The Presidential Election Game may change the way you think about presidential elections and, for that matter, American politics in general. It is not filled with statistics about the voting behavior of citizens, nor does it give detailed histories of past campaigns. Rather, it is an analytic treatment of strategy in the race for the presidency, from the primaries to the general election. Using modern game theory and decision theory, Brams demonstrates why certain campaign strategies are more effective than others and supports his analysis with historical evidence.

The Presidential Election Game may change the way you think about presidential elections and, for that matter, American politics in general. It is not filled with statistics about the voting behavior of citizens, nor does it give detailed histories of past campaigns. Rather, it is an analytic treatment of strategy in the race for the presidency, from the primaries to the general election. Using modern game theory and decision theory, Brams demonstrates why certain campaign strategies are more effective than others and supports his analysis with historical evidence.

Voters today often desert a preferred candidate for a more viable second choice to avoid wasting their vote. Likewise, parties to a dispute often find themselves unable to agree on a fair division of contested goods. In "Mathematics and Democracy," Steven Brams, a leading authority in the use of mathematics to design decision-making processes, shows how social-choice and game theory could make political and social institutions more democratic. Using mathematical analysis, he develops rigorous new procedures that enable voters to better express themselves and that allow disputants to divide goods more fairly.

One of the procedures that Brams proposes is "approval voting," which allows voters to vote for as many candidates as they like or consider acceptable. There is no ranking, and the candidate with the most votes wins. The voter no longer has to consider whether a vote for a preferred but less popular candidate might be wasted. In the same vein, Brams puts forward new, more equitable procedures for resolving disputes over divisible and indivisible goods.

This illuminating and instructive survey demonstrates both the insights and the pitfalls that result from applying game theoretic models to the analysis of problems in political science. Using real-life examples, it shows how game theory can explain and elucidate complex political situations, from warfare to presidential vetoes. 1975 edition. 24 figures.

Fair Division, unlike most research on fairness in the social sciences and mathematics, is devoted solely to the analysis of constructive procedures for actually dividing things up and resolving disputes, including indivisible items or issues, such as the marital property in a divorce or sovereignty in an international dispute.

Steven J. Brams' Theory of Moves, though based on the classical theory of games, proposes major changes in its rules to render it a truly dynamic theory. By postulating that players think ahead not just to the immediate consequences of making moves, but also to the consequences of countermoves to these moves, counter-countermoves, and so on, it extends the strategic analysis of conflicts into the more distant future. Applied to a series of cases drawn from politics, economics, sociology, fiction, and the Bible, the theory provides not only an explanation of their outcomes but also shows why they unfolded as they did.