Evolutionary game theory originated as an application of the mathematical theory of games to biological contexts, arising from the realization that frequency dependent fitness introduces a strategic aspect to evolution. Recently, however, evolutionary game theory has become of increased interest to economists, sociologists, and anthropologists–and social scientists in general–as well as philosophers. The interest among social scientists in a theory with explicit biological roots derives from three facts. First, the ‘evolution’ treated by evolutionary game theory need not be biological evolution. ‘Evolution’ may, in this context, often be understood as cultural evolution, where this refers to changes in beliefs and norms over time. Second, the rationality assumptions underlying evolutionary game theory are, in many cases, more appropriate for the modeling of social systems than those assumptions underlying the traditional theory of games. Third, evolutionary game theory, as an explicitly dynamic theory, provides an important element missing from the traditional theory. In the preface to Evolution and the Theory of Games, Maynard Smith notes that “paradoxically, it has turned out that game theory is more readily applied to biology than to the field of economic behavior for which it was originally designed.” It is perhaps doubly paradoxical, then, that the subsequent development of evolutionary game theory has produced a theory which holds great promise for social scientists, and is as readily applied to the field of economic behavior as that for which it was originally designed.
Now, one of the main concerns of the social scientists as well as the economists is to model the change of the society, and change within the society with respect to the change of social and economic relations between different economic strata.
One of the very important and widely accepted theories of social change is known as conflict theory, first explained by noted Philosopher Karl Marx.
The theory of social change can be looked upon in two different but interconnected ways. One is the change within the society, and the other is the change of the society. Discussing about the change of the society, Marx illuminates us well in a polemic against Proudhon:
“Feudal production also had two antagonistic elements, which were equally designated by the names of good side and bad side of feudalism, without regard being had to the fact that it is always the evil side which finishes by over-coming the good side. It is the bad side that produces the movement which makes history, by constituting the struggle. If at the epoch of the reign of feudalism the economists, enthusiastic over the virtues of chivalry, the delightful harmony between rights and duties, the patriarchal life of the towns, the prosperous state of domestic industry in the country, of the development of industry organized in corporations, guilds and fellowships, in fine of all which constitutes the beautiful side of feudalism, had proposed to themselves the problem of eliminating all which cast a shadow upon this lovely picture serfdom, privilege, anarchy what would have been the result? All the elements which constituted the struggle would have been annihilated, and the development of the bourgeoisie would have been stifled in the germ. They would have set themselves the absurd problem of eliminating history.”
According to Marx, conflict leads not only to ever-changing relations within the existing social structure, but the total social system under-goes transformation through conflict. During the feudal period, the relations between serf and lord (between burgher and gentry, underwent many changes both in law and in fact. Yet conflict finally led to a breakdown of all feudal relations and hence to the rise of a new social system governed by different patterns of social relations. It is Marx’s contention that the negative element, the opposition, conditions the change when conflict between the sub-groups of a system becomes so sharpened that at a certain point this system breaks down.
Each social system contains elements of strain and of potential conflict; if in the analysis of the social structure of a system these elements are ignored, if the adjustment of patterned relations is the only focus of attention, then it is not possible to anticipate basic social change. Exclusive attention to wont and use, to the customary and habitual bars access to an understanding of possible latent elements of strain which under certain conditions eventuate in overt conflict and possibly in a basic change of the social structure. This attention should be focused, in Marx’s view, on what evades and resists the patterned normative structure and on the elements pointing to new and alternative patterns emerging from the existing structure. What is diagnosed as disease from the point of view of the institutionalized pattern may, in fact, says Marx, be the first birth pang of a new one to come; not wont and use but the break of wont and use is focal. The ‘matters-of-fact’ of a ‘given state of affairs’ when viewed in the light of Marx’s approach, become limited, transitory; they are regarded as containing the germs of a process that leads beyond them.
Yet, not all social systems contain the same degree of conflict and strain. The sources and incidence of conflicting behavior in each particulars system vary according to the type of structure, the patterns of social mobility, of ascribing and achieving status and of allocating scarce power and wealth, as well as the degree to which a specific form of distribution of power, resources and status is accepted by the component actors within the different sub-systems. But if, within any social structure, there exist an excess of claimants over opportunities for adequate reward, there arises strain and conflict.
Now, if we think about the dynamics of the changes within the system, we can very well observe it from past history of the capitalistic development of the western countries. Let us take the conflicting relation between the workers and the technological development. It often has been observed that the effects of technological change have weighed most heavily upon the worker. Both informal and formal organization of workers represents in part an attempt to mitigate the insecurities attendant upon the impact of unpredictable introduction of change in the factory. But by organizing in unions workers gain a feeling of security through the effective conduct of institutionalized conflict with management and thus exert pressure on management to increase their returns by the invention of further cost-reducing devices. The search for mutual adjustment, understanding and ‘unity’ between groups who find themselves in different life situations and have different life chances calls forth the danger that Sorel warns of, namely that the further development of technology would be seriously impaired.
The emergence of invention and of technological change in modern Western society, with its institutionalization of science as an instrument for making and remaking the world, was made possible with the gradual emergence of a pluralistic and hence conflict-charged structure of human relations. In the unitary order of the medieval guild system, no one was permitted to harm others by methods which enabled him to produce more quickly and more cheaply than they. Technical progress took on the appearance of disloyalty. The ideal was stable conditions in a stable industry. In the modern Western world, just as in the medieval world, vested interests exert pressure for the maintenance of established routines; yet the modern Western institutional structure allows room for freedom of conflict. The structure no longer being unitary, vested interests find it difficult to resist the continuous stream of change-producing inventions. Invention, as well as its application and utilization, is furthered through the ever-renewed challenge to vested interests, as well as by the conflicts between the vested interests themselves.
It is precisely Marx’s contention that the change from feudalism to a different type of social system can be understood only through an investigation of the stresses and strains within the feudal system. Whether given forms of conflict will lead to changes in the social system or to breakdown and to formation of a new system will depend on the rigidity and resistance to change, or inversely on the elasticity of the control mechanisms of the system. It is apparent, however, that the rigidity of the system and the intensity of conflict within it are not independent of each other. Rigid systems which suppress the incidence of conflict exert pressure towards the emergence or radical cleavages and violent forms of conflict. More elastic systems, which allow the open and direct expression of conflict within them and which adjust to the shifting balance of power which these conflicts both indicate and bring about, are less likely to be menaced by basic and explosive alignments within their midst.
Now, at this point of the argument, a much needed tool of decision making would be that one with sufficient dynamism inflicted into it; which can change its values over the period of action and is dependent on the former state of relations or group of relations. With that sort of a tool with dynamic decision making capability, we can model the sociological, economic and cultural behavior within the society and it may lead to the prediction of the change unforeseen. And that tool is, precisely, the tool of Evolutionary Game Theory!
Doubt Everything 