On Collusion and Coercion: Agent Interconnectedness and In-Group Behaviour

The interconnectedness of actors is an antecedent for collective corruption, which in turn can lead to endemic corruption in a society. As a testbed for studying the effects of social interconnectedness on corrupt behaviours, we examine the domain of maritime customs. We add to our existing agent-based simulation a nuanced model of actor relatedness, consisting of clan, in-group (sect), and place of origin, and encode associated behavioural norms. We examine in simulation the effects of social interconnectedness on domain performance metrics such as container outcomes, delay, revenue, collusion, and coercive demands. Results confirm that, when corruption is widespread, localized punitive- or incentive-based policies are weakened, and that the effect of process re-engineering is frustrated when interconnectedness increases beyond a critical point, for two out of three forms of homophily connections. Our work connects with and provides a complementary methodology to works in the political economy literature.