Table of Contents

Preface vii Acknowledgments xiii Part One: Preliminaries 1 Chapter 1. Modeling Multiparty Competition 3 Chapter 2. Spatial Dynamics of Political Competition 15 Chapter 3. A Baseline ABM of Party Competition 28 Chapter 4. Systematically Interrogating Agent-Based Models 56 Part Two: The Basic Model 83 Chapter 5. Benchmarking the Baseline Model 85 Chapter 6. Endogenous Parties, Interaction of Different Decision Rules 106 Chapter 7. New Decision Rules, New Rule Features 132 Part Three: Extensions and Empirics 157 Chapter 8. The Evolutionary Dynamics of Decision Rule Selection 159 Chapter 9. Nonpolicy Factors in Party Competition 183 Chapter 10. Party Leaders with Policy Preferences 206 Chapter 11. Using Theoretical Models to Analyze Real Party Systems 228 Chapter 12. In Conclusion 258 References 267 Index 275

About the Author

Michael Laver is professor of politics at New York University. He is the coauthor of Multiparty Government: The Politics of Coalition in Europe. Ernest Sergenti is a consultant at the World Bank.

Reviews

"[T]he book is an excellent starting point for everyone interested in party competition and provides food for future agent-based research."--V?ctor M. Egu?luz, JASSS "Besides political scientists who are interested in the topic, this book is well suited for any social scientist who looks for an exemplary introduction to basic techniques of simulation-based research."--Johannes Zschache, RMM "This is a rich and provocative book... For methodologically sophisticated political scientists, and especially those interested in spatial analysis, this is no doubt the best introduction available to the challenging, exciting, and, to many, still mysterious worlds of agent-based modeling."--Charles H. Blake, Perspectives on Politics