Confronting Historical Paradigms: Peasants, Labor, and the Capitalist World System in Africa and Latin America
Year: 1996
Type: article
Abstract: I HAHR I MAY side.Such preferences are implausible for moderates, especially those on the left.One can object that the actors failed to foresee the consequences of confrontation, and this may be true; but as long as they did not, many of the actors seem to have expected confrontation to serve their immediate medium-term interests better than compromise.In other words, the game they played was not prisoner's dilemma but deadlock.The pareto optimal equilibrium of deadlock is noncooperation, and that is the strategy that moderates in Chile and Brazil chose.In the last few months before military intervention, the game changed from deadlock to chicken, but an insufficient number of players understood the change quickly enough to avert disaster.In either this or the prisoner's dilemma interpretation, game theory usefully clears away irrelevant detail and focuses attention on the lOgic of the situation, but it does not "explain" the outcome, because the outcome depends on misperception, which is outside the model.Succinct and highly readable, this book offers both a primer on different approaches to theorizing and a new interpretation of the breakdown of democracy in Latin America.It could usefully be assigned in graduate classes comparing analytical approaches and methodologies, as well as classes on Latin American politics.The author's outspoken defense of his own perspective should stir up lively discussions.
Authors: John Markoff, Frederick Cooper
Institution: University of Pittsburgh
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2576092837