Radicals, Revolutionaries and Reactionaries in a Model of Endogenous Classes
The dynamics of transitions between class-like social structures are investigated in the context
of sub-populations of deontically- or opportunistically-motivated agents. Such activist
agents—radicals and revolutionaries—actively attempt to perturb extant norms, both by their
own inter-class interactions and by intra-class recruitment to their strategies. In opposition to
attempts to modify the status quo, reactionary agents act to preserve it through their interand
intra-class interactions. Here we demonstrate that the presence of such activist agents can
dramatically alter both the character and statistics of regime transition. We interpret the
model through the Montgomery Bus Boycott of the U.S. Civil Rights movement. More generally,
we argue that for games in which multiple equilibria have disparate welfare consequences, (i)
the presence of activist agents is to be expected, and (ii) models that fail to consider such agents
are inherently mis-specified.