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IBEI International Workshop: Game Theory in international Relations at 50 

Game theory and its others: an outsider´s view

Noé CornagoUniversity of the Basque Country

noe.cornago@ehu.esSpeaking notes!

1) Working in the periphery of the IR academic world, and being trained in an educational

system so different to the North American one in which game theory was born and

shines, I had initially many hesitations about how to respond to the kind invitation that

the organizers of this stimulating workshop sent me some months ago. On one hand,

my connection with game theory has been mostly superficial. For two decades I have

been far more a dedicated and curious reader of game theory than a committed

advocate of its surely undisputable achievements. I recognize of course the captivating

effects of game theory when I teach my students even its more basic rudiments. Not in

vain, their fascination is the same of mine, when I was exposed for the first time to its

seductive tales and conceptual devices. The same fascination would be the case, I

suppose, for diplomats, politicians, military chiefs, CEOs, and even terrorists, in the pastas well as nowadays.

2) But in contrast with some of my fellow speaking colleagues, I am not fully convinced

about the excellences of game theory as a fruitful approach for either scholarly research

or informed practice in the field of international relations. In this brief presentation I will

try however to clarify my own understandings in a balanced way. For it is clear for me

that game theory is it worth of both praise and criticism. In addition, and in order to

follow our scheduled program, I will elaborate my comments keeping in mind that in this

roundtable we are expected to reflect on on the validity of game theory as an instrument

for our better understanding of collective action and multilateralism in the international

realm. But instead to speak about international regimes formation, summit diplomacy,

alliances, and third parties intervention, in the vein of Axelrod, Boyer, Brams, Bueno de

Mesquita, Grieco, James, Keohane, Martin, Mor, Olson, Oye, Powell, Zacher among

many others, my comments will remain basically propedeutical or preliminary in content.

3) Game theoretical approaches to collective action introduce a contradiction between

individual and strategic rationality and collective rationality in a context of uncertainty.

But that context is rarely explained in detail beyond a few ideal rules, configuring the

game situation as a more or less typical one, but with only analogical relationship with

reality. This is the price that game theory has to pay for its distinctive theoretical

parsimoniousness and conceptual clarity. But even so, I would agree in saying that

game theory, ultimately, allows us to foreseen better or worst expectations for

cooperation or conflict, providing revealing scenarios and suggesting us reasonableprescriptions about how to prudently proceed.

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4) Commitment of game theory with individualism is beyond theoretical negotiation. It

constitutes an absolute and non-negotiable epistemological red line. But once this has

been said, contextual conditions are of course introduced by game theorists, albeit in a

very careful way. Consequently, structural constrains or functional imperatives, initially

out of the picture, are frequently introduced in a very selective way: n-persons games,

groups size, availability of resources, power and informational asymmetries, common

pool resources, public goods, positive and negative externalities, transaction cost,

absolute and relative gains, incentives and sanctions, spatial constrictions and time

frame, multilayered institutional levels, conflicting legal frameworks, risk aversion,

nested games. All these relevant notions serve to complete little by little the scheme but

they never come all together. They come invariably in an isolated way, always in

accordance to the legitimate preferences of their different proponents.

5) Even more difficult for game theory is to introduce movement and change in their

theoretical schemes. Important efforts have been of course registered with the aim ofintroducing dynamic models, such as game trees, multiple equilibriums, iterated games,

evolutionary games, and theory of moves. All them look perfect when negotiating, let´s

say, a bus service in a small neighborhood across our High School years, but result

rigid and unrealistic when compared with the fluidity and unexpected moves of real

world politics, in critical topics such as nuclear proliferation, trade disputes, financial

stability, climate change, or global health. In other words, it is not easy to apply really

existing game theory to domains of great significance or complexity.

6) Another problem is the place of culture and values in the collective game to be played. It

is not my aim to vindicate the supposed achievements of constructivism, but the

proverbial utilitarianism of game theory is also an important limitation when trying tounderstand real collective action. Credibility, perceptions, beliefs system, reputation,

preferences, cognitive dramas... All these conceptual tools are legitimate forms to

recognize the complexity of real world politics. But in spite of these efforts, game

theoretical approaches only rarely offer direct attention to cultural pluralism, normative

relativism, ideological deformations, legitimating needs, and conflicting social norms.

This is particularly true for the extremely complex issues which give form to our global

agenda.

7) Far beyond game theoretical pessimistic expectations about the institutionalization of

collective action with large numbers, when considered in the long historical term,

multilateralism has proven to be a tool particularly useful to manage, at least tentatively,the basic functional and normative needs of the global system. In addition, through

formal international organizations or mere conferences, multilateral diplomacy has

offered surely the most relevant venue for deliberation, mutual understanding and policy

learning among Nation-States, and other social agents. Against this background, game

theoretical approaches to collective action insist in their individualistic methodologies,

ignoring the possible validity of notions such as the building of new transnational

political communities, the distinction of instrumental reason and communicative reason,

the growing importance of popular struggles for recognition and redistribution across the

globe, or the need of new of new regulatory schemes in the context of an increasingly

fragmented and agitated world.

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8) Only multilateralism can promote the new forms of transnational regulation as well as

the new ways of managing potential social conflicts that the contemporary world

requires. Nation-States remain invariably afraid of the eroding of its autonomy and the

displacement of political relevance which any serious form of multilateralism could

entail. Consequently, although some prominent exceptions exist, multilateral institutions

remain extremely weak. This outcome is perfectly coherent with the individualist scope

of game theoretical approaches and its proverbial aversion to institutional building,

beyond the supposedly minimal and optimum level for a successful outcome. Even the

global public goods approach seems to be narrowly rigid in its resistance to accept the

historicity of our political institutions and our need to reinvent our forms of governance.

9) Game theory has been always trying to escape from the noise of the world. Its

intramural achievements are out of dispute, but it needs to listen more carefully to its

others: the other games that are also played in this world. In his fascinating

anthropology of games, Roger Callois (1967) identified four basic types of games:

games of competence (agon), aleatory games (alea), simulacra games (mimicry), and

dizziness games (ilinx), indicating also a possible continuum within each of them,

between agitation (paidia) and quietness (ludus). These simple notions suggest a

refreshing point of departure to rethink the heuristic value of our old metaphors (see

Hurwitz 1988; Marks 2001) for a renewed theory of games open to a new

understanding of the many meanings of games for social life at a global scale.

10) A somewhat provocative but serious indication of how fruitful could be a new regard on

the place of games in our understanding of world politics, could be James Der Derian´s

recent work. In contrast with the elegant tales of nuclear deterrence produced in the

Cold War, Der Derian explores convincingly the consequences of a new military-

industrial-media-entertainment network, in which simulated battles in the Mojave

Desert, Silicon Valley, Hollywood and political science departments, converge withcyborg technologies, video games, media spectacles, and war movies, producing a

chimera of high-tech, low-risk „virtuous wars‟, blundering US “from one foreign fiasco to

the next” (Der Derian 2009)

11) Finally, for more revealing ideas about the enduring relevance of games for world

politics, I recommend you even a brief visit to the very appealing/appalling kids‟ corner 

in the CIA website: https://www.cia.gov/kids-page/games/index.html 

References:

Callois, Roger (1967) Le Jeux et les hommes: le masque et le vertige , Paris, Gallimard

Der Derian, James (2009) Virtous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media- 

Entertainment-Network , London, Routledge, second edition.

Hurwitz, Roger (1988) “Strategic and social fictions in the prisoner's dilemma”, James Der 

Derian and Michael J. Shapiro (eds.) International/intertextual relations: postmodern 

readings of world politics , Lexington, Lexington Books.

Marks, Michael (2001) “The Prison as Metaphor: Recasting the "Dilemma" of International

Relations” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political , Vol. 26.