ITR: Development and Applications of the PS-I Computational Modeling Platform for Problems of Ethnic Conflict, Globalization, State Stability, and Terrorism

University Of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

Abstract: "Development and Applications of the PS-I Computational Modeling Platform for Problems of Ethnic Conflict, Globalization, State Stability, and Terrorism," Professor Ian S. Lustick, University of Pennsylvania, P.I. Problems featuring non-linearities, local effects, multiple equilibria, positive feedback loops, and widely distributed processes among heterogeneous units, are understood to be common in the social world. They are also known to be intractable for conventional mathematical approaches, no matter how sophisticated, and have posed insuperable difficulties for the extension of formal modeling approaches in political science and other social sciences. Agent-based modeling, also referred to as computational modeling, is a technique for simulating and studying such complex problems by leveraging knowledge of simple mechanisms of interaction and performance at the micro-level to achieve insights into patterns that emerge at the macro-level. In the social sciences many attempts are being made to harness computers for the production of evolutionary simulations corresponding systematically enough to the empirical world to produce reliable explanations and predictions. The project's principal objective is to advance this general approach in three ways: 1) by providing social scientists with access to and training on PS-I, a flexible and powerful platform for the production of theoretically coherent agent-based models of social and political phenomena that does not require end-users to possess computer programming skills; 2) by working with these scholars to develop enhanced graphical and point and click interfaces for substantively-oriented rather than computer-oriented users; and 3) to use PS-I capabilities to produce high-end research addressing crucial substantive and theoretical problems. This project includes applications of PS-I simulation techniques to problems including the impact of globalization on ethnic and other identity related conflict, the potential of different institutional structures for the management or containment of ethnopolitical conflict, the consequences of catastrophic terrorism for the performance of market economies, mechanisms and conditions for political learning at the collective level, the evolution of threat perception, relationships between regional integration, nation-state integrity, and subnational self-determination movements, the peculiar dynamics of bio-terrorism, and the identification and operation of threshold effects and cascades of change in various political contexts. Of particular importance are applications of this simulation technology for producing templates to capture patterns of variability and similarity associated with particular kinds of countries, kinds of situations, or kinds of threats. The implications for intelligence gathering and analysis are direct and manifest. Indeed the most impressive obstacle to the effective use of these techniques for intelligence purposes has been the necessity for users to be computer programmers. An objective of this project is to make the open-ended potential of computational modeling available to any scholar or analyst with the requisite knowledge of his/her subject matter, the imagination to use virtual tools to think about the real world, and access to a standard computer.