Abstract
This paper presents an informal argument about the relationship between strategic interaction and ‘economic’ theories of political processes. It is concerned with interactions between small groups of rational actors, in which each knows the preferences of the others and is attempting to get the better of the others. In these circumstances, the outcome is usually determined by the strategic interaction involved and is often, therefore, rather unstable. Since formal models in themselves do not help us very much to interpret the processes involved, the bulk of the paper is concerned with an analysis of various aspects of strategic interaction. These include being sophisticated, lying, cheating and bluffing.
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