ABSTRACT
Most of the preceding discussion has involved the static analysis of collective action, that is, analysis of one-time-only action. As Barry and Taylor have argued specifically for the Prisoner’s Dilemma as a model of social life, 1 and as sociologists and anthropologists would argue more generally for social choice, such static analysis is fundamentally wrong-headed for many contexts of greatest interest to us. Most interesting group choices are probably made by groups that are ongoing; often those choices are even provoked by ongoing or repeated choice problems. One would wish to analyze the incentive structure in iterated, not one-shot, Prisoner’s Dilemma to explain the choices of ongoing groups. This is done, sometimes only implicitly, in Olson’s by-product theory and in the political entrepreneurship arguments of Wagner and of Frohlich, Oppenheimer, and Young, which were briefly discussed in chapter 2. It is done more explicitly and resolutely in Taylor’s analysis of cooperation in anarchy. 2
