Monday, February 27, 2006

Let's play a little game ...

What exactly will happen when our "leaders" meet and have the long awaited hiwar? That question will only be answered when the hiwar takes place, but as of late, it seems that this hiwar will lead to naught. However, the exact outcome depends on what the "leaders" aim at achieving. There are two extreme cases - they are completely self-interested, in which case they aim at being fully in control (regardless of the effect on the country), or they are completely selfless and aim at making the country better (regardless of the effect on their power).

On a simple level, these two models can be analyzed as games (similar to the prisoner's dilemma). The first game (with selfish players) can be described as follows. "Leaders" can either cooperate (which includes political compromises), or they can attempt to carve their own path, thus claiming a title of a zaim (each player prefers to be the only zaim). In general, the payoff of taking a stance is correlated to how much power he has, and the resulting game can be seen here.

The only solution to this is that each player aims at being a zaim.

In the second game, each player knows that cooperating will give added benefits to the country (since that is what they care about) - thus leading to this game.

The outcome? They both cooperate.

The model above is extremely simplistic and of course debatable. However, both games can be used to explain the different stances of the various "leaders", depending on what your opinion is of them. The main point to keep in mind is that if you believe the "leaders" mainly care about themselves, then there is little probability that dialogue will lead anywhere. So how will the dialogue play out? Somewhere in between the above result? That all depends on how many "leaders" actually care about a "better" Lebanon versus personal ambition. Is the country willing to wait and see?


posted by Lazarus, 10:34 PM

3 Comments:

  • Hey,

    I respect using game theory to try to understand our politicians' next move.

    But I beg to differ; the complexity of the dynamic, the variations in bilateral relationships, the conflicts of interest, plus the very distorting element of threat of violence, make me stand by the Chaos Theory as the best way to find a non-prediction of what will happen on March 2nd...

    I'm very pessimistic though, I can't imagine any kind of breakthrough happening..

    By Blogger Mustapha, at 3:15 AM  

  • Laz,
    In the prissoners dilemma the logic of the solution forces one to make a choice that is against ones own personal interest and none of the two outcomes that you showed reveal that.
    The first one can become a prisoners dilemma if you reverse the pay off of the Zaim-Zaim with that of Cooperate-Cooperate. The outcome dictated by the logic of the game will still be a Zaim-Zaim but that outcome will represent a less than optimal solution.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 5:22 AM  

  • hey mustapha ... you're right in saying things are much more complex than this. my previous post on dynamical systems (which encompasses chaos theory) is probably more realistic.

    ghassan - you're right. I didn't choose my payoffs to be similar to that of the prisoner's dilemma, but that was intentional because under the assumptions, they prefer to be zuama then to cooperate. but yes, regardless of the payoffs I actually give to the Zaim Zaim play, it will always be the outcome, even if it isn't an efficient solution.

    By Blogger Lazarus, at 7:07 AM  

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