Why we live in hierarchies: a quantitative treatise

Abstract

This book is concerned with the various aspects of hierarchical collective behaviour which is manifested by most complex systems in nature. From the many of the possible topics, we plan to present a selection of those that we think are useful from the point of shedding light from very different directions onto our quite general subject. Our intention is to both present the essential contributions by the existing approaches as well as go significantly beyond the results obtained by traditional methods by applying a more quantitative approach then the common ones (there are many books on qualitative interpretations). In addition to considering hierarchy in systems made of similar kinds of units, we shall concentrate on problems involving either dominance relations or the process of collective decision-making from various viewpoints.