Policy and Complex Systems - Volume 3 Number 2 - Fall 2017
Scenarios of Social Conflict Dynamics on Duplex Networks
Miron Kaufman A , Sanda Kaufman A , Hung The Diep B
Abstract
Social conflicts among large groups of people can have serious and costly consequences that can exceed the time and space boundaries of the contentious groups . They require carefully thought-out strategies for addressing the contested issues . However , the complexity of social conflicts poses obstacles to their resolution . Not only is it difficult to find clear cause-and-effect relationships , but the conflict dynamics impede prediction of outcomes . For any group in conflict , strategizing to find a way out requires an approach that allows testing of the range of consequences of various strategies . Thus in complex situations , where predicting how the opponent will respond to a strategy is difficult , a party to conflict might engage instead in anticipation , generating and preparing for a range of possible scenarios . We draw from duplex networks modeling to further analyze a recently proposed scenariogenerating model of conflicts and illustrate its application with two examples .
Keywords : social conflict , complexity , network dynamics , and social physics .
A
Cleveland State University , B University of Cergy-Pontoise
3 doi : 10.18278 / jpcs . 3.2.1