Social dilemmas, institutions, and the evolution of cooperation

Ben Jann and Wojtek Przepiorka

Introduction

The question of how cooperation and social order can evolve from a Hobbesian state of nature of a “war of all against all” (Hobbes [1668] 1982) has always been at the core of social scientific inquiry (e.g., Axelrod 1984; Bowles and Gintis 2011; Durkheim [1893] 1997; Ellickson 1991; Ostrom 1990; Sennett 2012). Various approaches exist for addressing this question, but the theoretical lens through which we view the phenomena presented in this book is methodological individualism (Weber [1922] 2013; Coleman 1990). Methodological individualism reminds us that cooperation and social order are macro-sociological phenomena that can be, and need to be, explained as a result of the goal-oriented behaviors of ...