Emergent Co-ordination by Structural Co-operation

Abstract

The present second part of the book is dedicated to the mechanism of structural co-operation, one of the main contributions of the work. This chapter introduces the mechanism. It is organised as follows: first, we present theories from social science underlying the development of structural co-operation. It is shown how observed social phenomena can be explained in terms of their social finality, and what role social structure plays in such rationalisations. Section 5.2 describes the reactive co-ordination settings that we are interested in. Subsequently, we show how the notion of social structure can be applied to these settings, giving rise to the mechanism of structural co-operation. Finally, we conclude this chapter by discussing issues respecting structural co-operation and multi-agent system design.