CONFLICT AND COOPERATION IN INTERNATIONAL-RELATIONS

Neorealist theories of international relations, particularly when form alized as noncooperative games, have difficulty accounting for substan tial cooperation between nation-states, perhaps because neorealists ha ve underestimated the role of communication between states. To address this issue, the authors developed an experiment in which nation-state s, represented as groups, can communicate. Two groups of three human s ubjects interacted for 10 iterations of a prisoner's dilemma (PD) game and an altered version of the game. The authors conducted 79 of these 10 iteration trials and tested the effects of communication and a wit hdrawal option on groups' ability to cooperate. Results indicate that groups cooperate more and defect less when they can communicate. Most groups appear to be motivated by fear of the opponent; communication a ppears to be a good mechanism for alleviating fear. However, a small b ut significant number of groups are motivated by greed; communication is not very effective in these situations.