Dan Little: ABM approaches to social conflict

Dan Little discusses ABM approaches to social conflict.

Second, it is important to notice the range of factors the simulation does not consider, which theorists like Tilly would think to be crucial: quality of leadership, quality and intensity of organization, content of appeals, differential pathways of appeals, and variety of political psychologies across agents. This simulation captures several important aspects of this particular kind of collective action. But it omits a great deal of substantial factors that theorists of collective action would take to be critical elements of the dynamics of the situation.

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In other words, the discipline and cohesion of a Leninist party is vitally important in bringing about revolutionary change.

Key variables in their simulation are religious identity, demographic change, population density, the history of recent inter-group conflict, and geographical location. The action space for individuals is: move location, mobilize for violence. And their model is calibrated to real data drawn from four states in Northwest India. Their basic finding is this: "Conflict is predicted in this model where islands or peninsulas of one ethnicity are surrounded by a sea of another (Figure 2.1)."

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It is interesting to note that the two (2) major incubators of the Bolshevik Revolution were island:

• Industrial district of Vyborg near St. Petersburg
• Kronstadt Naval fortress at St. Petersburg

Their isolation was meant to contain unrest, but the isolation allowed and fostered revolutionary temperments.

All these models warrant study. They attempt to codify the behavior of individuals within geographic and social space and to work out the dynamics of interaction that result. But it is very important to recognize the limitations of these models as predictors of outcomes in specific periods and locations of unrest. These simulation models probably don't shed much light on particular episodes of contention in Egypt or Tunisia during the Arab Spring. The "qualitative" theories of contention that have been developed probably shed more light on the dynamics of contention than the simulations do at this point in their development.

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Revolutionaries should continue to study previous revolutions, and see what is applicable to the current and evolving political situation.