Social Stability and Catastrophe Risk: Lessons From the Stag Hunt

Michael Powers () and Zhan Shen
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Zhan Shen: Shenzhen Ping An Bank, shenzhan001@pingan.com.cn, samson.shen@gmail.com

Journal of Theoretical Politics, 2008, vol. 20, issue 4, 477-497

Abstract: Had the destruction and suffering visited upon New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina been the result of a terrorist attack, it would have been very successful — not because of the number of innocent lives lost or amount of property destroyed, but rather because of the breakdown of the social order. What better possible outcome could a terrorist envision than planting seeds of doubt regarding the willingness and ability of individuals and government to fulfill their respective roles in the `social contract'? In this article, we employ a class of symmetric, ordinal 2 × 2 games — including the frequently studied Prisoner's Dilemma, Chicken, and Stag Hunt — to model the stability of the social contract in the face of catastrophic changes in social relations. In two alternative analyses, we find that the Stag Hunt provides a relatively stable and efficient normative model for society. These results offer useful insights into the pre- and post-event management of catastrophe risks, especially large-scale terrorist attacks designed to disrupt the social order.

Keywords: catastrophe risk; social contract; 2 × 2 games; Stag Hunt; terrorism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:20:y:2008:i:4:p:477-497

DOI: 10.1177/0951629808093777

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