Theory of political coalitions
- Westport connecticut Green Wood Press 1984
- 300 p.
The specific purpose of this book is to construct, with the help of an existing general theory of coalitions (the theory of n-person games), a theory of coalitions that will be use ful in studying politics. As such, it is not-most emphati cally not a book about mathematics, even though it makes use of some notions drawn from a mathematical theory. Since the audience I wish to reach is, primarily, political scientists and those laymen interested in the ab stract interpretation of political events, I have, therefore, relegated those portions of the argument which make con siderable use of mathematical symbols to appendixes, which, however, are summarized briefly in the text. Fur thermore, I hasten to add that even the material in the appendixes, while occasionally using mathematical meth ods of notation, is not really mathematical in nature. Rather, this argument is simply reasoning about curves in a geometrical model, somewhat after the fashion in which economists reason about supply and demand curves.
This rather emphatic disclaimer is intended to warn mathematicians that, despite the use of game theory, they will not find material of interest to them here and to dis arm political scientists who are at the present time, un fortunately, largely unaware of the relevance of mathematical notions to politics and, even more unfortunately, likely to be impatient with the kind of abstract reasoning about behavior in a model which can make use of mathe matical symbolism to illuminate behavior in the real world of politics. The last chapter, especially, is intended. to suggest the relevance of model-building to an under standing of action in the real world and, in content, this chapter is actually directed to those persons make policy on the basis of the theory of politics.
9780313242991
Political science:Coalition:Mathematical models-politica