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dc.contributor.authorJohnson, Paul E.
dc.date.accessioned2014-07-10T13:10:26Z
dc.date.available2014-07-10T13:10:26Z
dc.date.issued2013-01-26
dc.identifier.citationPaul Johnson. (2013). On the Importance of Frailty in Social Science Theory (and other lessons of agent-based modeling). European Quarterly of Political Attitudes and Mentalities 2(1).
dc.identifier.issn2285 - 4916
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1808/14681
dc.descriptionThis is the publisher's version, also available electronically from https://sites.google.com/a/fspub.unibuc.ro/european-quarterly-of-political-attitudes-and-mentalities/Home
dc.description.abstractThis paper is about the theoretical implications of agent-based modeling exercises. Construction of an agent-based model challenges a social scientist to formalize many concepts and relationships that would have remained implicit or unrecognized. While formalizing these "unimportant" assumptions can be a nuisance, it can also have substantial theoretical payoffs. In order to fill the gaps of the model, the researcher is forced to confront the gaps in the theory that motivated the model in the first place. Using examples drawn from several large political science simulation models, the paper argues that frailty, defined as unpredictability in the behavior of agents, is often required in order to bring closure to the modeling exercise. It is difficult (or impossible) to square the dynamic or aggregate implications of the agent-based model with observations without placing a substantial amount of emphasis on frailty. Hence, the component in behavior that we often treat as "error" in empirical analysis is actually a vital part of the glue that makes the many different moving parts of a social system interact in coherent ways. The example models were developed with the Swarm simulation system (http://www.swarm.org) during the last decade.
dc.publisherEuropean Quarterly of Political Attitudes and Mentalities
dc.subjectagent-based modeling
dc.subjectpolitical science
dc.subjectsimulation models
dc.subjectfrailty
dc.titleOn the Importance of Frailty in Social Science Theory (and other lessons of agent-based modeling)
dc.typeArticle
kusw.kuauthorJohnson, Paul E.
kusw.kudepartmentPolitical Science
kusw.oastatusfullparticipation
kusw.oaversionScholarly/refereed, publisher version
kusw.oapolicyThis item meets KU Open Access policy criteria.
dc.rights.accessrightsopenAccess


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