The Potential of Agent-Based Simulation for Decision Support in Politics: The Case of Multicultural Societies

According to PARSON’s structural functionalism, politicians are in charge of establishing and preserving a functional society. Political decisions have to be effective regarding such functionality. Due to globalization and numerous worldwide trouble spots, more and more people leave their home countries. They concentrate themselves in cities like Berlin or New York. Such societies are deemed as “multicultural” and exhibit an increasing space-time complexity. Additionally, such societies challenge politicians to make effective political decisions. For one thing, politicians have to make decisions under time pressure as well as with insufficient information in both quantity and quality. For another thing, the perception of societies’ space-time complexity by politicians is limited. As a consequence, politicians need decision support to increase the quality of their decisions. Against this background, this paper investigates the potential of agent-based simulation for decision support in politics, in particular in the context of multicultural societies.