The paper introduces and discusses some of the most important conceptual ideas in game theory by exploring their implicit answer to the question: Who is a player? It will be illustrated that some of the most celebrated results in game theory rely on different notions of a player, global players...

This paper examines a recent debate in the literature on power indices in which classical measures such as the Banzhaf, Shapley-Shubik, and Public Good indices have been criticized on the grounds that they do not take into account player preferences. It has been argued that an index that is...

The aim of this article is to distinguish between strategies in the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma on the basis of their relative performance in a given population set. We first define a natural order on such strategies that disregards isolated disturbances, by using the limit of...

How is negative reciprocity cultivated in an environment of violent conflict? This study investigates how students in the West Bank react to unfair proposals in an ultimatum game. Proposals submitted with Hebrew as compared to Arab handwriting are rejected more often. Israelis must offer 15...

The author develops a new game-theoretic approach, anchored not in Boolean two-valued logic but instead in linguistic fuzzy logic. The latter is characterized by two key features. First, the truth values of logical propositions span a set of linguistic terms such as true, very true, almost...

Storytelling has long been recognized as central to human cognition and communication. Here we explore a more active role of stories in social science research, not merely to illustrate concepts but also to develop new ideas and evaluate hypotheses, for example, in deciding that a research...

This article analyzes the literature on procedural models of European Union politics. We present an overview of the main models of the legislative procedures, with a focus on their relevance to European Union politics and the literature today. We discuss early controversies in the literature and...

One of the main goals of terrorism is to instill fear in a targeted populace. We investigate how information precision about rare, but highly devastating terrorist attacks influences psychological resilience, which we operationalize as the ability to continue to take optimum risks. First, we...

I investigate the rationality of challenge and escalation when a third party, allied either to defender or challenger, is uncertain about the enemy’s power. The analysis illustrates how third-party ally power impacts general and immediate deterrence and willingness to intervene. In...

How do civilians respond to violence in civil war, and how do these responses shape combatants’ coercive strategies? Conventional wisdom expects civilian victimization to backfire, as a security-minded public “balances†against the side posing the greatest threat to its...