POLISCI 255 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Security Dilemma, Strategic Dominance, Invisible Hand

• School: UMASS-Amherst
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLISCI 255
• Professor: Paul Musgrave

Document Summary

Security dilemma: many of the means by which a state tries to increase its security decreases the security of others; in international politics, states protecting themselves with more security almost always threatens others, subjective security demands. Issue 1: differ in the amount of security they want and how much they would be willing to pay to get it. Issue 2: differ in the perception of the threat (estimation of whether the other player will cooperate: look at how many enemies they need to be prepared to fight, their own opinions about another states" predisposition, etc. The dominant strategy in this is to not contribute (defect).