The results of the political bargaining process play a great role in decisions concerning foreign policy. Therefore, game theory lies at the heart of Democratic Peace Theory, which stipulates that democratic states seldom go to war against one another. This theory is strongly supported by observed evidence and data and has been extensively discussed; however, this theory is weak for it is still uncertain whether these observed trends in international relations legitimately signify more cooperative relations between democracies. For that reason, the research article titled Cantankerous Cooperation: Democracies, Authoritarian Regimes, and the Prisoners Dilemma (URL provided above) seeks to study the Democratic Peace Theory in more depth. The research study in the article was conducted, mainly, to examine whether decision-making groups are, in fact, more cooperative when operating democratically.
Self-serving nations often act according to dominant strategies that may lessen the welfare of the group. For example, a country’s dominant strategy may be to obtain weaponry because increasing its own security is its best choice in response to whatever the other countries choose to do. However, due to the overall decrease in security, the group’s welfare decreases when that one country obtains more weapons. This arrangement mimics the Prisoners Dilemma Game; the research conducted in this article, therefore, uses the structure of the Prisoners Dilemma Game to model the interaction of varying regime types. The two types of regimes examined in the study are democratic and authoritarian, for these are the most widespread forms of government in the world today. Each player can choose to cooperate or defect with the opposing player, making its decision either in a democratic or authoritarian way.
The research study used computer simulation and mathematical models to analyze the decisions and to predict the outcomes of the two agents, one representing a democracy and the other an authoritarian regime. The decisions of each agent were influenced, but not decided, by their own unique tendency towards cooperation as determined by the set-up of the experiment. As in Game Theory, the players in the simulation are rewarded a payoff after each round in accordance to the payoff matrix. After each round of play, the agents choose their strategy for the next round of play; they choose this strategy in accordance to the perceived success or failure of the strategy previously chosen. The assessments of each round, the payoffs, and the predispositions of each player were represented numerically throughout the experiment, as detailed in the article.
The results found by the experiment support the Democratic Peace Theory and the researchers’ hypotheses prior to the experiment, which were in accordance with the theory. The results provide evidence that noteworthy differences do, in fact, exist in the patterns of cooperation between democratic and authoritarian regimes. The most cooperative combination was between two democracies, and the least cooperative combination was between two authoritarian regimes; democratic regimes, however, are just as prone to discord as authoritarian regimes when opposite a non-democratic regime.
Many logical explanations support this result. Firstly, the decisions made by a democratic group are controlled by domestic interest groups. In contrast, in an authoritarian regime, the authoritarian leader makes the decision on behalf of the group while handling far fewer pressures. As a result, authoritarian states can more easily institute grand, unexpected changes in policy, often taking the form of impulsive defections. Similarly, due to recurring public debate, which is so fundamental to the operation of a democratic state, the information that is relayed to other states is more clear and dependable. Therefore, the relations between democratic and non-democratic states are plagues with suspicion and an reluctance to compromise, resulting in chronic conflict.
* You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.