Benjamin Acosta and Hafsa Aasi with George Haugh

This project provides an innovative theory and model for projecting Israeli domestic politics. In recent decades, a form of democratic tribalism based on distinct identity groups has come to define Israeli politics. Accordingly, our study focuses on the emergent behavior surrounding the formation of political coalitions and deriving from the interaction of Israeli identity groups and media-driven political issues. By fusing identity theory with computational agent-based modeling, the study sheds further light on the general role of identity groups, their demographic fluctuations, interaction with the media, interpassivity with other identity groups, and fixed political preferences, which make them distinct from the onset. In particular, the study employs computational simulations to project and show how demographic/cultural change in Israel over the next two decades will likely shift Israeli politics further to the right.

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