The Possibility of Cooperation

This 1987 book is a revised and expanded edition of the author's 'Anarchy and Cooperation'.

Michael Taylor (Author)

9780521339902, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 13 August 1987

220 pages
21.7 x 14.1 x 1.1 cm, 0.28 kg

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.

Preface
1. Introduction: the problem of collective action
2. The prisoners' dilemma, chicken and other games in the provision of public goods
3. The two-person prisoners' dilemma supergame
4. The N-person prisoners' dilemma supergame
5. Altruism and superiority
6. The state
7. Epilogue: cooperation, the state and anarchy
Annex
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Social & political philosophy [HPS]