The United Nations and the Rationale for Collective Intelligence ...

While game theory may have its usefulness as a descriptive and, to a limited extent, prescriptive tool, it can only accomplish these objectives in a rather restricted fashion. For instance, the existence of an intractable game situation in a group process might simply point to the obvious lack of efficient communication channels between the participants in a given social situation. A static and linear interpretation of this situation can be avoided if a model of collective action looks beyond basing a complex set of analyses and a description of phenomena strictly on the characteristics of the participants and their preferences, which generally define such situations as intractable. On the contrary, a model of collective action should attempt to be flexible and inclusive of the various factors that define the individual units and their relationship with the environment in which interaction is played out. An inclusive approach such as this aims to expand beyond mainstream assumptions but at the same time remain both constructive and plausible. It also assumes that with respect to the complexity of a given problem, where existing tools in the parent discipline are inadequate for a satisfactory exploration of the issues involved, it would be useful to employ tools developed elsewhere to facilitate an adequate explanation of the problem.

On The Distinction Between
Cooperation and Collective Action

It is observable that the application of the term ‘cooperation’ to describe social and political interaction tends to be vague in both the analysis of social interaction and in collective endeavour. The problem is largely one of overlap between the terms ‘collective action’ and ‘cooperation’, which calls for a need to clarify the context in which these terms are used in the present study. In many respects, these two concepts tend to have interchangeable meanings. The first problem to be encountered in the application of these terms in IR scholarship is the obvious lack of coherence and, sometimes, definitional confusion. A further problem is that a situation involving these concepts can be studied with exactly the