Challenges in Modelling Social Conflicts: Grappling with Polysemy

This discussion paper originates from the preceding annual workshop of the Special Interest Group on Social Conflict and Social Simulation (SIG-SCSS) of the ESSA. The workshop especially focused on the need to identify and examine challenges to modeling social conflicts. It turned out that the polysemous nature of social conflicts makes it very difficult to get a grasp of their complexity. In order to deal with this complexity, various dimensions have to be taken into consideration, beginning with the question of how to identify a conflict in the first place. Other dimensions include the relation of conflict and rationality and how to include non-rational factors into conflict models. This involves a conception of organized action. Finally, guiding principles for model development are being discussed. We would like to invite readers of the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation to 'sow the seeds' of this debate.Social Conflicts, Conflict Models, Modelling Challenges, Polysemy, Rationality, Emotions

Votes and Lobbying in the European Decision-Making Process: Application to the European Regulation on GMO Release

The paper presents a multi-agent model simulating a two-level public decision game in which politicians, voters and interest groups interact. The objective is to model the political market for influence at the domestic level and at the international level, and to assess how new consultation procedures affect the final decision. It is based on public choice theory as well as on political science findings. We consider in this paper that lobbying groups have different strategies for influencing voters and decision-makers, with long-term and short-term effects. Our computational model enables us to represent the situation as an iterative process, in which past decisions have an impact on the preferences and choices of agents in the following period. In the paper, the model is applied to the European decision-making procedure for authorizing the placing on the market of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO). It illustrates the political links between public opinions, lobbying groups and elected representatives at the national scale in the 15 country members, and at the European scale. It compares the procedure which was defined by the European 1990/220 Directive in 1990 with the new procedure, the 2001/18 Directive, which replaced it in 2001. The objective is to explore the impact of the new decision rules and the reinforced public participation procedures planned by the 2001/18 Directive on the lobbying efficiency of NGOs and biotechnology firms, and on the overall acceptability of the European decision concerning the release of new GMOs on the European territory.Lobbying, Europe, GMO, Multi-Agent Simulation, Public Choice, Politician, Voter, Group Contest

The social sciences and the web : From ‘Lurking’ to interdisciplinary ‘Big Data’ research

Acknowledgements This research is supported by the award made by the RCUK Digital Economy theme to the dot.rural Digital Economy Hub (award reference: EP/G066051/1) and the UK Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) (award reference: ES/M001628/1).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Political economics and normative analysis

The approaches and opinions of economists often dominate public policy discussion. Economists have gained this privileged position partly (or perhaps mainly) because of the obvious relevance of their subject matter, but also because of the unified methodology (neo-classical economics) that the vast majority of modern economists bring to their analysis of policy problems and proposed solutions. The idea of Pareto efficiency and its potential trade-off with equity is a central idea that is understood by all economists and this common language provides the economics profession with a powerful voice in public affairs. The purpose of this paper is to review and reflect upon the way in which economists find themselves analysing and providing suggestions for social improvements and how this role has changed over roughly the last 60 years. We focus on the fundamental split in the public economics tradition between those that adhere to public finance and those that adhere to public choice. A pure public finance perspective views failures in society as failures of the market. The solutions are technical, as might be enacted by a benevolent dictator. The pure public choice view accepts (sometimes grudgingly) that markets may fail, but so, it insists, does politics. This signals institutional reforms to constrain the potential for political failure. Certain policy recommendations may be viewed as compatible with both traditions, but other policy proposals will be the opposite of that proposed within the other tradition. In recent years a political economics synthesis emerged. This accepts that institutions are very important and governments require constraints, but that some degree of benevolence on the part of policy makers should not be assumed non-existent. The implications for public policy from this approach are, however, much less clear and perhaps more piecemeal. We also discuss analyses of systematic failure, not so much on the part of markets or politicians, but by voters. Most clearly this could lead to populism and relaxing the idea that voters necessarily choose their interests. The implications for public policy are addressed. Throughout the paper we will relate the discussion to the experience of UK government policy-making

Simulating Political Stability and Change in the Netherlands (1998-2002): an Agent-Based Model of Party Competition with Media Effects Empirically Tested

Agent-based models of political party competition in a multidimensional policy space have been developed in order to reflect adaptive learning by party leaders with very limited information feedback. The key assumption is that two categories of actors continually make decisions: voters choose which party to support and party leaders offer citizens a certain policy package. After reviewing the arguments for using agent-based models, I elaborate two ways forward in the development of these models for political party competition. Firstly, theoretical progress is made in this article by taking the role of the mass media into account. In previous work it is implicitly assumed that all parties are equally visible for citizens, whereas I will start from the more realistic assumption that there is also competition for attention in the public sphere. With this addition, it is possible to address the question why new parties are seldom able to successfully compete with political actors already within the political system. Secondly, I argue that, if we really want to learn useful lessons from simulations, we should seek to empirically falsify models by confronting outcomes with real data. So far, most of the agent-based models of party competition have been an exclusively theoretical exercise. Therefore, I evaluate the empirical relevance of different simulations of Dutch party competition in the period from May 1998 until May 2002. Using independent data on party positions, I measure the extent to which simulations generate mean party sizes that resemble public opinion polls. The results demonstrate that it is feasible and realistic to simulate party competition in the Netherlands with agent-based models, even when a rather unstable period is investigated.Agent-Based Model, Voting Behaviour, Mass Media, Empirical Validation

A principal-agent model of corruption

One of the new avenues in the study of political corruption is that of neo-institutional economics, of which the principal-agent theory is a part. In this article a principal-agent model of corruption is presented, in which there are two principals (one of which is corrupting), and one agent (who is corrupted). The behaviour of these principals and agent is analysed in terms of the costs and benefits associated with different actions. The model is applied to political corruption in representative democracies, showing that, contrary to common belief, the use of principal-agent models is not limited to bureaucratic corruption

Political economics and normative analysis

The approaches and opinions of economists often dominate public policy discussion. Economists have gained this privileged position partly (or perhaps mainly) because of the obvious relevance of their subject matter, but also because of the unified methodology (neo-classical economics) that the vast majority of modern economists bring to their analysis of policy problems and proposed solutions. The idea of Pareto efficiency and its potential trade-off with equity is a central idea that is understood by all economists and this common language provides the economics profession with a powerful voice in public affairs. The purpose of this paper is to review and reflect upon the way in which economists find themselves analysing and providing suggestions for social improvements and how this role has changed over roughly the last 60 years. We focus on the fundamental split in the public economics tradition between those that adhere to public finance and those that adhere to public choice. A pure public finance perspective views failures in society as failures of the market. The solutions are technical, as might be enacted by a benevolent dictator. The pure public choice view accepts (sometimes grudgingly) that markets may fail, but so, it insists, does politics. This signals institutional reforms to constrain the potential for political failure. Certain policy recommendations may be viewed as compatible with both traditions, but other policy proposals will be the opposite of that proposed within the other tradition. In recent years a political economics synthesis emerged. This accepts that institutions are very important and governments require constraints, but that some degree of benevolence on the part of policy makers should not be assumed non-existent. The implications for public policy from this approach are, however, much less clear and perhaps more piecemeal. We also discuss analyses of systematic failure, not so much on the part of markets or politicians, but by voters. Most clearly this could lead to populism and relaxing the idea that voters necessarily choose their interests. The implications for public policy are addressed. Throughout the paper we will relate the discussion to the experience of UK government policy-making.Public Finance, Public Choice, Public Economics, Political Economics, Normative Analysis

CAST – City analysis simulation tool: an integrated model of land use, population, transport and economics

The paper reports on research into city modelling based on principles of Science of Complexity. It focuses on integration of major processes in cities, such as economics, land use, transport and population movement. This is achieved using an extended Cellular Automata model, which allows cells to form networks, and operate on individual financial budgets. There are 22 cell types with individual processes in them. The formation of networks is based on supply and demand mechanisms for products, skills, accommodation, and services. Demand for transport is obtained as an emergent property of the system resulting from the network connectivity and relevant economic mechanisms. Population movement is a consequence of mechanisms in the housing and skill markets. Income and expenditure of cells are self-regulated through market mechanisms and changing patterns of land use are a consequence of collective interaction of all mechanisms in the model, which are integrated through emergence