How can we model political polarization?
Title: An Agent-Based Statistical Physics Model for Political Polarization: A Monte Carlo Study Authors & Year: Hung T. Diep, Miron Kaufman, and Sanda Kaufman (2023) Journal: Entropy [DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/e25070981] Review Prepared by Amal Machtalay Political polarization refers to a phenomenon where people’s political beliefs become radical, often resulting in the increasing division between political parties, which can have significant social consequences. This polarization is a complex system that is characterized by multiple factors: numerous interacting components (individual agents/voters, politicians, groups, media, etc.), non-linear dynamics (meaning that small changes can lead to large and uncertain effects), and emergent behavior (where collective phenomena result from local interactions, like when individuals engage with posts on social media that align with their political beliefs). The authors study the case of three USA political groups, each group indexed by $i\in \left\{ 1,2,3\right\}$: Two types of interactions are classified and illustrated in Figure 1:…