How can foreign policy today benefit from complexity sciences?

The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) for complexity research in New Mexico, USA, is hosting an exclusive Working Group Meeting (February 23-25, 2011) to explore this very question. Science and technology with social policy need to be integrated into foreign assistance programs. But how is this to be done? The aim of the meeting is to define new approaches to long-term sustainable development in conflict countries, in particular Afghanistan and Pakistan.

For many years, the Santa Fe Institute has been doing cutting-edge work in data assessment and analysis in the areas of conflict, complexity and behavioral dynamics.

Frauke de Weijer is blogging from this event, which will engage SFI faculty staff, as well as a selected number of leading scholars, practitioners and policy-makers.

Also see our earlier blog on Strategy and Complexity and an earlier article on complexity thinking and social development by Alan Fowler.