In analyzing political rhetoric and other forms of persuasive communication scholars have sometimes found it helpful to formally evaluate the "integrative complexity" of various arguments. These traits ar also often a useful indicator of what makes a good academic essay. You may thus find it helpful in refining your own ability to make sophisticated arguments.
The ranking looks at two elements of argumentative strategy. The first of these, differentiation, refers to the range of plausible factors that an author considers relevant for explaining a particular event or policy. It will often include not only explanations of contributing factors but also consideration of why some factors did not contribute in a particular case. Differentiation is a measure of how multi-dimensional an argument is. The second element, integration, refers to how well an author explains and evaluates the relationships among the different factors of a differentiated argument, including any paradoxes, reciprocities, and competing imperatives that may be important. A highly integrated argument has a good thesis, is well-organized, and connects the pieces together ingeniously.
Explanations are simplistic, reductionist, and monocausal, providing no explicit consideration of multiple forces or competing factors. They offer no sense of how time, place, and authorial intent shaped decision-making and opinion-formation. The author's own views are considered to be true, normative, or universal, but are often borrowed unreflectively from authority figures. Categories and conflicts are perceived as starkly binary.
Explanations differentiate more than one factor but do not explicitly consider how these factors interact or integrate together. May define decision processes in terms of simple binary yes-or-no, all-one-way-or-all-the-other processes and groupings. May explore with some complexity the role of background, time, place, and self-interest in shaping an opponent's positions but may not apply similar tests to the author's own positions. May rhetorically contrast the higher principle and logic of one's own side with the personal gain and irrationality of the other.
Explanations are moderately multi-dimensional. They show recognition of the trade-offs involved in decision-making and opinion-formation. They show some effort to rank relationships among causal factors and evaluate their relative significance. They even-handedly acknowledge the paradoxes and inconsistencies of arguments presented by all sides of a given issue or debate. Explanations consider the role of time, place, and background with moderate analytical complexity.
Explanations have a high degree of both differentiation and conceptual integration. There is a systematic and plausible overall explanation that is subtle enough to incorporate the full range of human behaviors, inconsistencies, paradoxes, and trade-offs represented in subordinate contributing factors. Although built around clear and plausible generalizations its explanations are capacious enough to incorporate these exceptions. Time, place, and background are central explanatory elements of the argument. The author acknowledges that his or her own arguments are substantial but provisional, subject to revision when better information or more robust explanations become available.
[This summary has been adapted for historical analysis from Brown, et al., Coding Manual for Conceptual/Integrative Complexity (http://www.psych.ubc.ca/~psuedfeld/MANUAL.pdf)].