---
description: >-
  How can social science research truly empower agency for systems
  change—without reinforcing the very systems we seek to transform?
---

# Critical Realist Agent-Based Approach

Many popular systems approaches claim to address complexity by mapping leverage points, coordinating stakeholders, and fostering shared vision. However, when grounded in **positivist assumptions**, these methods risk reducing open, living systems into **mechanistic closed systems** — frozen in time, fixated on KPIs, and blind to emergent, relational, or epistemic harms.

In practice, once a “leverage point” becomes institutionalized (e.g., increasing college attendance), the system locks itself into a frozen assumption. Over time, **the blind spots of that assumption become breeding grounds for new systemic harm**.

This alternative approach combines:

* **Critical realism’s stratified ontology and morphogenetic analysis**
* Insights from **complex adaptive systems** — especially Derek Cabrera et. al.’s [Agent-Based Approach](https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.54120/jost.000009)

Together, they allow researchers to surface **generative behavioral rules** that agents follow across seemingly different domains.

***

#### 🔍 Core Principles:

* Wicked problems are sustained by **recurring agent-level rules**, not just by static structures or surface conditions.
* Agents **self-organize** around rules that are **simple, transfactual**, and often unconscious.
* Causality lies not in linear events or fixed variables, but in the **activation of underlying generative mechanisms**.

***

#### ✳ Example:

Consider the rule:

> “Redeem allocated resources that I depend on by fitting into allocation measures.”\
> This encapsulates **Allocation Dependence**, a behavioral rule observable across education, international relations, and even human-animal dynamics. It persists even when surface phenomena (e.g., particular policy) appear to change.

By contrast, a rule like:

> “Take care of the world around me through my self-actualization, and take feedback as regenerative input,”\
> describes a **relational, prosocial rule** — as seen in _Learning by Caring_ — that fosters emergence through care rather than conformity.

<figure><img src="https://478732721-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2FTbiiVKUrN9bvoIKypqnf%2Fuploads%2FckPTsA3mlpXqJ4HhNSkA%2Fimage.png?alt=media&#x26;token=7ae9a28b-950f-4f55-a92f-899c95a652b3" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

***

#### 🧠 A simplified walk-through:

1. Identify a wicked problem that resists intervention.
2. Trace the patterns of action agents continue to take to cope or survive — despite those interventions.
3. Infer the **behavioral rules** or generative regularities at play.
4. Test whether the same rule exists in other contexts or systems — to determine its **transfactual nature**.
5. Prototype **low-barrier, agent-level interventions** that shift the behavioral rule itself — not just surface conditions or structures.

***

This approach **de-centers the myth of top-down systems control** and instead **empowers transformative agency from within** — wherever an individual, group, or initiative may be situated. It invites social science to be not just analytical, but deeply enabling.



## Read more

📰[Under the Shadows of Popular Systems Change: How a Prestigious University Failed a Disadvantaged Student, or the Case for a Critical Realist Agent-Based Approach](https://medium.com/@illuminatesystemschange/under-the-shadows-of-popular-systems-change-how-a-prestigious-university-failed-a-disadvantaged-09d31aed8c8a)

🎞️[What If the Disadvantaged Are Already the Most Resource Abundant? A Case for Shifting from "Forecast-based" to "Agent-based" Talent Incubation](https://youtu.be/V0JYOMW1bJw?si=-sziuenh2uKF55OF)



## See also

* [allocation-dependence](allocation-dependence "mention")
* [learning-by-caring](learning-by-caring "mention")
* [reflexive-media](reflexive-media "mention")
