The public sphere that is composed of multiple actors, including government, civil groups, and citizens, is a complex system to study. Policy makers, public administrators, and public policy analysts that act within institutions and rules have been recognized in the classics such as Simonˇ¦s (1957) theory of bounded rationality and Lindblomˇ¦s (1959) thesis about incremental decision making. The spill-over effect of functions, the linking effect of issues and the involvement of pluralistic actors characterize public issues and affairs. Entangled causes and effects in public sphere are making analysis of politics and activities within a public sphere even more challenging.
How would the development of complexity theory and associated methods and tools assist us to understand the operation of the public sphere? How much we have learned from the applications of complexity theories and methods to solve social problems? How much we can say on and beyond the concepts of emergence, adaption, co-evolution, self-organization, and the border of chaos and order?
Years of the development in the cross-disciplinary field of social simulation require our reflection and evaluation. As computer science and social sciences interact, new fields have been established within political science, public policy studies, public administration, and public management. Although some scholars feel frustrated by the difficulties of such cross-disciplinary cooperation, some are keep on searching for theories, studies, methods and tools that can advance our knowledge about our society, involving solutions to political and public issues.
This session is to invite scholars devoting themselves to the development and application of theories, methods, and tools to tackling social complexity occurring in the study of political, public policy, and public management. The session(s) aim to exchange ideas of the development of the field and to brainstorm for innovative and thought-provoking ideas on the novel applications of social simulation in politics and public sphere by presenting the latest research findings.
The prospective authors should submit the paper on-line through EasyChair (see the conference website http://www.aiecon.org/conference/wcss2012/index.htm on "Paper Submission"). When submitting, please choose "Applications of Social Simulation in Politics and Public Spheres" as the topic of interest so that it will be separated from other general submissions. The authors are also expected to send an email to the special session organizer to indicate that they have done so. The paper submission deadline is May 15, 2012, and other schedules are the same as what have been indicated in the conference website.