Britt Cartrite

Ph.D., University of Colorado at Boulder (2003)
• Student of Sven Steinmo
• Dissertation focused on the dynamics of the politicization of
ethnic identity in Western Europe
 Had nothing to do with agent-based modeling

Post-doctoral fellow, Solomon Asch Center for Study
of Ethnic Conflict, University of Pennsylvania (2004-5)
• Began working with Ian Lustick and Dan Miodownik on models
of ethnic conflict using PS-I
• Became interested in both the theoretical underpinnings and
application of agent-based modeling
Disclaimer: I have no formal computer coding
background, only “hands-on” training!

Interested in the impact of limited information
(bounded rationality) and information flows on
macro-level outcomes
• Particularly interested in how political structures interact with
and perform against such dynamic social models

Initial work with Lustick, “Virtualstan,” tested theories
of authoritarian regime stability under a very large
variety of individual and social conditions
• The type of authoritarian regime matters (somewhat
surprising)
• Regime collapse occurs very differently depending on regime
type (very surprising)
 Work
with Miodownik on political
decentralization and ethnopolitical
mobilization
• Empirical literature reaches opposite conclusions:
 Decentralization exacerbates mobilization
 Decentralization ameliorates mobilization
• Our findings:
 the relationship is curvilinear (in some sense combining
the two empirical results)
 The cause of this divergence is the impact of
decentralization on ethnic identity salience and
subsequent mobilization
 With
Miodownik and Bhavnani: Exploring
model replication versus model docking
• Attempted to replicate an earlier Bhavnani
model of Putnam’s work on civil society in Italy
using different hardware and software
 Most
recent advances: using GIS to build
models: