States Playing Games

Abstract

Global Collective Action. By Todd Sandler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 314 pp., $75.00 cloth (ISBN: 0-521-83477-5), $24.99 paper (ISBN: 0-521-54254-5). In Global Collective Action , Todd Sandler's goal is to leave the ivory tower. Sandler is a trained mathematician who turned economist first and international relations theorist second. Global Collective Action shows that he is tired of writing for an ever shrinking club of specialists (p. 31). Sandler has made many important contributions to game theory, one of the most powerful tools of the social sciences. Global Collective Action is based on this forbiddingly technical scientific discourse. Yet, almost none of these technicalities are visible in the book. Nevertheless, Sandler's message is powerful. Sandler applies game theory to globalization, which he approaches in fairly broad terms. Globalization encompasses “the significant rise in transboundary transactions” (p. 3), but it also involves “noneconomic exchanges, e.g. pollution or cyber viruses” (p. 4). Globalization is present in the accelerated spread of ideas, including terrorist ideas (p. 173), in the expansion of criminal activity (p. 160), and in any increase in transnational complexity (p. 17). This broad definition is appropriate given that Sandler is interested in how problems can be solved even if the recourse to one government's monopoly of sovereign power is not an option. Specifically, he considers global health, foreign aid, rogue states, terrorism, civil war, atmospheric pollution, and the governance of outer space. Global Collective Action makes two main points. First, many more games can be identified in the interactions among states than the canonical prisoner's dilemma (p. 12). Second, in analyzing games, the “aggregation technology”—that is, how the decisions of multiple actors interact to produce a final solution—matters (p. 38 and following). Both points are well taken. The main implications of a prisoner's dilemma have long ago made their way into the social sciences at large. For example, for …