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Challenges in ABSS of Negotiation 257

Figure 31.2. Average distance between negotiating positions of agents in nine-agent simulation

with three or more agents. Simply trading agreements on more important posi-
tions in exchange for giving up less important positions is evidently insufficient.
The problem here is that moving towards agreement with any other agent typi-
callyinvolvesincreasingthedistancetosomeother agent. It is nodoubt possible
to devise a variety of arrangements under which agents combine in pairs to reach
agreement and form a coalition and then pairs of coalitions negotiate to form
a super-coalition and so on until every agent is in the coalition. The value of
such an exercise is not clear. Certainly there is no evidence that such a tree of
bilateral agreements is a realistic description of successful negotiations, though
equally certainly there is some element of small groups coming together on
particular issues.

4. Implications

If good science starts from good observation, then the implications of these
simulation results are that we should model actual, individual processes of mul-
tilateral negotiation. The modelling itself will doubtless yield insights into the
elements of successful and unsuccessful negotiation processes and the mod-
elling of a range of such processes is likely to inform the development of mod-
elling techniques that apply quite generally to descriptive simulation models
and to capture sound negotiating processes that will usefully inform the devel-
opment of multi agent software systems.
The results reported above indicate that it will be much more difficult to
simulate successful negotiations among three or more agents and, therefore,