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Abstract

This article extends Axelrod's results concerning the evolution of cooperation to situations in which a pair of individuals is simultaneously engaged in several continuing interactions, all of the Prisoners' Dilemma type. It is shown formally that in such a PD multisupergame, players may adopt strategies that create linkages across time and games, thus opening up new opportunities for cooperative outcomes in games for which cooperation would not be rational if considered in isolation. However, such linkage-based cooperation is often very brittle, in that attempts to include or delete issues may shatter the existing basis of cooperation. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate the wide variety of possible cooperative equilibria and the sensitivity of these equilibria to small changes in the payoffs of each game. Some implications for the evolution of arms control and other international regimes are discussed.

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Issue Linkage and the Evolution of International Cooperation

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