Gebruiker:Art Unbound/Kladblok

In international relations – be they cooperative, peaceful or noncooperative i.e. conflictuous, reference is often made to game theory. This theory, economic in origin, has become widespread in all human-related sciences. A generalistic definition is “theory of conflict and cooperation between intelligent, rational decision-makers” (en.wikipedia). Since 1950 it has produced eleven Nobel Prize winners. John von Neumann started a long list of scientific publications with his treatment of the zero-sum game, in which one player loses what the other gains, in his Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (1944, together with Oskar Morgenstern). A well-known example is the prisoner's dilemma: prisoner B will be freed if he betrays prisoner A (‘defects’), only if prisoner A remains silent (‘cooperates’). However, if both remain silent, they will serve a lesser sentence than if both betray each other.

A game is cooperative if both players are bound by mutual agreements (contract law); it is non-cooperative if both rely on their own strength (e.g. depend on credible threats). Any game can of course be extended to multiple players. In international politics, the Cold War between the USA and the Soviet Union – both spending trillions in a nuclear arms race – is regarded as such a non-cooperative game. Today, the climate change issue is often discussed within the matrix of game theory.

References

1 Peter John Wood, 2011. “Climate change and game theory” in [].

[[Category:International Relations]]