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Spring 2018

POLICYMAKING IN A COMPLEX WORLD

PUBP880-001 (#21224)

LOCATION – ARLFH #467

TIME— 7:20PM-10:00PM THURSDAY;

DRAFT January 12, 2018

Instructor: Prof. Hilton Root

Website: hiltonroot.gmu.edu/

Email: hroot2@gmu.edu

Office: Arlington Founder’s Hall, RM #636

Phone: 310-384-5545

Office Hours: 5pm-7pm (Wednesday, Thursday)

This course explores the proposition that the frontiers of modern science, especially

Complexity Science has increasing relevance to the study of real policy cases, offering

social scientists a common set of thinking tools for observing and abstracting patterns of

social behavior and ultimately for adapting policy mechanisms to address the wickedly

hard questions of contemporary, global political economy.

A number of analyses and proofs of concept are available, dispersed throughout distant

disciplines, ranging from social sciences (economics and sociology); to natural sciences

(ecology, epidemiology, and physics); to practice-oriented research (engineering, policy

analysis, and urbanism). The accomplishments of this approach are not fully apparent

because their reach is contained within the narrow limits of their respective fields.

This course seeks to integrate both well-known and cutting-edge methodologies and

theoretical frameworks and seeks the interface between experts of various academic

disciplines and policymakers. The goal is to facilitate decision-making in a constantly

changing environment. Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

1. Complex social systems and applications in public policy

2. Complexity methods and analysis for policymakers.

3. Effects of governance in complex social systems

4. Management of financial networks, real estate, and financing spillovers

5. Smart cities, mobility, and towns in complex urban environments

6. Dynamic risk management in complex scenarios

7. Analyses that explicitly include political-spatial governance boundaries

8. Design and analysis of complex sociotechnical systems for public services

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LEARNING OUTCOMES:

The course will enable students to become familiar with the analytical framework of

complex adaptive systems and its application to global public policy. Students will acquire

new tools to understand the adaptive processes and possible discontinuities that will shape

the emergent global order. Analysis of the military, political, economic and cultural

interactions of both Western and non-western societies will illustrate and validate the

complex systems approach, challenging conventional conceptions of what the state should

do, and the ways in which it can act.

When policy makers confront a complicated problem, they often ask "What do we do

first?" or "what is the best solution?" But for problems that are not just complicated, but

complex in nature, those are the wrong questions. These problems -- which include

everything from state-building to peacemaking to consolidating democracy -- are created

by networks of interacting agents influencing each other in a dynamic system. So one

cannot isolate a first step from a second, or identify a single optimal solution -- one has to

approach the entire landscape of interacting units as a complex system, and identify its

feedbacks and interdependencies to understand the effects of different actions. Only then

can one build a strategy that is sufficiently dynamic and adaptive to attain desired

outcomes in a constantly changing environment. Without understanding the nature of

complexity, policy makers will continue to fail -- as they have so often in the last few

decades -- to make progress on crucial problems that develop from the dynamic

interactions among actors within linked systems.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

Students are expected to keep up with each week’s required readings and to participate in

class discussion.

20%: Class discussion and one class presentation of a title in the syllabus.

20%: Midterm Take Home: A set of questions will be emailed to the class from which

students will select their topic and write an essay of 1,000 words.

60%: One term paper, 3,500 words due at the end of the semester or an agent based

model revealing a property of a complex social environment. Peer assessed.

A) Write a 3,500-word essay in which you explore how the study of complexity can be

applied to practical problems of global public policy. Demonstrate potential

connections between evolutionary theories of complexity and problems in

global management, government or organizations. Students can choose topics in

public health, environment, critical infrastructure, global security,

cyberwarefare, demographic transitions As examples consider problems that are

inadequately explained; can models of evolutionary complexity can be applied

to provide a more realistic understandings and better policies than conventional

analytical tools? Devise experiments that can reveal laws or patterns that govern

how complex institutions, organizations or technologies organizations evolve.

OR:

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B) Computationally adept students can construct computer-based simulation models to

analyze complex systems. Show how artificial worlds like Sugarscape can be

created to capture relevant aspects of the global problems under consideration

during the semester. Given all exogenous and endogenous factors, construct

model economies that evolve over time so that different scenarios can be

analyzed using the models as virtual testbeds for theory generation and

exploration.

REQUIRED READING

1. Barabasi, A.L. 2003. Linked: How Everything is Connected to Everything Else and

What It Means. Plume.

2. Beinhocker, E., 2006, The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the

Radical Remarking of Economics, Harvard Business School Press, Boston.

3. Root, Hilton. L. 2013. Dynamics among Nations: The Evolution of Legitimacy and

Development in Modern States. MIT Press.

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4. Ilene Grabel ,2017.When Things Don’t Fall Apart: Global Financial Governance and

Developmental Finance in an Age of Productive Incoherence . The MIT Press Cambridge,

Massachusetts London, England.

5. Gillian K. Hadfield,2017, Rules For A Flat World: Why Humans Invented Law and How to

Reinvent It for a Complex Global Economy, Oxford University Press

6.W. Brian Arthur, The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves Free Press

New York London Toronto Sydney

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Richerson, Peter J, and Robert Boyd. 2005. Not by Genes Alone: How Culture

Transformed Human Evolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chapter 1 – 4,

pages 1 –147

WEEK 1: January 25, 2018

Topic: What is Social Complexity: Building Blocks to examine global political

economy and complexity

“Theories of complex social systems are tested on massive scales everyday, when

governments implement various policies that often involve substantial resources and

ultimately have tremendous impacts on the lives of countless citizens” (Miller and Page

2007: 235). Scholars from many disciplines are applying perspectives from the study of

dynamical systems to problems of global and international public policy. How will this

affect some of the basic paradigms of governance, development policy, foreign policy

and international relations?

Social Complexity 1: Overview: via@YouTube (youtu.be/kkcGr3y70bk?a via

@youtube) This module will provide a quick overview to the application theory to the

social sciences. See Complexity Academy@Complexityacad

Root, Hilton L. 2013. Dynamics Among Nations: The Evolution of Legitimacy and

Development in Modern States. MIT Press. Chapter 1, pages 1 – 15.

Johnson, Jeffrey. 2010. “The Future of the Social Sciences and Humanities in the Science

of Complex Systems.” Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research 23

(2): 115–134. doi:10.1080/13511610.2010.518422.

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WEEK 2: FEBRUARY 1, 2018

Topic: The Great Debate on the Role of the State and Economy Hayek, F. (1956). The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Keynes, J. M. (1931). “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren.” Essays in

Persuasion. http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf

Hilton L. Root. （2017）Keynes or Hayek: Is the Road to the Future Mechanistic or

Organic? SSRN

WEEK 3: FEBRUARY 8, 2018

Topic: The Economy as a Complex Adaptive System

-Why do the rich get richer?

Did complexity cause the demise of central planning and will it cause the

reconsideration of neo-classical models of economic development as well?

How do the global trends of growing economic and social inequalities result from

the globalization of resource use, production and consumption?

Required Reading:

Bienhocker, Eric D. The Origin of Wealth. Harvard Business School Press. Pages 415 –

450.

Arthur, B., Durlauf, S. and Lane, D. (1997). The Economy as an Evolving Complex

System II. Addison Wesley, Redwood City Ca. Chapter 1.

W. Brian Arthur, Complexity and the Economy, Oxford University Press 2015, chapter 1,

Page 1-30; chapter 4-6, Page 69-119; chapter 9-12, Page 144-182.

Root, Hilton L. 2013. Dynamics Among Nations: The Evolution of Legitimacy and

Development in Modern States. MIT Press. Chapter 3, pp. 35 - 56

WEEK 4: FEBRUARY 15, 2018

Topic: Modeling Techniques

Guest Speaker: Steve Scott- MITRE Cooperation

Reading Robert Axtell and Doyne Farmer http://breakthroughs.csmonitor.com/the-economy, part of a series the

“Christian Science Monitor” is doing on complex systems more broadly

(e.g., cities, diseases, traffic).

WEEK 5: FEBRUARY 22, 2018

Topic: Global Finance

Required Reading:

Ilene Grabel , 2017.When Things Don’t Fall Apart: Global Financial Governance and

Developmental Finance in an Age of Productive Incoherence . The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England.

Root, Hilton. 2012. "The Policy Conundrum of Financial Market Complexity" in

Research Handbook on Banking and Governance (edited by James R. Barth, Clas

Wihlborg and Chen Lin). Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing. Chapter 20. E-

RESERVE

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WEEK 6: MARCH 1, 2018

Topic: Networks Barbasi, Albert-Laszlo. 2003. Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else

and What It Means. Plume.

WEEK 7: MARCH 8, 2018

Topic: Culture, Cognition and Social Evolution Axelrod, Robert. 1997. The Dissemination of Culture: A Model with Local Convergence

and Global Polarization. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 41(2): 203-226

Hilton Root, (2016). Fast, slow and endless variation drives global development,

Cambridge Review of International Affairs.

WEEK 8: MARCH 15, 2018

Spring Break

WEEK 9: MARCH 22, 2018

Topic: How Technology Evolves?

W. Brian Arthur, The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves Free Press

New York London Toronto Sydney

F.W. Geels. 2005. “Process and Pattern in Transition and System Innovation: Refining

the Co-Evolutionary Multi-level Perspective.” Technological Forecasting & Social

Change 72: pp. 681-696.

Audley Genus, Ann-Marie Coles. 2008. “Rethinking the Multi-level Perspective of

Technological Transitions.” Research Policy 37: pp.1436-1445.

WEEK 10: MARCH 29, 2018

Topic: Great Transitions in Economic History Root, Hilton L. Networks and Change in Economic History, chapter 1,2,4,6

WEEK 11: APRIL 5, 2018

Topic: Law for a Complex Global Economy

Gillian K. Hadfield, 2017, Rules for A Flat World: Why Humans Invented Law and How

to Reinvent It for a Complex Global Economy, Oxford University Press.

Root, Hilton L.(2018) Networks and Change in Economic History, chapter 5.

WEEK 12: APRIL12, 2018

Topic: The Rise of China

Root Hilton L (2018) Networks and Change in Economic History, chapter 7

WEEK 13: APRIL19, 2018

Topic: The coming instability

Root Hilton L. (2018) Networks and Change in Economic History, chapter 8-10

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WEEK 14: APRIL26, 2018

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Topic: Global Development

Development Assistance and Complexity for Practitioners

- Why do outbreaks of political or economic instability occur?

- How can we separate causes into structural conditions and triggering events?

Required Reading:

Root, Hilton, Jones, Harry and Wild, Leni. 2014. “Managing complexity and uncertainty

in development policy and practice”. Working Paper ODI,

http://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/events-documents/5191.pdf

Root, Hilton L. 2013. Dynamics Among Nations: The Evolution of Legitimacy and

Development in Modern States. MIT Press. Chapter 6, pages 95 - 114

Ramalingam, Ben. “From Best Practice to Best Fit”

http://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-

files/9159.pdf

WEEK 15: MAY 3, 2018

Topic: Presentations and Assessment

Peer Assessment of Student Projects

Recommended Readings: WEEK 1

Simon, Herbert A. 1996. The Sciences of the Artificial - 3rd Edition. third edition. The

MIT Press. Chapter 8: The Architecture of Complexity: Hierarchic Systems pp. 170 –

182

Johnson, Neil. 2009. Simply Complexity: A clear guide to complexity theory. Reprint.

Oneworld. (pp. 3 – 18)

WEEK 3

Blanchard, Olivier J. 2008. The State of Macro. Working Paper. National Bureau of

Economic Research. http://www.nber.org/papers/w14259.

Simon, Herbert A. 1955. “A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice.” The Quarterly

Journal of Economics 69 (1) (February 1): in Gunderson and Holling: 99–118.

WEEK 4

Schelling, T.C. (1971), 'Dynamic Models of Segregation', Journal of Mathematical

Sociology, 1(1): 143-186.

“Economics Focus: Agents of Change.” The Economist, July 22, 2010

http://www.economist.com/node/16636121.

Week 6 Ormerod, Paul. 2012. Positive Linking. Faber & Faber. Chapter 7. Easley, David and Jon Klienberg. 2010. Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning

About a Highly Connected World. New York: Cambridge University Press. chapter 1-5

Hausmann, Ricardo, and Cesar Hidalgo. 2011. The Atlas of Economic Complexity:

Mapping Paths to Prosperity. Harvard Kennedy School,

htttp://www.cid.harvard.edu/documents/complexityatlas.pdf.

Stanford Network Analysis Project (SNAP) Website at: http://snap.stanford.edu

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Jennifer Ouellette, The New Laws of Explosive Networks,

https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-complex-networks-explode-with-growth-

20150714/

Matthew O. Jackson, Networks in The Understanding of Economic Behaviors, Journal of

Economic Perspectives VOL.28, NO.4, Fall 2014

Xiao Fan Wang and Guanrong Chen, Complex Networks: Small-World, Scale-Free and

Beyang IEEE Circuits and System Magazine First Quarter 2003

WEEK 7

Rendell, L., R. Boyd, D. Cownden, M. Enquist, K. Eriksson, M. W. Feldman, L. Fogarty,

S. Ghirlanda, T. Lillicrap, and K. N. Laland. 2010. “Why Copy Others? Insights from the

Social Learning Strategies Tournament.” Science 328 (5975) (April 9): 208–213.

WEEK 10

Holling, C.S. 1973. “Resilience and stability of ecological systems”. Annual Review of

Ecology and Systematics 4: 1-24.

Marten Scheffer, Francis Westley, William Brock, and Milena Holmgren 2002.

“Dynamic Interaction of Societies and Ecosystems—Linking Theories From Ecology,

Economy, and Sociology” in Gunderson and Holling: 195-239

Cederman, Lars-Erik. 1997. Emergent Actors in World Politics: How States and Nations

Develop and Dissolve. Princeton University Press. (Chapters 1 - 2). Available on library

e- reserves

S.A. Levin. 1999. Fragile Dominion: Complexity and the Commons. Reading: Perseus

Books.

North, Douglass C., John Joseph Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast. 2009. Violence and

Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History. 1st

ed. Cambridge University Press. Selections (TBA)

Raif Yorque, Brian Walker, C.S. Holling, Lance H. Gunderson, Carl Folke, Stephen

Carpenter, and William Brock, “Toward an Integrative Synthesis” in Gunderson and

Holling: 419-438 (e reserves).

WEEK 13

Dirk Helbing, 2009, Systemic Risks in Society and Economics, SFI WORKING PAPER: 2009-

12-044 WEEK 14

Barder, Owen. 2012. “What Is Development?” Global Development: Views from the

Center. http://blogs.cgdev.org/globaldevelopment/2012/08/what-is-development.php.

Ramalingam, Ben. 2013. Aid on the Edge of Chaos: Rethinking International

Cooperation in a Complex World. London: Oxford University Press. Part III, pages 239 –

364

Michael Bamberger, Jos Vaessen, Estelle Raimondo , Dealing with Complexity in

Development Evaluation: A Practical Approach, 2016,SAGE Publications ,Inc.

Useful Background Sources: (Not Required) For a general overview of complexity:

Lance H. Gunderson and C.S. Holling eds., 2002. Panarchy: Understanding

Transformations in Human and Natural Systems Island Press, Washington DC.

Epstein, Joshua M. and Robert Axtell. 1996. Growing Artificial Societies, Social

Science from the Bottom Up, Brookings Institution Press, Washington, DC.

M. Mitchell Waldrop, 1993, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of

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Chaos. Simon & Schuster.

Mark Buchanan. 2007. Social Atom: Why the rich get richer, cheaters get caught, and

your neighbor usually looks like you. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Mandelbrot, Benoit and Richard L. Hudson, 2004, The (Mis)behavior of Markets: A

Fractal View of Risk, Ruin, and Reward, Basic Books, New York.

Mayer, Ernst. 2001. What Evolution Is. Basic Books, A Member of the Peruses

Books Group

Page, Scott. 2011. Diversity and Complexity. Princeton University Press.

Mitchell, Melanie. 2009. Complexity: A Guided Tour. Oxford University Press

Simon, Herbert A. 1996. The Sciences of the Artificial - 3rd Edition. 3rd ed. The MIT

Press

Acemoglu, Robinson , Verdier. "Can't We All Be More Like

Scandinavians? Asymmetric Growth and Institutions in an Interdependent World?”

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Economics Working Paper

Series, Working Paper 12-22,August 20, 2012

General Software, Toolkits, and Hardware

A website reviewing academic work on evolutionary complexity and social science is

http://www.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/

Ada for Agent-Based Simulation

From Bruce R. Barkstrom (NOAA National Climate Data Center): "Ada, a

general purpose programming language originally developed by the U.S.

Department of Defence in 1983, appears to provide an appealing tool for

developing agent-based software. The language has undergone two major

revisions, one in 1995, and a second in 2005. An excellent open-source

implementation is available with the GPL license at the AdaCore Site, from

which it is possible to download both the GNAT GPL version and the GPS

Integrated Development Environment, as well as numerous other libraries and

toolkits. The reason Ada would appear to be an attractive language for agent-

based simulations is that Ada defines a model for concurrent programming as part

of the language itself. A task is an active component encapsulating a light-weight

process and it provides a simple model for executing multiple code blocks

concurrently - and for allowing different tasks to communicate and synchronize.

In cases in which it is necessary for concurrent processes to avoid interference,

Ada also provides protected entries and tasks. Because Ada has been designed to

handle embedded, distributed systems, it also has excellent exception handling

capabilities."

Brahms: Multi-Agent Discrete-Event Simulation (Java based)

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From the developers: " Brahms, developed by the Brahms Team in the

Computational Sciences Division at the NASA Ames Research Center, is a multi-

agent discrete-event simulation environment. It is also an Agent-Oriented

Language for implementing real-time distributed agents. There is an agent

language construct that can inherit from multiple group constructs. This permits

the modeling of teams of agents either interacting in one model or distributed over

multiple models. Agents are belief-based (BDI) activity-oriented, and both

deliberative and reactive. Besides agents, the Brahms language also includes

constructs for objects and object-class inheritance for modeling of data objects

and real-world artifacts. Agents and objects are located in a conceptual geography

model, enabling agent and object movement in this geography. The Brahms byte-

code is XML, which is interpreted by the Brahms Virtual Machine. Each Brahms

agent executes in a separate Java thread using a subsumption-based activity and

rule execution engine. Multiple Brahms Virtual Machines can interact together

via a network using a message- and directory-based communication layer. Agents

can publish themselves and locate others on a network, using a distributed

directory service. Agents interact via a message-based communication layer that

can be based on any low-level communication protocol, such as Corba, UDP,

TCP/IP, SOAP."

Brahms can be downloaded at Agent iSolutions. A Tutorial on Brahms is also

available.

Breve: 3-D Simulation Environment (Open Source)

Breve is a free software package that provides a 3-D environment for the

simulation of decentralized systems and artificial life. Users define the behaviors

of agents in a 3-D world and observe how they interact. Breve includes physical

simulation and collision detection for the simulation of realistic creatures, and an

OpenGL display engine so that users can visualize their simulated worlds. It is

available for Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows platforms.

MASON: Multi-Agent Simulator - Latest Release (Java, Open Source)

The George Mason University Evolutionary Computation Laboratory and Center

for Social Complexity has announced a new release (MASON 12) of the MASON

multiagent simulation toolkit. MASON contains both a model library and an

optional suite of visualization tools in 2D and 3D. MASON is a joint effort

between George Mason University's ECLab (Evolutionary Computation

Laboratory) and the GMU Center for Social Complexity, and was designed by

Sean Luke, Gabriel Catalin Balan, and Liviu Panait, with help from Claudio

Cioffi-Revilla, Sean Paus, Daniel Kuebrich, and Keith Sullivan. A SwarmFest04

presentation on MASON can be accessed here.

Repast Latest Releases (Java,Python,C#; Open Source)

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Repast (REcursive Porous Agent Simulation Toolkit) is an agent-based simulation

toolkit specifically designed for social science applications. Originally developed

by researchers at the University of Chicago and the Argonne National Laboratory,

Repast is now managed by the non-profit volunteer organization ROAD (Repast

Organization for Architecture and Development). Repast is currently released in

four versions supporting model development in three different languages: RepastJ

(Java based); RepastPy (based on the Python scripting language); Repast.Net

(implemented in C#, but any .Net language can be used); and Repast S

(Simphony, Java-based, developer's alpha release 2). Repast runs on virtually all

modern computing platforms (e.g., Windows, Mac OS, and Linux). The latest

Repast releases, along with detailed technical information regarding the

installation and use of RePast, can be found at the RePast Sourceforge Website.

NetLogo is a cross-platform multi-agent programmable modeling environment.

NetLogo was authored by Uri Wilensky in 1999 and is under continuous

development at the CCL (the people who brought you StarLogoT). NetLogo also

powers the HubNet participatory simulation system. NetLogo is free of charge.

For a fuller description, please go to: http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/docs/

Statement on special needs of students If you are a student with a disability and you need academic accommodations, please see

me and contact the Disability Resource Center (DRC) at 993-2474. All academic

accommodations must be arranged through the DRC.

Online Student Journal

New Voices in Public Policy: I will consider nominating the very best papers in this

course for publication in New Voices in Public Policy. New Voices is a student- and

faculty-reviewed journal that shares SPP's finest student work with the rest of the world.

SPP Policy on Plagiarism The profession of scholarship and the intellectual life of a university as well as the field

of public policy inquiry depend fundamentally on a foundation of trust. Thus any act of

plagiarism strikes at the heart of the meaning of the university and the purpose of the

School of Public Policy. It constitutes a serious breach of professional ethics and it is

unacceptable.

Plagiarism is the use of another’s words or ideas presented as one’s own. It includes,

among other things, the use of specific words, ideas, or frameworks that are the product

of another’s work. Honesty and thoroughness in citing sources is essential to professional

accountability and personal responsibility. Appropriate citation is necessary so that

arguments, evidence, and claims can be critically examined.

Plagiarism is wrong because of the injustice it does to the person whose ideas are stolen.

But it is also wrong because it constitutes lying to one’s professional colleagues. From a

prudential perspective, it is shortsighted and self-defeating, and it can ruin a professional

career.

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The faculty of the School of Public Policy takes plagiarism seriously and has adopted a

zero-tolerance policy. Any plagiarized assignment will receive an automatic grade of “F.”

This may lead to failure for the course, resulting in dismissal from the University. This

dismissal will be noted on the student’s transcript. For foreign students who are on a

university-sponsored visa (e.g. F-1, J-1 or J-2), dismissal also results in the revocation of

their visa.

To help enforce the SPP policy on plagiarism, all written work submitted in partial

fulfillment of course or degree requirements must be available in electronic form so that

it can be compared with electronic databases, as well as submitted to commercial services

to which the School subscribes. Faculty may at any time submit student’s work without

prior permission from the student. Individual instructors may require that written work be

submitted in electronic as well as printed form. The SPP policy on plagiarism is

supplementary to the George Mason University Honor Code; it is not intended to replace

it or substitute for it.

Topics of Recent Students’ Papers

Pan- Islamism: A Quiet Network of Resilience

The Complexity of Space Object Behavioral Science: A Surveillance Network

Toward Perfect Information

A Complexity Perspective on Bank Reserve Requirements

The Use of Social Media and Policing

The Network Structures and Cyber Ecosystem Impacts of Government Sponsored

Non-State Cybercrime Organizations

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