Endogenizing geopolitical boundaries with agent-based modeling

Agent-based modeling promises to overcome the reification of actors. Whereas this common, but limiting, assumption makes a lot of sense during periods characterized by stable actor boundaries, other historical junctures, such as the end of the Cold War, exhibit far-reaching and swift transformations of actors' spatial and organizational existence. Moreover, because actors cannot be assumed to remain constant in the long run, analysis of macrohistorical processes virtually always requires “sociational” endogenization. This paper presents a series of computational models, implemented with the software package REPAST, which trace complex macrohistorical transformations of actors be they hierarchically organized as relational networks or as collections of symbolic categories. With respect to the former, dynamic networks featuring emergent compound actors with agent compartments represented in a spatial grid capture organizational domination of the territorial state. In addition, models of “tagged” social processes allows the analyst to show how democratic states predicate their behavior on categorical traits. Finally, categorical schemata that select out politically relevant cultural traits in ethnic landscapes formalize a constructivist notion of national identity in conformance with the qualitative literature on nationalism. This “finite-agent method”, representing both states and nations as higher-level structures superimposed on a lower-level grid of primitive agents or cultural traits, avoids reification of agency. Furthermore, it opens the door to explicit analysis of entity processes, such as the integration and disintegration of actors as well as boundary transformations.