balance data. International Energy AgencyInternational Energy Agency. https://www.iea.org/Sankey/
LindgrenF.RueH. (2015). Bayesian spatial modelling with r-inla. Journal of Statistical Software, 63(19), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v063.i19
44.
LindstedtS. L.MillerB. J.BuskirkS. W. (1986). Home range, time, and body size in mammals. Ecology, 67(2), 413–418. https://doi.org/10.2307/1938584
45.
LiuZ.LuZ.WenX.Otto-BliesnerB. L.TimmermannA.CobbK. M. (2014). Evolution and forcing mechanisms of El Niño over the past 21, 000 years. Nature, 515(7528), 550–553. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13963
46.
LiuZ.Otto-BliesnerB. L.HeF.BradyE. C.TomasR.ClarkP. U.CarlsonA. E.Lynch-StieflitzJ.CurryW.BrookE.EricksonD.JacobR. L.KutzbachJ.ChengJ. (2009). Transient simulation of last deglaciation with a new mechanism for Bolling-Allerod warming. Science, 325(July), 310–313. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1171041
47.
McNabB. K. (1963). Bioenergetics and determination of home range size. American Naturalist, 97(894), 133–140. https://doi.org/10.1086/282264
48.
MiltonK.MayM. L. (1976). Body-weight, diet and home range area in primates. Nature, 259(5543), 459–462. https://doi.org/10.1038/259459a0
49.
MirandaL.FreemanJ. (2020). The two types of society: Computationally revealing recurrent social formations and their evolutionary trajectories. Plos One, 15(5), Article e0232609. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0232609
50.
MurdockG. P. (1967). Ethnographic atlas. University of Pittsburgh Press.
51.
NorthD. C. (1990). Institutions, institutional change and economic performance. Cambridge University Press.
52.
NorthD. C.WallisJ. J.WeingastB. R. (2009). Violence and social orders: A conceptual framework for interpreting recorded human history. Cambridge University Press.
53.
OdumE. P. (1997). Ecology: A bridge between science and society. Sinauer Associates.
54.
OdumH. T. (2007). Environment, power, and society for the twenty-first century: The hierarchy of energy. Columbia University Press.
55.
OstromE. (1998). A behavioral approach to the rational choice theory of collective action: Presidential address, American Political Science Association, 1997. American Political Science Review, 92(01), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.2307/2585925
56.
Otto-BliesnerB. L.RussellJ. M.ClarkP. U.LiuZ.OverpeckJ. T.KoneckyB.DeMenocalP.NicholsonS. E.HeF.LuZ. (2014). Coherent changes of southeastern equatorial and northern African rainfall during the last deglaciation. Science, 346(6214), 1223–1228. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1259531
PebesmaE. J.BivandR. S. (2005). Classes and methods for spatial data in R. R News, 5(2), 9–13.
59.
PontzerH.Durazo-ArvizuR.DugasL. R.Plange-RhuleJ.BovetP.ForresterT. E.LambertE. V.CooperR. S.SchoellerD. A.LukeA. (2016). Constrained total energy expenditure and metabolic adaptation to physical activity in adult humans. Current Biology, 26(3), 410–417. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.12.046
60.
PontzerH.RaichlenD. A.WoodB. M.MabullaA. Z.RacetteS. B.MarloweF. W. (2012). Hunter-gatherer energetics and human obesity. Plos One, 7(7), Article e40503. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0040503
61.
PutnamR. D.LeonardiR.NanettiR. Y. (1993). Making democracy work: Civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton University Press.
62.
R Development Core Team (2008). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. ISBN 3-900051-07-0. http://www.R-project.org
63.
RichersonP. J.BoydR. (1998). Homage to malthus, ricardo, and boserup toward a general theory of population, economic growth, environmental deterioration, wealth, and poverty. Human Ecology Review, 4, 85–90.
64.
SchulzJ. F.Bahrami-RadD.BeauchampJ. P.HenrichJ. (2019a). The church, intensive kinship, and global psychological variation. Science, 366(6466), eaau5141. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aau5141
65.
SchulzJ. F.Bahrami-RadD.BeauchampJ. P.HenrichJ. (2019b). The church, intensive kinship, and global psychological variation. Dryad, Dataset (Accessed July 2021).https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2rbnzs7hs
66.
SchulzJ. F.Bahrami-RadD.BeauchampJ. P.HenrichJ. (2019c). Supplementary materials for the church, intensive kinship, and global psychological variation. Science, 366(eaau5141), eaau5141. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aau5141
67.
SchwarzloseR. (2021). Brainscapes: The warped, wondrous maps written in your brain–and how they guide you. Houghton, MifflinHarcourt.
68.
TallavaaraM.EronenJ. T.LuotoM. (2018). Productivity, biodiversity, and pathogens influence the global hunter-gatherer population density. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(6), 1232–1237. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1715638115
69.
TurchinP.CurrieT. E.WhitehouseH.FrançoisP.FeeneyK.MullinsD.HoyerD.CollinsC.GrohmannS.SavageP.Mendel-GleasonG.TurnerE.DupeyronA.CioniE.ReddishJ.LevineJ.JordanG.BrandlE.WilliamsA.SpencerC. (2018). Quantitative historical analysis uncovers a single dimension of complexity that structures global variation in human social organization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(2), E144–E151. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1708800115
UllahI. I.KuijtI.FreemanJ. (2015). Toward a theory of punctuated subsistence change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(31), 9579–9584. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1503628112
WiessnerP. (1998). On network analysis: The potential for understanding (and misunderstanding)! kung hxaro. Current Anthropology, 39(4), 514–517. https://doi.org/10.1086/204763
74.
YorkR.RosaE. A.DietzT. (2003). STIRPAT, IPAT and ImPACT: Analytic tools for unpacking the driving forces of environmental impacts. Environmental Entomology, 46(3), 351–365. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0921-8009(03)00188-5
75.
Zammit-MangionA.CressieN. (2021). Frk: An r package for spatial and spatio-temporal prediction with large datasets. Journal of Statistical Software, 98(4), 1–48. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v098.i04
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
