Emergent Political Structures in Abstract Forms of Rule-making and Legislation

Abstract:  Many political scientists have tried to answer the question how wellknown forms of self-government, such as democracy, emerge from a society of (primarily) self-interested individuals. This question is also relevant to computer science. Recent developments in the area of distributed artificial intelligence suggest a new generation of distributed computer systems, often called multi-agent systems, that are populated by virtual personalities, agents, that perform laborious information-gathering tasks on behalf of their users. Among others, agents have interests, which they serve by trying to change their environment. This environment includes other agents, communication primitives, and rules of conduct. This paper tries to explain how political structures emerge in distributed intelligent computer systems, by playing simplified versions of a game called Nomic. Nomic is an abstract form of rulemaking and legislation, played by a small group of dedicated enthusiasts on international computer networks. The idea behind Nomic is to change the rules of Nomic. In this paper, simplified versions of Nomic are played by a group of 15 artificial participants (agents). The participants have different interests, which they make known by casting a vote. The voting behaviour of the participants results in the emergence of a political structure, in the form of a collection of rules.