Strategic Partnerships: An Evaluation of The Role of Member State's Dependence Level in the Formation of Alliances

Abstract

Historically, states have been motivated to protect themselves and ultimately embarked on security arrangements against a mutual adversary. Regardless of the reasons for defensive or aggressive pacts, the formation and internal consistency of an alliance have been a subject of considerable interest among the game theorists. This article examines the formation process of alliances in terms of game theory by evaluating the influence on the role of member states’ dependency level on an alliance. Drezner’s “conflict expectations model” is used in the theoretical framework of the article, which was determined by the formation of two separate game models in which states with or without a commitment to an alliance are the two players of the game. In the first model, the game ended in the status quo, the member state did not cooperate with the alliance, and therefore the game ended in a pure Nash equilibrium. In the second model, a utility function was added to change the vicious circle of the status quo, including the dependency of the member state to the alliance. As a result, when the function is included, the result of the game is different from the previous status quo. It is therefore argued that the dependence on alliance is related to the existence of bilateral relations of the states and consequently, their future expectations are a source of concern for relative gains. As dependency on an alliance increases, states will act in accordance with the second model, which will increase the likelihood of cooperation, rather than a concern for absolute gains as indicated in the first model.