Proceedings of the 11th European Agent Systems Summer School Student Session

This volume contains the papers presented at the Student Session of the 11th European Agent Systems Summer School (EASSS) held on 2nd of September 2009 at Educatorio della Providenza, Turin, Italy. The Student Session, organised by students, is designed to encourage student interaction and feedback from the tutors. By providing the students with a conference-like setup, both in the presentation and in the review process, students have the opportunity to prepare their own submission, go through the selection process and present their work to each other and their interests to their fellow students as well as internationally leading experts in the agent field, both from the theoretical and the practical sector. Table of Contents: Andrew Koster, Jordi Sabater Mir and Marco Schorlemmer, Towards an inductive algorithm for learning trust alignment . . . 5; Angel Rolando Medellin, Katie Atkinson and Peter McBurney, A Preliminary Proposal for Model Checking Command Dialogues. . . 12; Declan Mungovan, Enda Howley and Jim Duggan, Norm Convergence in Populations of Dynamically Interacting Agents . . . 19; Akın Günay, Argumentation on Bayesian Networks for Distributed Decision Making . . 25; Michael Burkhardt, Marco Luetzenberger and Nils Masuch, Towards Toolipse 2: Tool Support for the JIAC V Agent Framework . . . 30; Joseph El Gemayel, The Tenacity of Social Actors . . . 33; Cristian Gratie, The Impact of Routing on Traffic Congestion . . . 36; Andrei-Horia Mogos and Monica Cristina Voinescu, A Rule-Based Psychologist Agent for Improving the Performances of a Sportsman . . . 39; --Autonomer Agent,Agent,Künstliche Intelligenz

Mechanism-Based Thinking on Policy Diffusion. A Review of Current Approaches in Political Science

Despite theoretical and methodological progress in what is now coined as the third generation of diffusion studies, explicitly dealing with the causal mechanisms underlying diffusion processes and comparatively analyzing them is only of recent date. As a matter of fact, diffusion research has ended up in a diverse and often unconnected array of theoretical assumptions relying both on rational as well as constructivist reasoning – a circumstance calling for more theoretical coherence and consistency. Against this backdrop, this paper reviews and streamlines diffusion literature in political science. Diffusion mechanisms largely cluster around two causal arguments determining the desires and preferences of actors for choosing alternative policies. First, existing diffusion mechanisms accounts can be grouped according to the rationality for policy adoption, this means that government behavior is based on the instrumental considerations of actors or on constructivist arguments like norms and rule-driven actors. Second, diffusion mechanisms can either directly impact on the beliefs of actors or they might influence the structural conditions for decision-making. Following this logic, four basic diffusion mechanisms can be identified in mechanism-based thinking on policy diffusion: emulation, socialization, learning, and externalities.policy diffusion

Why De Minimis?

De minimis cutoffs are a familiar feature of risk regulation. This includes the quantitative individual risk thresholds for fatality risks employed in many contexts by EPA, FDA, and other agencies, such as the 1-in-1 million lifetime cancer risk cutoff; extreme event cutoffs for addressing natural hazards, such as the 100 - year - flood or 475 - year - earthquake; de minimis failure probabilities for built structures; the exclusion of low - probability causal models; and other policymaking criteria. All these tests have a common structure, as I show in the Article. A de minimis test, broadly defined, tells the decisionmaker to determine whether the probability of some outcome is above a low threshold and makes this determination relevant, in some way, to her choice. De minimis cutoffs are deeply problematic, and have been generally misunderstood by scholars. First, they are warranted - if at all - by virtue of policymakers\u27 bounded rationality. If policymakers were fully rational, de minimis cutoffs would have no justification. (This is true, I suggest, across a wide range of normative theories, and for the full gamut of de minimis tests). Second, although it seems plausible that some de minimis tests are justified once bounded rationality is brought into the picture, it is not clear which those are, or even how we should go about identifying them

Bargaining and Influence in Conflict Situations

[Excerpt] This chapter examines bargaining as an influence process through which actors attempt to resolve a social conflict. Conflict occurs when two or more interdependent actors have incompatible preferences and perceive or anticipate resistance from each other (Blalock 1989; Kriesberg 1982). Bargaining is a basic form of goal-directed action that involves both intentions to influence and efforts by each actor to carry out these intentions. Tactics are verbal and/or nonverbal actions designed to maneuver oneself into a favorable position vis-a-vis another or to reach some accommodation. Our treatment of bargaining subsumes the concept of negotiation (see Morley and Stephenson 1977). This chapter is organized around a conceptual framework that distinguishes basic types of bargaining contexts. We begin by introducing the framework and then present an overview of and analyze theoretical and empirical work on each type of bargaining context

An advanced fuzzy Bayesian-based FMEA approach for assessing maritime supply chain risks

This paper aims to develop a novel model to assess the risk factors of maritime supply chains by incorporating a fuzzy belief rule approach with Bayesian networks. The new model, compared to traditional risk analysis methods, has the capability of improving result accuracy under a high uncertainty in risk data. A real case of a world leading container shipping company is investigated, and the research results reveal that among the most significant risk factors are transportation of dangerous goods, fluctuation of fuel price, fierce competition, unattractive markets, and change of exchange rates in sequence. Such findings will provide useful insights for accident prevention

a review of current approaches in political science

1\. Introduction 5 2\. Differences and Intersections in Mechanism-Based Thinking on Policy Diffusion 7 2.1 Constructivist and Rationalist Thinking 9 2.2 Explanations Based on Changes in Structures and/or Agency 10 2.3 Four Concepts of Diffusion Mechanisms 11 3\. Pathways of Policy Diffusion 14 3.1 Conceptualizing Learning 14 3.2 Conceptualizing Externalities 17 3.3 Conceptualizing Socialization 19 3.4 Conceptualizing Emulation 21 4\. Concluding Remarks 23 Literature 27Despite theoretical and methodological progress in what is now coined as the third generation of diffusion studies, explicitly dealing with the causal mechanisms underlying diffusion processes and comparatively analyzing them is only of recent date. As a matter of fact, diffusion research has ended up in a diverse and often unconnected array of theoretical assumptions relying both on rational as well as constructivist reasoning – a circumstance calling for more theoretical coherence and consistency. Against this backdrop, this paper reviews and streamlines diffusion literature in political science. Diffusion mechanisms largely cluster around two causal arguments determining the desires and preferences of actors for choosing alternative policies. First, existing diffusion mechanisms accounts can be grouped according to the rationality for policy adoption, this means that government behavior is based on the instrumental considerations of actors or on constructivist arguments like norms and rule-driven actors. Second, diffusion mechanisms can either directly impact on the beliefs of actors or they might influence the structural conditions for decision-making. Following this logic, four basic diffusion mechanisms can be identified in mechanism-based thinking on policy diffusion: emulation, socialization, learning, and externalities

Refounding of Activity Concept ? Towards a Federative Paradigm for Modeling and Simulation

Journal : Simulation, Transactions of the Society for Modeling and Simulation InternationalInternational audienceCurrently, the widely used notion of activity is increasingly present in computer science. However, because this notion is used in specific contexts, it becomes vague. Here, the notion of activity is scrutinized in various contexts and, accord-ingly, put in perspective. It is discussed through four scientific disciplines: computer science, biology, economics, and epis-temology. The definition of activity usually used in simulation is extended to new qualitative and quantitative definitions. In computer science, biology and economics disciplines, the new simulation activity definition is first applied critically. Then, activity is discussed generally. In epistemology, activity is discussed, in a prospective way, as a possible framework in models of human beliefs and knowledge

Civilising Globalism: Transnational Norm-Building Networks—A Research Programme

Decentralised, self-organised cross-border activities are increasingly shaping global policymaking. While state actors have lost ground, policy and economic networks have emerged as key actors, transforming international relations as well as national spheres. Academic discourse is following their activity, often focusing on "advocacy networks" and on the role of transnational actors within the transformation of the world economy and world polity. In contrast to these research activities, the approach proposed here extends the scope of inquiry to include the role of transnational networks in norm-building and norm-implementation. The networks under scrutiny here do not confine themselves to the articulation of particular interests, the resolution of particular conflicts, or compliance with legal norms. It is presumed here that a variety of networks which are fundamentally concerned with the creation of norms have emerged. The predominance of the nation-state, one of the main characteristics of modern democratic thinking, has eroded to the point where the fundamental nexus of voice (democratic participation) and entitlement (legal and social rights and duties) has been weakened or even broken. We presume that this decentration has fundamentally changed the option of voice as one of the most important responses by citizens to crisis and change. This comes to the fore with the emergence and effectiveness of transnational norm-building networks. The article develops a research programme, the outcome of which will shed light on this new resource for the development of a democratised world polity.networks, norms, world polity, globalisation, global civil society