Opinion dynamics: rise and fall of political parties
E. Ben-Naim
We analyze the evolution of political organizations using a model in
which agents change their opinions via two competing mechanisms. Two
agents may interact and reach consensus, and additionally, individual
agents may spontaneously change their opinions by a random, diffusive
process. We find three distinct possibilities. For strong diffusion,
the distribution of opinions is uniform and no political organizations
(parties) are formed. For weak diffusion, parties do form and
furthermore, the political landscape continually evolves as small
parties merge into larger ones. Without diffusion, a pattern develops:
parties have the same size and they possess equal niches. These
phenomena are analyzed using pattern formation and scaling techniques.
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