Cooperation

Community

In what certain classical authors called “the state of nature,” conflict is pervasive. If human interactions are unconstrained, anyone, with the advantage of surprise, can try to impose his or her will on others. But if all do, then people may find themselves living in a state of chaos in which, in Thomas Hobbes's famous words, life tends to be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” In such an environment, it is not reasonable to risk unilateral cooperation, while cooperation within groups is precarious. However, human beings can do better. People can agree on creating a government equipped with tools of coercion to enforce rules mandating cooperative actions that produce beneficial results for society as a whole. The government may apply sanctions against “defectors”—that is, violators of mutually beneficial rules of conduct—discourage free riding on public goods, and craft incentives for cooperation. People can rationally accept conditional consent. By an agreed “social contract,” the efficient outcome of civilization or “commonwealth,” in which each can live in peace and security, can be attained.

Democratization

In situations of institutional regime crisis in which authoritarian rulers cannot go on as they were accustomed to do, actors with opposite political regime preferences can generate violent conflict or a civil war in which both sides may [Page 448]fight to eliminate each other. Eventually, one of the sides can become a single, absolute winner. But choosing confrontation, with an uncertain outcome, also entails the risk of becoming an absolute loser, as well as the costs of significant destruction on both sides. In contrast, by anticipating the foreseeable consequences of their choices, either the rulers or the opposition leaders can offer conditional, retractable cooperation. Negotiations can lead to a provisional compromise, including the calling of a multiparty election that does not secure an absolute winner, which may open further developments in favor of either of the actors involved, as has happened in so many cases of democratization in different parts of the world since the last quarter of the 20th century.

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