Game Theory and the Social Contract

Abstract

The ST/ICERD blue series contains an earlier discussion paper with the same title called "Part I". This sought to defend the Rawlsian position on social contract issues by an appeal to Rubinstein-type bargaining arguments employed "in the original position". The current paper is not "Part II" of this earlier paper, but a re-appraisal of the whole problem. The re-appraisal continues to defend a version of the Rawlsian position against Harsanyi's utilitarian alternative, but no longer makes the error of emphasizing technical matters from the theory of non-cooperative bargaining models. It is necessary that the right ideas be borrowed from this theory, but the crucial issue is that "commitment" be properly modeled. The bulk of the paper is concerned with justifying the manner in which the term "properly modeled" is to be interpreted. The treatment forces close attention to be given to questions of the inter-personal comparison of utilities. This treatment may be of some independent interest, since it leads to some unifying considerations for cooperative bargaining solutions. No background in game theory or knowledge of mathematics beyond elementary algebra is required to read the paper. On the other hand, the arguments do often hinge on points which need to be thought about with some precision.KeywordsNash EquilibriumOriginal PositionSocial ContractDisagreement PointBargaining SolutionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.