Deterrence games and social choice: Asymmetry,aggregation of preferences,and a conjecture about uncertainty

Rational choice principles of mutual deterrence in 2 × 2 games elaborated for Prisoner's Dilemma and for Chicken are generalized to a variety of other, asymmetric games in which players’ preferences satisfy a Condition for Mutual Deterrence. Players’ preferences are taken to be aggregations from the preferences of subsidiary participants. It is shown that, unless all subsidiary actors hold deterrable preferences, the ordering of the player cannot be guaranteed to be deterrable. Uncertainty regarding the preferences of subsidiary actors is conjectured to make it more likely a player will adopt a deterrence strategy, no matter the opponent's preferences in fact.