Models For the Analysis of Balance of Power in Society

Abstract

This chapter surveys certain recent developments in game-theoretical bargaining models that have cleared the way for more extensive fruitful applications of the theory of games in the social sciences. In particular, these developments open the way that is proposed to call a bargaining-equilibrium analysis of social behavior for explaining social institutions and social practices in terms of the balance of power or bargaining equilibrium among the interested social groups or individuals. Apart from their applications in the social sciences, these bargaining models also have interesting philosophical implications in that they throw new light on the concept of rational behavior and on the relationship between rational behavior and moral behavior. Though the analysis of social institutions in terms of an interaction among a variety of different social interests has a long history, all such analytical attempts in the past suffered from the fundamental logical defect that no clear theoretical model had been available to explain or predict the outcome of such an interaction among groups or individuals with more or less conflicting interests.