SOCIOPHYSICS: A REVIEW OF GALAM MODELS

By Serge Galam. 2008

488 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We review a series of models of sociophysics introduced by Galam and Galam et al. in the last 25 years. The models are divided into five different classes, which deal respectively with democratic voting in bottom-up hierarchical systems, decision making, fragmentation versus coalitions, terrorism and opinion dynamics. For each class the connexion to the original physical model and techniques are outlined underlining both the similarities and the differences. Emphasis is put on the numerous novel and counterintuitive results obtained with respect to the associated social and political framework. Using these models several major real political events were successfully predicted including the victory of the French extreme right party in the 2000 first round of French presidential elections, the voting at fifty–fifty in several democratic countries (Germany, Italy, Mexico), and the victory of the "no" to the 2005 French referendum on the European constitution. The perspectives and the challenges to make sociophysics a predictive solid field of science are discussed.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c29cabbb715c1950ee7da9bd8d16582816d293b9

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

1. Marco Alberto Javarone
2. Bernard Walliser
3. Serge Galam

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Marco Alberto Javarone
2. Bernard Walliser

In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

1. Marco Alberto Javarone
2. Bernard Walliser
3. Serge Galam
4. Nicola Bellomo
5. Marco Ajmone Marsan
6. M. Egidi

Citations in the corpus

• Modeling Radicalization Phenomena in Heterogeneous Populations (2015, background): “However, inflexible core agents may step in to bring back opponents to a peaceful choice thus weakening the phenomenon.”
• Ising model versus normal form game (2009, background): “Numerous applications have been also achieved outside physics in particular in sociophysics (Castellano, Fortunato and Loreto, 2009; Galam, 2008).”