It occurred to me that the traditional prisoners’ dilemma (PD) justification of the state has a similar logic. The traditional story says that life in the state of nature is a PD, where everyone has the incentive to cheat rather than cooperate. But since everyone would be better off cooperating, it’s in their interest to form a government that forces them to cooperate. Or:
People in the state of nature would benefit from establishing a government.
???
Therefore, government
What this justification skips over is an explanation of how people could establish a government. Government is treated as a deus ex machina, an “external” institution that is simply “given.” The traditional story throws rational choice out the window: instead of resulting from individual actions, government just magically pops into existence when its total social benefits outweigh total social costs.
Jason Briggeman, in his paper “Governance as a Strategy in State-of-Nature Games,” sets out to remedy this situation by providing a rational choice model of the establishment of government, what he calls the “Prisoners’ Dilemma with Coercion.”
As he writes: “To model this Hobbesian situation with the tools of game theory, it would seem to be required that society’s governor be an internal player who chooses strategies, not an external model-builder who sets payoffs.” Take that Buchanan!