Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

"Cooperation, Not False Competition." Fragmented Families And Splintered Classes: Why So Much Churning? What Can Be Done? What Will America Come To Look Like? A Symposium., Matthew J. Lindstrom

Political Science Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Is Power Zero-Sum Or Variable-Sum? Old Arguments And New Beginnings, James H. Read

Political Science Faculty Publications

The political and social world in which we live and act is partly constituted by the words we use and the way we use them. What power is and how power works is shaped by what we collectively think it is and how we think it works.

This essay revisits the question of whether power should be understood as inherently zero-sum (gains for some entailing equivalent losses for others) or variable-sum (both mutual gains and mutual losses of power are possible). The zero-sum assumption is very old (predating by thousands of years the game-theoretic shorthand) and draws its force from …