Dresden 2003 – scientific programme

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AKSOE: Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

AKSOE 3: Postersitzung

AKSOE 3.8: Poster

Monday, March 24, 2003, 15:45–17:15, P1

War and Peace and Game Theory: Can game theory help us understand the origins of armed conflict? — •Adrian Seufert — Technische Universität Berlin

We present a game-theoretical model of international conflict introduced by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita et. al. in their paper No-dqAn Institutional Explanation of the Democratic PeaceNo-dq(American Political Science Review, Vol. 93, No. 4, December 1999) and an extension to that model made by us.

Democratic Peace is an expression coined by political scientists to describe the observation that democracies almost never fight wars against one another. Evidence of it’s regularity is so strong, that it is sometimes regarded as the closest thing to an empirical law of international relations. Associated to this are many other observations about the behavior of democracies in the face of conflict, which can be verified empirically. Some of these are: 1) Democracies do fight wars against autocratic regimes 2) Democracies tend to fight shorter wars with less costs of human life than do autocracies 3) Democracies tend to win the wars they fight.

The model attempts to explain these observations based on simple assumptions about the different nature of political institutions in democracies and autocracies. These institutions affect leaders’ values for staying in power, and consequently their choice of a course of action in a conflict situation.