IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jocore/v40y1996i3p502-516.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

When Is Universal Contribution Best for the Group?

Author

Listed:
  • Norman Frohlich

    (Faculty of Management, University of Manitoba)

  • Joe Oppenheimer

    (Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland)

Abstract

Social scientists from a variety of disciplines have long been captivated by the simplicity and elegance of the two-person, binary choice prisoners' dilemma (2 × 2 PD). Over the years, the domain of the research has been extended and applied to events that are neither two person nor binary. We use a defining characteristic of the 2 × 2 PD to identify situations under which full levels of contribution are suboptimal. We propose, on the basis of that characteristic, an extended definition and categorization of prisoners' dilemmas to n-person and nonbinary situations. The new distinction is shown to point to differing normative and strategic imperatives for the different categories of games.

Suggested Citation

  • Norman Frohlich & Joe Oppenheimer, 1996. "When Is Universal Contribution Best for the Group?," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 40(3), pages 502-516, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:40:y:1996:i:3:p:502-516
    DOI: 10.1177/0022002796040003006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022002796040003006
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0022002796040003006?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gary Miller, 1977. "Bureaucratic compliance as a game on the unit square," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 37-51, March.
    2. Peter Bernholz, 1976. "Liberalism, Logrolling, And Cyclical Group Preferences," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(1), pages 26-38, January.
    3. Ostrom, Elinor & Walker, James & Gardner, Roy, 1992. "Covenants with and without a Sword: Self-Governance Is Possible," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 86(2), pages 404-417, June.
    4. John Aldrich, 1977. "Liberal games: Further comments on social choice and game theory," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 30(1), pages 29-34, June.
    5. Frohlich, Norman, 1992. "An Impartial Reasoning Solution to the Prisoner's Dilemma," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 74(4), pages 447-460, December.
    6. Sen, Amartya Kumar, 1970. "The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal," Scholarly Articles 3612779, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    7. Sen, Amartya, 1970. "The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 78(1), pages 152-157, Jan.-Feb..
    8. Nicholas Miller, 1977. "“Social preference” and game theory: A comment on “the dilemma of a paretian liberal”," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 30(1), pages 23-28, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Colander, David, 2009. "What Was “It” That Robbins Was Defining?," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 31(4), pages 437-448, December.
    2. Antoinette Baujard, 2016. "Utilitarianism and anti-utilitarianism," Chapters, in: Gilbert Faccarello & Heinz D. Kurz (ed.), Handbook on the History of Economic Analysis Volume III, chapter 40, pages 576-588, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Leo Katz & Alvaro Sandroni, 2020. "Limits on power and rationality," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 54(2), pages 507-521, March.
    4. Bernholz, Peter, 1997. "Property rights, contracts, cyclical social preferences and the Coase theorem: A synthesis," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 419-442, September.
    5. Azam, Jean-Paul, 2008. "Macroeconomic Agenda for Fiscal Policy and Aid Effectiveness in Post-Conflict Countries," IDEI Working Papers 539, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
    6. Jean Lainé & Ali Ozkes & Remzi Sanver, 2016. "Hyper-stable social welfare functions," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 46(1), pages 157-182, January.
    7. Ngo Long & Vincent Martinet, 2018. "Combining rights and welfarism: a new approach to intertemporal evaluation of social alternatives," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 50(1), pages 35-64, January.
    8. Bezalel Peleg, 2002. "Complete Characterization of Acceptable Game Forms by Effectivity Functions," Discussion Paper Series dp283, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
    9. John A. Weymark, 2017. "Conundrums for nonconsequentialists," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 48(2), pages 269-294, February.
    10. Bezalel Peleg & Ron Holzman, 2017. "Representations of Political Power Structures by Strategically Stable Game Forms: A Survey," Games, MDPI, vol. 8(4), pages 1-17, October.
    11. Fritz W. Scharpf, 1991. "Games Real Actors Could Play: The Challenge of Complexity," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 3(3), pages 277-304, July.
    12. J González-Pachón & C Romero, 2006. "An analytical framework for aggregating multiattribute utility functions," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 57(10), pages 1241-1247, October.
    13. Stern, Nicholas, 2014. "Ethics, equity and the economics of climate change paper 2: economics and politics," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 62704, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    14. Dimitrov, Dinko & Sung, Shao Chin & Xu, Yongsheng, 2007. "Procedural group identification," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 137-146, September.
    15. Ben McQuillin & Robert Sugden, 2011. "The representation of alienable and inalienable rights: games in transition function form," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 37(4), pages 683-706, October.
    16. Stanley Reiter, 2001. "Interdependent Preferences and Groups of Agents," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 3(1), pages 27-67, January.
    17. Jean Mercier-Ythier, 2010. "The Aggregation of Individual Distributive Preferences through the Distributive Liberal Social Contract : Normative Analysis," Working Papers of BETA 2010-01, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    18. Jay Simon, 2016. "On the existence of altruistic value and utility functions," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 81(3), pages 371-391, September.
    19. René Brink & Yukihiko Funaki & Yuan Ju, 2013. "Reconciling marginalism with egalitarianism: consistency, monotonicity, and implementation of egalitarian Shapley values," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 40(3), pages 693-714, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:40:y:1996:i:3:p:502-516. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://pss.la.psu.edu/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.