Structural Balance in Politics
Donald Trump’s Campaign Stands By Embrace of Putin
Currently, in case you’re not from the United States and/or you don’t follow the American presidential campaign, there are two frontrunner candidates for President of the United States. Clearly since they are running against each other they are destined to hate each other. Staying true to this idea Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton disagree on seemingly every possible issue that the American voters might care about. In this latest article from the New York Times, they describe how Donald Trump essentially endorses the Russian president Vladimir Putin, stating how great of a leader he is and that, in fact, he is a much better leader of his country than Barack Obama is of his. Hillary Clinton then completely disagrees with this, stating how Donald Trump must be crazy because Vladimir Putin is crazy and that Barack Obama is really not that bad. Overall, the comments these candidates make spark further controversy and probabaly solidify their respective followers as the true fans that they are.
Really, this scenario is a simple network composed of three nodes. Node A is Vladimir Putin, Node B is Donald Trump, and Node C is Hillary Clinton. First off, in this triangle edge “BC” is constantly negative since the two candidates will always be enemies (at least while the race is ongoing). This means that in order for the network to be structurally balanced only one of the remaining edges can be positive. Furthermore, since Vladimir Putin is too busy and probably disinterested over in Russia, he is not going to make a comment about whether he likes or dislikes Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. So, inevitably, one of the American presidential candidates was going to speak out about their view of the Russian president in order to not only fuel their supporters, but to balance the network as well.