Generating and maintaining cooperation in international relations: A model of repeated interaction among groups in complex and uncertain situations

One important change in the Post Cold War international landscape is the emergence of a number of reconstituted nation‐states. Because of significant and continuing domestic political change, economic volatility, “newness” of bureaucratic institutions, factional divisions, and unstable leadership, the behavior of reconstituted nation‐states is volatile, uncertain, and difficult to predict. This creates a more complex and difficult decision environment for both established and reconstituted nation‐states and makes the task of generating and maintaining cooperative security regimes more problematic. Can established nation‐states develop stable cooperative relationships with reconstituted nation‐states? Can they maintain established cooperative security regimes? To address these questions, the relations between established and reconstituted nation‐states are modeled as a repeated coordination problem (a mutual fate control game) where nation‐states are represented as groups that employ adaptive decision rules; tit for tat for established nation‐states and trial and error for reconstituted nation‐states. An analysis of the model reveals that groups can achieve stable cooperative relationships with relative ease. However, cooperative outcomes hinge on the ability of groups to maintain cohesiveness; a difficult task for reconstituted nation‐states.