Toward integrated global models: From economic engineering to social science modeling

It is argued that political and military variables are so crucial in decision making that they ought to be included in world models. Three projects, including our own, are described in brief to give a sense of the theories and data that have been employed in some existing global modeling efforts based on this assumption. The project entitled Computer Simulations for Decision Making in International Affairs utilizes an adaptive macromodel of global political, military, and economic processes into which a host of empirically based minimodules are introduced. The Nations in Conflict studies have focused thus far on an econometric model comprised of three primary components: domestic growth and external expansions, competition for foreign resources, market, allies, and strategic advantage, and the dynamics of crisis behavior. The Alker simulation studies have utilized artificial intelligence techniques to study the structuring and restructuring of international systems of social interaction. The theoretical and empirical materials developed in these projects are highly relevant to the enterprise of integrated global modeling. The earliest efforts were begun to build models of the political and military components of international processes. Subsequent world modelers of the Forrester-Meadows inspired genre focused on the economic aspects of the globe, including its demography. It is argued that the convergence of these two traditions be accomplished in a synthetic fashion in ongoing as well as future work.