SimPolitics: America’s Quest to Solve Politics with Computers

For more than six decades, the public has been promised that computers will revolutionize politics, both nationally and internationally. In SimPolitics: America’s Quest to Solve Politics with Computers, Dr. Fenwick McKelvey traces the entwined history of politics and computers from the 1960s to the late 1980s. He shows how programmers, consultants, academics, political scientists, and peace activists all worked—sometimes in tandem, sometimes not—to build simulations to win campaigns, predict coups, forecast the future, and render politics as legible as a spreadsheet.

In his talk, Dr. McKelvey will explore how computer models became fundamental to political practice—from winning elections to global affairs—and how we can imagine political futures as a computing problem.

About the speaker

Dr. Fenwick McKelvey is a Professor in Information and Communication Technology Policy in the Department of Communication Studies atConcordia University. He is associate director at the Milieux Institute and leads Machine Agencies, and was co-director of the Applied AI Institute.  He studies digital politics and policy. He is the author of SimPolitics: America’s Quest to Solve Politics with Computers (MIT Press, 2026) and Internet Daemons: Digital Communications Possessed (University of Minnesota Press, 2018) winner of the 2019 Gertrude J. Robinson Book Award, and co-author of The Permanent Campaign: New Media, New Politics (Peter Lang, 2012) with Greg Elmer and Ganaele Langlois.