Power and Cooperation

Abstract

The pure realist picture of world politics combines the demand for power with the problem of cooperation. In a more up-to-date, less austere variant, power is no unqualified asset: a state can profit from a unilateral loss of power, all else equal. And mutual cooperation is often achievable, thanks in great measure to the shadow of the future. My newer, richer variant enlarges and combines those two features of anarchy: sometimes a loss of power by a single state not only is advantageous to that state but enhances mutual cooperation, and when that happens the motives to cooperate-which turn out to be quite varied-only have to work in a one-sided way.