Band 6, Heft 2

In this paper relating to developing countries, Amartya Sen asks the basic question: how does the preparation for and the execution of wars influence the ability of famine-prone countries to escape mass starvation --- a question of perhaps not much significance to highly developed industrialized market economies, but clearly of tremendous significance to developing economies. (eds.)

In the last twenty years or so years, there has been a surge of interest in modeling both national security and international political economy issues using the tools of game theory. In this brief note, I will not cite this now extensive literature but instead (1) outline four major theoretical problems that have bedeviled various attempts at modeling international relations (IR) phenomena and processes and (2) propose an alternative approach, grounded in game theory, that I and others have found attractive in (i) capturing the thinking of decision makers and (ii) realistically modeling their strategic choices in a parsimonious but historically informed way.