IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/12751.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How democracy resolves conflict in difficult games

Author

Listed:
  • Brams, Steven J.
  • Kilgour, D. Marc

Abstract

Democracy resolves conflicts in difficult games like Prisoners’ Dilemma and Chicken by stabilizing their cooperative outcomes. It does so by transforming these games into games in which voters are presented with a choice between a cooperative outcome and a Pareto-inferior noncooperative outcome. In the transformed game, it is always rational for voters to vote for the cooperative outcome, because cooperation is a weakly dominant strategy independent of the decision rule and the number of voters who choose it. Such games are illustrated by 2-person and n-person public-goods games, in which it is optimal to be a free rider, and a biblical story from the book of Exodus.

Suggested Citation

  • Brams, Steven J. & Kilgour, D. Marc, 2008. "How democracy resolves conflict in difficult games," MPRA Paper 12751, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:12751
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/12751/1/MPRA_paper_12751.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert Sugden, 2009. "Neither Self-interest Nor Self-sacrifice: The Fraternal Morality of Market Relationships," Springer Series in Game Theory, in: Simon A. Levin (ed.), Games, Groups, and the Global Good, pages 259-283, Springer.
    2. I. D. Hill, 2008. "Mathematics and Democracy: Designing Better Voting and Fair‐division Procedures," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 171(4), pages 1032-1033, October.
    3. Leeson, Peter T., 2010. "Rational choice, Round Robin, and rebellion: An institutional solution to the problems of revolution," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 73(3), pages 297-307, March.
    4. repec:cup:cbooks:9780521555838 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tatsuyoshi Saijo & Takehito Masuda & Takafumi Yamakawa, 2018. "Approval mechanism to solve prisoner’s dilemma: comparison with Varian’s compensation mechanism," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 51(1), pages 65-77, June.
    2. Brams, Steven J. & Kilgour, D. Marc, 2012. "Inducible Games: Using Tit-for-Tat to Stabilize Outcomes," MPRA Paper 41773, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Wood, Peter John, 2010. "Climate Change and Game Theory: a Mathematical Survey," Working Papers 249379, Australian National University, Centre for Climate Economics & Policy.
    4. Peter J. Wood, 2010. "Climate Change and Game Theory: A Mathematical Survey," CCEP Working Papers 0210, Centre for Climate & Energy Policy, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.

    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. Pierre Courtois & Rabia Nessah & Tarik Tazdaït, 2024. "Revolutions and rational choice: A critical discussion [Révolutions et choix rationnel : une analyse critique]," Post-Print hal-04566834, HAL.
    2. Louis Rouanet, 2024. "On the tendency of revolutions to devour their own children," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 200(3), pages 603-626, September.
    3. Steven Brams & D. Kilgour, 2013. "Kingmakers and leaders in coalition formation," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 41(1), pages 1-18, June.
    4. Alessandro Moro, 2016. "Understanding the Dynamics of Violent Political Revolutions in an Agent-Based Framework," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(4), pages 1-17, April.
    5. Steven Brams & D. Kilgour & Christian Klamler, 2012. "The undercut procedure: an algorithm for the envy-free division of indivisible items," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 39(2), pages 615-631, July.
    6. Steven J. Brams & D. Marc Kilgour, 2014. "Satisfaction Approval Voting," Studies in Choice and Welfare, in: Rudolf Fara & Dennis Leech & Maurice Salles (ed.), Voting Power and Procedures, edition 127, pages 323-346, Springer.
    7. Vladimir Maltsev, 2024. "Religious reforms and large-scale rebellions (via the case of the Honganji sect of the True Pure Land Buddhism)," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 200(3), pages 589-601, September.
    8. Steven J Brams & D Marc Kilgour, 2012. "Narrowing the field in elections: The Next-Two rule," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 24(4), pages 507-525, October.
    9. Luca Stanca & Luigino Bruni & Marco Mantovani, 2011. "The effect of motivations on social indirect reciprocity: an experimental analysis," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(17), pages 1709-1711.
    10. Andrew Marcum & David Skarbek, 2014. "Why didn’t slaves revolt more often during the Middle Passage?," Rationality and Society, , vol. 26(2), pages 236-262, May.
    11. Paolo Silvestri, 2021. "Percentage tax designation institutions. On Sugden’s contractarian account," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 68(1), pages 101-130, March.
    12. Brams, Steven J. & Jones, Michael A. & Klamler, Christian, 2011. "N-Person cake-cutting: there may be no perfect division," MPRA Paper 34264, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard, 2013. "It’s the weather, stupid! Individual participation in collective May Day demonstrations," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 155(3), pages 251-271, June.
    14. Brams, Steven J. & Kilgour, D. Marc, 2011. "When does approval voting make the "right choices"?," MPRA Paper 34262, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Pelligra, Vittorio, 2010. "Trust responsiveness. On the dynamics of fiduciary interactions," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 39(6), pages 653-660, December.
    16. Benjamin Abrams, 2024. "Movement split: how the structure of revolutionary coalitions shapes revolutionary outcomes," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 200(3), pages 473-495, September.
    17. Pierre Courtois & Rabia Nessah & Tarik Tazdaït, 2024. "Revolutions and rational choice: A critical discussion," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 200(3), pages 497-529, September.
    18. Barbanel, Julius B. & Brams, Steven J., 2011. "Two-person cake-cutting: the optimal number of cuts," MPRA Paper 34263, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Federica Nalli, 2021. "Robert Sugden’s theory of team reasoning: a critical reconstruction," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 68(1), pages 21-40, March.
    20. Peter T. Leeson & David B. Skarbek, 2010. "Criminal constitutions," Global Crime, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(3), pages 279-297, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Democracy; voting; social choice; public goods; game theory; Prisoners' Dilemma; Bible;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making
    • D6 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:pra:mprapa:12751. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    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.