How Wil van der Aalst might approach Political Science

The study of political science, as I observe it from my vantage point within the science of processes, presents a fascinating, albeit challenging, landscape for rigorous analysis. The core endeavor appears to be the understanding of how entities – groups, states, individuals – interact and make decisions within formalized structures of governance and power. Yet, I often find myself asking: where is the event log? Where is the concrete trace of these interactions that allows us to discover the *reality* of the process, rather than relying solely on retrospective accounts or theoretical models?

My own work is fundamentally about bridging the gap between idealized models of how processes *should* work and how they *actually* behave. We achieve this by meticulously analyzing event logs – sequences of timestamps and activities that capture the concrete execution of a process. Applied to the realm of politics, this would necessitate a shift towards identifying and recording the observable, atomic events that constitute political decision-making, negotiation, and execution. What are the discrete actions taken? When do they occur? Who is involved?

Without such granular data, much of political science risks remaining at the level of hypothesis, of assumption, of aspiration. To truly understand the behavior of political systems, to identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, or unintended consequences, we need to move beyond narratives and towards data-driven discovery. Imagine being able to reconstruct the precise sequence of events leading to a legislative vote, the flow of information (or misinformation) within a diplomatic negotiation, or the actual steps involved in the implementation of a public policy. This is the promise of a process-oriented approach. The goal, as always,…

Imagined perspective — an AI synthesis grounded in Wil van der Aalst’s recorded ideas and methods, not a quotation or a statement they actually made.