Cooperation

Cooperation is the capacity to work or act with others for mutual benefit. It should not be viewed simply as the absence of conflict or the alternative to competition, but rather the product of a conscious decision by two or more actors to alter their behavior based on others' preferences,.

Cooperation therefore entails a process of negotiation between two or more parties and is generally held by political science to be a desirable aspect of the human condition. However, the propensity for two or more actors to cooperate, rather than conflict or compete with one another, tends to depend upon their calculation of the relative costs and benefits to be derived from cooperation when compared with the dividend from alternative courses of action. The motivation for cooperation remains essentially contested, with the debate focused upon the nature of the necessary or sufficient political or institutional prerequisites for cooperation to emerge among individuals, communities, societies, and states.

The relative incentives and disincentives for cooperation have been encapsulated by game theory in terms of the notion of the prisoner's dilemma, where two prisoners must decide whether to confess that the other has committed a crime. If the first prisoner confesses that the other is guilty, but the second prisoner stays silent, the first prisoner will win his freedom. If both prisoners blame the other for the crime, both face punishment. If both prisoners remain silent, their cooperation will be rewarded by escaping punishment. The dilemma surrounds the fact that each actor must decide whether to cooperate or not, but without knowing the other's intended actions. Therefore, their cooperation depends upon whether they trust one another to act in a manner that serves their mutual self-interest.

In the field of international relations, cooperation was defined by Thomas Christiansen in 2005 as customary, continued, and potentially deepening interaction on policy issues among states. That cooperation is possible is manifested in the existence of institutions and regimes at a range of levels of governance from the local to the global. The possibility of cooperation, as opposed to conflict or competition, between the rival states that comprise the anarchical global order of sovereign nation states has been disputed among realists, neorealists, and contingent realists, on the one hand, and liberal institutionalists, on the other. This debate has become particularly vigorous following the collapse of communism.

For classical realists from Thucydides to Hans Morgenthau, the principal barrier to cooperation among states lies in the fact that their constant rivalry for power and frequent descent into conflict and war is simply a reflection of the characteristics of the human nature of their citizens. For structural realists, notably Kenneth Waltz, the propensity for conflict and rivalry, rather than cooperation, in human affairs is not attributable to human nature but rather the absence of an overarching political authority above states and the nature of the distribution of power in international politics.

During the post–Cold War era, the realist perspective on cooperation has been divided. On the one hand, neorealists, such as John Mearsheimer, have asserted that there remain strict limitations upon the prospects for cooperation among states arising from the problem of “relative gains.” According to this perspective, rival states tend to measure cooperation in terms of their gains relative to those of the competitors, rather than focusing upon the absolute gains that cooperation can generate for all parties concerned. This preoccupation with relative gains is held to have resulted in an international environment characterized by mistrust and uncertainty, and perpetual competition and conflict, rather than cooperation.

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