Simulating
Politics – the agent-based simulation of voting behaviour
An online workshop held on Wednesday, November 17, 2021
as part of the Populism
and Civic Engagement Conference, Brussels, as part of the Populism
and Civic Engagement project.
Agent-based simulation is when
each voter (and maybe party) is represented by a separate entity in
the simulation. This allows for (a) the representation of realistic
levels of voter diversity (both in opinions and behaviour) and (b) can
allow the co-development of voting with other aspects (such as policy
adaptation by parties). This seminar is for those involved in
developing such models to come together, present and discuss their
work in a relatively informal, online forum.
A recording of the whole session:
Is available to view on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDe4nxYZ334
Speakers:
- Ruth Meyer, Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester Met. Uni,
UK on “An Evidence-Driven Model of Voting and Party Competition”
(her slides are here)
- Simon Schweighofer, Department of Media & Communication,
Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China on “Weighted Balance Model
of Opinion Hyperpolarization” (his slides
are here)
- Bruce Edmonds, Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester Met.
Uni, UK on “A Complex Model of Voter Turnout” (his slides
are here)
The papers mentioned in the presentations or the chat:
- Meyer, R., Fölsch, M., Dolezal, M. and Heinisch, R. (2021) An
Evidence-Driven Model of Voting and Party Competition. Social
Simulation Conference 2021. https://cfpm.org/discussionpapers/269
- Schweighofer, S., Schweitzer, F., & Garcia, D. (2020). A weighted
balance model of opinion hyperpolarization. Journal of Artificial
Societies and Social Simulation, 23(3), 5. https://doi.org/10.18564/jasss.4306
- Fieldhouse, E., Lessard-Phillips, L. & Edmonds, B. (2016) Cascade
or echo chamber? A complex agent-based simulation of voter turnout. Party
Politics. 22(2):241-256. DOI:10.1177/1354068815605671
- Troitzsch, K.G. (2021) Validating Simulation Models: The Case of
Opinion Dynamics. In Tamás Rudas & Gábor Péli (eds.) Pathways
Between Social Science and Computational Social Science (pp.
123-155). Springer. DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-54936-7_6
