The evolution of social cohesion

People Involved

• Andrew Bell
• Simon Angus
• Will Ludington
• Paul Hooper
• Alenjandro Balbin

Concept

We often study the effect of certain social institutions, and sometimes look at transitions, but what effect does passed-on cultural institutions play in the evolution and formation of cohesive social institutions?

Proposition

Suppose that a set of agents have choices over the following

• within an institutional period: how to behave towards each other
• between institutional periods: which institution to have (and pass on?) to the next generation

Of interest is whether memory (cultural, historical, heritage) affects agents' long-term decisions about social institutions?

Research Questions follow:

• is there a stable (long-run) social institution that is selected?
• does this institutional structure have a path-dependance (i.e. must institutaion A then B then C preceed the selection and stabilisation of institution X)?
• do agents operate heterogeneosly within a period (e.g. old agents who have cultural knnowledge prefer institution X, but young agents, with shorter memories, or trust in passed-on heritage select institution Y?
• what scaling? do small vs. large population affect these decisions?
• what about a two-population model? do we see group selection occuring to promote a certain institution in both camps? or is there a stable complimentary institutional framework (e.g. E. vs. W. Germany)?

Approach

• Keep things simple
• construct a simple interaction game for the agents, causing the institutions to be also simple
  • (leave out voting methodologies, political interest etc.)

A possible model:

• a standard hunter-gatherer scenario under scarcity
• agents face a decision problem whether to cooperate the hunt or to act individually (stag-hunt style)
• for the coalitions: the success of any grouping is proportional to the number in the coalition (due to division of labour within the coalition, trust-based hunting methods)
• for the individuals: a minority game design (we are hunting) could lead to preferable outcomes (I didn't hunt where the large, noisy group hunted?)
• institutions:
  • a 'good' institution for cooperation: a transfer system (public good provision?) to all members of society, supports free-riders in the short-term, but does this survive in the long-run (over successive generations, since some agents remember when everyone had lack)
  • a targeted (progressive) taxation system: a transfer system specifically from the well-off top half to the bottom half (ranked in terms of reward from expended gathering effort)
  • no transfer system: you get (only) what you work for, no other transfers or public good provision
  • a consumption taxation regime: distribution based on discretionary welfare (so we would need a metabolism system for basic needs, and then a discretionary part for 'leisure')
  • public good provision through taxation: but only to the 'cultural memory fund' -- i.e. for libraries, books, plays, histories, langauge etc. that capture things about how times were in previous set-ups

Parameters:

• memory of each individual (how many previous instutional arrangements they remember)
• birth/death rates (how fast we turn over the population ('physical' memory)

Notes and thoughts

From Paul:

• Andrew introduced Ostrom's typology of institutional norms--mays, musts, and must nots--where each directive is accompanied by a promise of reward or punishment for compliance or non-compliance. 'Good' institutions presumably alter the fitness landscape of individual players to be more compatable with socially desirable outcomes (contribute to the public good, don't shirk, engage in low-cost or pro-social rather than disruptive forms of status competition, etc.).