POSC 39023: Game Theory in IR
T/R 2:00-3:20
Tucker 244
Instructor:
Name:
Extension:
Email:
Office:
Office hours:
Eric Cox
5219
e.cox@tcu.edu
Scharbauer 2007
M/T 11:00-12:00 and by appointment
Class Description:
This class is designed as a workshop to introduce students to the use of game theory in international relations. The first
part of the class will provide students with basic instruction on game theory and formal models, including how to create
a decision tree, how to find equilibrium points in a game, and how to design a basic game. The second part of the class
will be a writing workshop as students progress in their original research and writing in pursuit of a written project that
incorporates formal methodology.
Though the initial phase of the class will be quite similar to a traditional lecture / discussion class, most of the latter part
of the semester will be more of a workshop / discussion format.
Class Objectives
Students completing this class should be able to:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
Solve basic simultaneous and sequential move games;
Apply the scientific method to issues in international relations;
Analyze and create simple decision trees;
Construct a literature review;
Exhibit the ability to use writing as a means of gaining and expressing an understanding of discipline-specific
content.
The first learning objective will be evaluated through homework assignments and an in-class exam. The final four
objectives will be evaluated through the core class project: the analysis of an empirical question in international politics
through the use of game theory.
Class Texts
The central text for the class (available at the book store) is:
Avinash Dixit, Susan Skeath, and David Reiley, Games of Strategy 3rd ed. (New York: W.W.Norton and Company
2009). (D&S on syllabus)
You may also find the following book useful, though it is not required. I have not requested it at the bookstore; it can be
purchased online at a reasonable price.
Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff, The Art of Strategy (New York: W.W. Norton and Company 2008). (AoS on
Syllabus)
That book is available at the bookstore, and is widely available elsewhere as well.
Additional readings will be available on the Ecollege website (these readings are designated with a *)
Grading
As this is a writing emphasis class, a significant portion of your grade necessarily derives from the central research
project, a ~20 page research paper containing your original argument.
Your grade will be determined as follows:
Homework assignments / quizzes
10%
We will have limited assignments from your textbook that will be graded. The assignments will be given out the
class period before they are due. You should expect a minimum of 4 assignments.
Exam
25%
We will have an exam applying basic game theoretic concepts.
Paper
65%
The paper will be divided into three distinct assignments.
1) 15% of final grade: The introduction to your basic question, tentative answer, and a literature
review.
2) 15% of final grade: Your formal section – the use of formal methodology to answer your research
question and a discussion of your research design (how you will test your model)
3) 35% of final grade: The final paper incorporating revisions to the above as well as your presentation
of evidence in support of your model.
Grades are determined on a 100 point scale as follows:
A: 93.5 and above
A-: 89.5-93.4
B+: 86.5-89.4
B: 82.5-86.4
B-: 79.5-82.4
C+: 76.5-79.4
C: 72.5-76.4
C-: 69.5-72.4
D+: 66.5-69.4
D: 62.5-66.4
D-: 59.5-62.4
F:59.4 and below
Statement on Disability Services at TCU:
Texas Christian University complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the
Rehabilitation Act of 1973 regarding students with disabilities. Eligible students seeking accommodations should
contact the Coordinator of Student Disabilities Services in the Center for Academic Services located in Sadler
Hall, 1010. Accommodations are not retroactive, therefore, students should contact the Coordinator as soon as
possible in the term for which they are seeking accommodations. Further information can be obtained from the
Center for Academic Services, TCU Box 297710, Fort Worth, TX 76129, or at (817) 257-6567.
Adequate time must be allowed to arrange accommodations and accommodations are not retroactive;
therefore, students should contact the Coordinator as soon as possible in the academic term for which they are
seeking accommodations. Each eligible student is responsible for presenting relevant, verifiable, professional
documentation and/or assessment reports to the Coordinator. Guidelines for documentation may be found at
http://www.acs.tcu.edu/disability_documentation.asp.
Students with emergency medical information or needing special arrangements in case a building must be
evacuated should discuss this information with their instructor/professor as soon as possible.
Academic Integrity:
(Sec. 3.4 from the Student Handbook). Any act that violates the academic integrity of the institution is considered
academic misconduct. The procedures used to resolve suspected acts of academic misconduct are available in the
offices of Academic Deans and the Office of Campus Life. Specific examples include, but are not limited to:

Cheating: Copying from another student’s test paper, laboratory report, other report, or computer files and
listings; Using, during any academic exercise, material and/or devices not authorized by the person in charge of
the test; Collaborating with or seeking aid from another student during a test or laboratory without permission;
Knowingly using, buying, selling, stealing, transporting, or soliciting in its entirety or in part, the contents of a
test or other assignment unauthorized for release; Substituting for another student or permitting another
student to substitute for oneself;

Plagiarism: The appropriation, theft, purchase or obtaining by any means another’s work, and the
unacknowledged submission or incorporation of that work as one’s own offered for credit. Appropriation
includes the quoting or paraphrasing of another’s work without giving credit therefore.

Collusion: The unauthorized collaboration with another in preparing work offered for credit.
Electronics policy:
You are free to use a laptop to take notes in my class, though you may find it difficult to recreate the games on your
laptop as we go over them in class. You are also free to record lectures. However, you may not share my recorded
lectures or pictures of diagrams in class through any social media site, with others outside the class, or in any other
electronic or print medium without my specific permission.
I ask that you not text or otherwise use your phone in my class for anything other than recording lectures. The primary
reason is that if you are texting, you are not paying attention. While your performance in my class is ultimately up to
you, I find that students who are engaged in electronic activities not related to course lecture or discussion tend not to
do well in class.
If I determine that your use of electronic devices in class is distracting to other students, I may ask you to sit in the back
of the room.
Course Schedule:
August 21:
Introduction to syllabus and class
August 23:
Thinking about your paper I: Formulating a research question & devising an answer
August 28:
Thinking about your paper II: The literature review (and journal introduction)
Readings:
August 30:
Beginning to think about game theory
Readings:
September 4:
D&S, Chapters 1&2
Recommended: AoS Chapter 1
Sequential move games
Readings:
September 6:
Jeffrey Knopf, “Doing a Literature Review”*
Iain McMenamin, “Process and Text”*
D&S Chapter 3
Recommended: AoS Chapter 2
Simultaneous-Move Games with Pure Strategies I
Readings:
D&S Chapter 4
Recommended: AoS Chapters 3&4
September 11: Simultaneous-Move Games with Pure Strategies II
Readings:
D&S Chapter 5
September 13: Combining Sequential and Simultaneous Moves
Readings:
D&S Chapter 6
September 18: Mixed strategies
Readings:
D&S Chapter 7
September 20: The role of information
Readings:
D&S Chapter 9
Recommended: AoS Chapter 8
YOUR BASIC RESEARCH QUESTION IS DUE BY THIS DATE
You will turn in your research question on eCollege. Your question should be presented as a paragraph
containing your question and some preliminary thoughts on the nature of the game you expect to use in
exploring the question and the cases you expect to use to test your game. You should also include a bibliography
with at least five sources in it.
September 25: Strategy
Readings:
D&S Chapter 10
Recommended: AoS Chapter 6
September 27: The Prisoners’ Dilemma or THE FOUNDATION FOR MUCH OF GAME THEORY IN INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS
Readings:
October 2:
Collective-Action Games
Readings:
October 4:
D&S Chapter 11
Recommended: AoS Chapter3 reprised
D&S Chapter 12
Application I
Readings:
D&S Chapter 14
Recommended: AoS Chapter 14
October 9:
No class (Fall break)
October 11:
Application II: The Prisoners’ Dilemma
Readings:
Myerson, “Game Theory and Deterrence”
PART ONE (Introduction and Literature Review) OF YOUR PAPER IS DUE! As part of this assignment, I
expect you to produce a short (one paragraph) synopsis of your introduction to your research question,
including why it is an important question. You will also produce a one paragraph synopsis of the state of
the literature exploring your question, including where your argument fits. You should turn in your paper
on eCollege.
October 16:
Application III: Trust
Readings:
Andrew Kydd, “Trust, Reassurance and Cooperation”
October 18:
Review
October 23:
Game theory exam
October 25:
No class
October 30:
Application IV: Student presentations of research questions and answers I
The presentation should last no more than 5-10 minutes.
November 1:
Application V: Student presentations of research questions and answers II
The presentation should last no more than 5-10 minutes.
November 6:
Devising your game
November 8:
Devising your cases / evidence
November 13: Peer workshop – reading each other’s work to date
November 15: PART TWO OF YOUR PAPER IS DUE
This assignment should include the basic structure of your game(s), including explanations of the game in
terms that would be understandable to a layperson., including who the major actors are and the choices
that are available to them. Finally, you should include a one paragraph synopsis per case of how your
game illuminates decision-making in that case(s).
November 20: How to write your case studies
November 22: THANKSGIVING
November 27: Peer workshop – case study outlines
November 29: Research Presentation I
December 4:
Research presentation II
FINAL PAPER DUE
The Paper Assignment
This paper is the major portion of your grade for this class. You will have some time in class to work on this paper, but
you should be doing outside work on it basically from the first week of class. This description of the paper assignment
sets the minimally acceptable standards, not the requirements for achieving an A in the course.
Format:
The final paper should be a minimum of 18 pages in length. There is no maximum, though 20-21 pages is a good length
to aim for. The paper should be in Calibri 11 point font, double spaced throughout, with 1” margins. If these are not the
default settings for your word processing program, change them! Failure to conform to these basic standards will
result in the subtraction of 10 points from your final paper grade!
Your final paper will lose 2 points per grammatical, spelling, typographical error. I highly recommend that you have
an outside reader proofread your final draft.
For citations, use footnotes following the basics of the Chicago Style Manual, detailed here:
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html .
Content:
The general content of this paper is an exploration of some empirical question in international relations. You will be
expected to devise your own empirical question, though some time in class will be devoted to this. You are expected to
develop and test an answer to this empirical question using some form of game theoretic / formal methodology. To test
the answer, you can use either quantitative or qualitative analysis (both will be discussed in class).
You must email me your basic research question no later than September 20, turned in via dropbox on eCollege.
Your paper should follow the following basic guidelines:
PART ONE
A: Introduction to empirical question
This section should clearly designate your primary research question, the empirical puzzle that you wish to explain. The
section should also provide a very basic introduction to your explanation/answer to that question and how you will test
your explanation. It should also explain, in your own words, why this is an important question.
B: Literature review
This section should contain your review of the literature surrounding your puzzle. This includes 1) competing
explanations for your empirical puzzle; 2) competing interpretations of the history / empirical evidence you intend to sift
through; and 3) any literature that provides insights into the best way to answer your empirical puzzle. We will devote
time in class to the literature review process.
*Part One (A&B combined) should comprise approximately 4-5 pages of your paper. You must have, at a minimum, 10
sources for your literature review. The text cannot count as one of your sources; neither can you count websites in your
literature review. Only academic articles (such as those found through databases on the TCU Library website) or
academic books may be used as sources. This portion is due by October 14 at 4:30 PM via eCollege and will count for
15% of your final overall grade. Late assignments will receive no more than ½ credit.
PART TWO: Formal model and methods
This section lays out your formal explanation for answer to the empirical question. You should be able to lay out your
model without reference to any particular international situation, though you can use relevant examples to explain your
logic. The model can draw upon models studied in class, models you come across in your readings, or be completely
original. I do not expect models approaching the level of complexity in the Kydd article we are reading together. In this
section, you are welcome to hand-draw decision trees or other figures if you are having trouble doing them in your
document.
Once you have laid out the model, you then need to explain how you will test it. In particular, you need to explain why
the cases you are choosing to explore with your model provide a good test of it and how broadly applicable you expect
your model to be.
*This section should comprise a significant portion of your paper (at least 1/3-1/2). The first draft of this section will be
due on November 15 at 4:30 PM either in paper form in my office or in electronic form via email and will count 15%
toward your final grade. Late assignments will receive no more than ½ credit.
PART THREE: Empirical test
You can use any form of empirical test in this particular paper. I highly recommend, however, that you look to the Kydd
article for a good example. Please note that other classes are much more focused on the testing of hypotheses; the
focus in this class is on developing and reading formal models. This latter statement is not an open door to take this
section less seriously, only to place the class in context.
Your grade on this section will suffer for the use of inaccurate historical details, for using unusual interpretations of
history that are not supported by at least two references, and the over-reliance on one or two sources. This section
needs a minimum of 8 sources. This means you are expected to have a minimum of 18 sources for the paper as a whole.
PART FOUR: Conclusion
Summarize your research question, your model, the evidence supporting your model and the significance of your
project. This section should take 1-2 pages.
PART FIVE: Bibliography
Follow the Chicago guide referenced earlier.
Your final paper is due December 4 by 5:00 on eCollege. If you can not turn it in electronically, I must have a paper
copy by 4:30 in the Political Science office. Your final paper should have a title page that includes your name and
paper title towards the top of the page and the following information toward the bottom:
Dr. Eric Cox
POSC 39023: Game Theory in IR
Fall 2012
December 4, 2012