The Possibility of Cooperation
By: Michael Taylor
Series: Studies in Rationality and Social Change
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Cambridge, USA
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 205
ISBN-13: 9780521339902
Other titles: Possibility of Cooperation
Description: This 1987 book offers a critique of the liberal theory of the state, focusing on a detailed study of cooperation in the absence of the state and of other kinds of coercion. The discussion includes an analysis of collective action and of the Prisoners’ Dilemma supergame. It is a revised and expanded edition of the author’s classic work of rational choice theory Anarchy and Cooperation, originally published with John Wiley in 1976. The analysis has been recast and developed here to make it more accessible to non-mathematical readers and to provide a more comprehensive and self-contained treatment of the theory of collective action. The book will be of interest to a range of readers in political and social philosophy and in economics.

(Source: [Cambridge University Press](https://www.cambridge.org/de/academic/subjects/philosophy/political-philosophy/possibility-cooperation))
Table of contents: title: Preface
pagenum: ix; label: 1
title: Introduction: the problem of collective action
pagenum: 1; title: The provision of public and other non-excludable goods
pagenum: 5; title: The Prisoners’ Dilemma
pagenum: 13; title: The problem of collective action
pagenum: 18; title: Time and the lone exploiter
pagenum: 20; title: Solutions? Community, states, entrepreneurs, property rights and norms
pagenum: 21; title: Plan of the rest of the book
pagenum: 30; label: 2
title: The Prisoners’ Dilemma, Chicken and other games in the provision of public goods
pagenum: 34; title: Alternatives to the Prisoners’ Dilemma
pagenum: 35; title: An N-person game of Chicken
pagenum: 40; title: Mutual aid, fisheries and voting in committees
pagenum: 43; title: Pre-commitment as a risky decision and the prospects for cooperation in Chicken games
pagenum: 45; title: Continuous strategy sets
pagenum: 49; title: Cournot analysis
pagenum: 56; title: A summary remark
pagenum: 58; label: 3
title: The two-person Prisoners’ Dilemma supergame
pagenum: 60; title: Supergames
pagenum: 60; title: Unconditional Cooperation and Defection
pagenum: 64; title: The possibility of conditional Cooperation
pagenum: 65; title: An Assurance game
pagenum: 67; title: Conditions for (B, B) to be an equilibrium
pagenum: 67; title: Axelrod’s tournaments
pagenum: 69; title: Coordination equilibria
pagenum: 71; title: Other mutual Cooperation equilibria
pagenum: 73; title: Taking it in turns to Cooperate
pagenum: 76; title: Outcomes
pagenum: 78; label: 4
title: The N-person Prisoners’ Dilemma supergame
pagenum: 82; title: Payoffs in the constituent game
pagenum: 83; title: Unconditional Cooperation and Defection
pagenum: 84; title: Conditional Cooperation
pagenum: 84; title: Subgroups of Cooperators
pagenum: 88; title: Chickens nesting in the Prisoners’ Dilemma supergame
pagenum: 92; title: Other Cooperative equilibria
pagenum: 94; title: An example
pagenum: 96; title: Alternation between blocks of conditional cooperators
pagenum: 99; title: Summary and discussion of results
pagenum: 104; title: A more realistic model
pagenum: 105; label: 5
title: Altruism and superiority
pagenum: 109; title: Altruism in two-person games
pagenum: 112; title: An N-person Game of Difference
pagenum: 122; label: 6
title: The state
pagenum: 125; title: Hobbes’s Leviathan
pagenum: 126; title: Hume’s Leviathan
pagenum: 150; label: 7
title: Epilogue: cooperation, the state and anarchy
pagenum: 164; title: International anarchy
pagenum: 165; title: The destruction of community
pagenum: 166; title: The decay of voluntary cooperation
pagenum: 168; title: Rationality
pagenum: 175; title: Annex: the theory of metagames
pagenum: 180; title: Notes
pagenum: 185; title: Bibliography
pagenum: 198; title: Index
pagenum: 203