A decentralized cooperative solution to the iterated pacifist’s dilemma game: notes in the margin of Pinker’s theory of Leviathan

Abstract

The current paper is heavily indebted to Steven Pinker’s theory of Leviathan. He made ingenious theoretical and historical use of the one-off prisoner’s dilemma game (= the pacifist’s dilemma game) and demonstrated how the state, as one of the most important institutions for controlling violence, solves the Hobbesian problem of anarchy. We argue, however, that centralized authoritarian solutions to the pacifist’s dilemma game continue to suffer from a few, specifiable problems that cause political violence, and citizens’ violence against one another, and that decentralized cooperative solutions to the pacifist’s dilemma game, arising from iterated solution concepts, are capable of solving these particular problems. A decentralized cooperative solution to the pacifist’s dilemma game, without the sovereign, is not only a feasible, but, also, under certain conditions, an evolutionarily stable equilibrium. There are several theoretical constructs that have reached essentially the same conclusion. These include the Folk Theorem by Robert Aumann, the theory of reciprocal altruism by Robert Trivers, and the strategic simulations and models of the evolution of cooperation by Robert Axelrod and William D. Hamilton. Constitutional democracy, based on citizens’ equal political rights and on the rule of law, incorporates some of the key logical components of the above-mentioned models of decentralized cooperation. It is not a perfect system of government, as such, but it does solve some of the key problems of political violence and instability that have plagued centralized authoritarian systems of government. The paper thus provides a new theoretical outlook upon the pacifying effects of constitutional democracy.