Games Real Actors Play: Compromise and Rational Choice Theory

In economic game theory, which goes back to John von Neumann (1903-1957), Oskar Morgenstern (1902-1977) and John F. Nash (1928-2015), among others, “cooperation” and “defection” are the dominant terms and decisive categories. Under what conditions do private actors cooperate/defect in the provision of public goods? How can those involved in the use of common-pool resources cooperate in such a way that the shared resource is not overexploited or even destroyed? While economic game theory for the sake of simplicity often models social conflict situations as a game with only two alternative courses of action (i.e., cooperation vs. defection), in real (economic) life it can be observed that the “players” often make compromises. However, in the literature on game theory and rational choice theory in economics, political science and other social sciences the term “compromise” is not or only very rarely explicitly mentioned. This is surprising insofar as compromise is a ubiquitous phenomenon: i.e., this mechanism of conflict resolution can be observed in everyday life in many areas of society. Against this background, the present paper investigates in more detail in which “games” and negotiation/conflict situations, which are dealt with in the social science literature on game theory and rational choice theory, compromises play a role. Moreover, the conditions under which compromise is (or would be) the rational choice are discussed.