A Simple Model of Conflict

In recent years and especially after the Arab Spring, the world has experienced an increasing number of social conflicts and instability. The simple and generic analytical model developed in this book, bridges behavioral and classical socio-economic literature and can be generalized to a large variety of con¿icts. The model describes the clash between two sub-populations,one attempting to re-write the current (social) contract in its favor, the other to maintain the status quo. The free-rider problem obstructs the occurrence of a con¿ict, leading to a low probability of successful turn-over. Players belonging to the group, which is favorable to the con¿ict, will not join the revolutionaries, though doing so would be bene¿cial for the majority of players. Introducing an emotional component counter-acts the free-rider e¿ect and enables the model to predict the existence of two stable equilibria; one with high and another with no con¿ict potential. In addition, adapting a threshold approach by Granovetter, the likelihood of transition from no to high con¿ict equilibrium will vary positively with group size.