Relative Gains Research Project

David L. Rousseau
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
235 Stiteler Hall
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104
E-mail: rousseau@sas.upenn.edu
Phone: (215) 898-6189
Fax: (215) 573-2073

Realists argue that power is by definition a relative concept and that due to the anarchical nature of the international system any gain in power by one state represents an inherent threat to its neighbors. Realist, therefore, assume that any potential exchange between states must exactly preserve the pre-existing balance of power (i.e., they focus on relative gains). In contrast, liberal institutionalists assume that state leaders will accept any agreement which makes the state better off (i.e., they focus on absolute gains). The relative gains project seeks to probe these assumptions using survey research, game theoretic experiments, quantitative analysis, historical case studies, and elite interviews.

• Papers
  • "The Perception of Gains from Cooperation in International Relations: Comparing Japanese and American Responses."
  • "Relative or Absolute Gains: Beliefs and Behavior in International Relations."
• English Language Links
  • English 45-Question Survey
  • English Prisoner's Dilemma Web Page
• Japanese Language Links
  • Japanese 45-Question Survey
  • Japanese Prisoner's Dilemma Web Page
  • Note: In order to view the Japanese web pages, you must load the Japanese fonts on to your machine, select "edit/preferences/appearance/font/for encoding/japanese", and then "view/character set/japanese(autodetect). The Japanese font package requires a Windows Operating System Update which is available for free from Microsoft.Com. Alternatively, Netscape has recently released international browsers capabable of displaying many languages (http://home.netscape.com/intl/download/index.html).