Bailey's social entropy theory as an explicit theoretical approach for an empirical assessment of security of contemporary societies

摘要

The aim of the article, based on my doctoral thesis (Mitar, Theoretical and Methodological comparison of selected approaches for assessment of security of modern society, Ph.D. Dissertation, 2005), is to present my slight modification of Bailey's SET as an explicit theoretical approach for an empirical assessment of security of contemporary societies. I formed a model D velence f(PLOTIS), in which component D was defined (various deviant or unwanted phenomena--in present article measured by the number of deaths in violent conflicts), which was conditioned by macro-societal factors (Population, Level-of-living, Organisation, Technology, Information, Space), denoted by acronym PLOTIS. The model is tested by cross-sectional design, 19 (non-random) chosen former European socialist countries are compared, available secondary data at the end of a period of transition (1989-2002) are used. The model is tested by different methods of analysis: descriptive statistics, qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) and descriptive discriminant analysis (DDA). The comparison of results acquired by different methods confirmed usefulness of the modified SET as starting point for formation and testing of hypotheses about the influence of macrosocietal characteristics (measured by PLOTIS) on unwanted phenomena. Last but not least, some proposals for further research are presented.