Last updated by The POOG on September 16, 2020.

When an entity acts on a system, it may have a measurable or observable effect on the system. If we can estimate the change or difference between the resulting state of the system and what we would otherwise have expected the state to be if the entity had not acted, we call the difference an expression of ‘influence’ on the system.

Individuals and organizations deliberately set out to modify systems towards a preferred state. This activity is usually well defined as a strategy or set of strategies. I will call such a strategy a playbook. Hence, a playbook is a succinct list of actions or strategies that if implemented by the entity, will attain a desired goal.

There appear to be a large number of individuals and organizations operating in the world today to shape it in some form or other. Some are small players and some are large in stature. Determine the playbooks of the players should facilitate an analysis of the global power structures.

The value of such analyses is that it helps the reader to identify the tactics being used in society today. This in turn allows us to assess how advanced the institutionalization of playbook strategies is We can also identify the type of state we are progressing towards in comparison to the state of the actors whose playbooks are presented.

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