Multiple Games Analysis: A Petri Dish for Growing Polycentric Orders

Abstract

Game theory, as originally envisioned, is a tool to theorize about social interaction. As game theory became geared towards prediction and control, branching into mechanism and market design theory, its mathematical sophistication focused on solution spaces and, ultimately, the attainment of steady states or simple patterned behavior. I contend that game theory can also describe complex behavior like spontaneous emergence, the development process of polycentric influence hierarchies, and the emergence and survival of institutional forms. Multiple games analysis expands the solution spaces of classic games like the prisoner’s dilemma and the principal agent game, not by including conditioning stages or evolving the game in a repeating fashion, but through a detailed expansion of the game itself.