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Journal of Conflict Resolution
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A Tournament of Party Decision Rules

James H. Fowler

Department of Political Science University of California, San Diego

Michael Laver

Department of Politics New York University

Following Axelrod's tournaments for strategies in the repeat-play prisoner's dilemma, we ran a ``tournament of party decision rules'' in a dynamic agent-based model of party competition. We asked researchers to submit rules for selecting party positions in a two-dimensional policy space, pitting each rule against all others in a suite of long-running simulations. The most successful rule combined a number of striking features: satisficing rather than maximizing in the short run, being ``parasitic'' on choices made by successful rules, and being hardwired not to attack other agents using the same rule. In a second suite of simulations in a more evolutionary setting in which the selection probability of a rule was a function of the previous success of agents using the same rule, the rule winning the original tournament pulled even further ahead of the competition.

Key Words: agent-based model • computer tournament • party competition • parties and elections

Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 52, No. 1, 68-92 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0022002707308598
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