Rebellion on sugarscape: Case studies for greed and grievance theory of civil conflicts using agent-bBased models

Abstract

Public policy making has direct and indirect impacts on social behaviors. However, using system dynamics model alone to assess these impacts fails to consider the interactions among social elements, thus may produce doubtful conclusions. In this study, we examine the political science theory of greed and grievance in modeling civil conflicts. An agent-based model is built based on an existing rebellion model in Netlogo. The modifications and improvements in our model are elaborated. Several case studies are used to demonstrate the use of our model for investigating emergent phenomena and implications of governmental policies. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.