Game Theory: Climate Talks Destined to Fail: Scientific American: "Bueno de Mesquita makes a living by calculating the likely outcomes to various scenarios under the lens of game theory, a mathematical tool political scientists use to better understand how power relationships inform various strategies in negotiations. By applying numerical values to the influence and attitudes of actors, he has used his proprietary software to accurately predict the outcome of elections, foreign aid spending decisions and the Copenhagen talks.
His main argument: Governments probably won't conclude a major international treaty to reduce atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, ever. And even if they do, any such treaty won't actually work.
'Universal treaties have one of two qualities,' Bueno de Mesquita said in explaining the modeling. 'They don't ask people to change what they're doing, and so they're happy to sign on ... or it asks for fundamental changes in behavior and it lacks monitoring and sanctioning provisions that are credible.'"
