Incorporating Misperception into the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution

A flexible hypergame methodology is designed and implemented for modeling misperceptions by participating decision makers (DMs) in a conflict having two or more DMs within the framework of the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution (GMCR). This comprehensive approach allows one or more of the DMs to have misunderstandings about the actual situation. Moreover, the methodology can account for misperceptions founded upon other misunderstandings such that different levels of misperception exist. This improved methodology can handle a DM's misperception about itself as well as its perceptions about its opponents. To accomplish this, the options or courses of action of each DM in a conflict are categorized according to various types of misperceptions that can occur either due to others or the particular DM. Furthermore, the union of all possible kinds of option perceptions creates the universal set of options for each DM, which in turn can be extended across all DMs in the dispute to generate the universal set of states or possible scenarios for the hypergame. The universal set of states permits the DMs to experience and view the dispute independently, yet allows an analyst to distinguish between the states that are commonly recognized by all DMs and those that are individually misperceived. Furthermore, DMs' preferences are expressed in a relative fashion by pairwise comparisons between any pair of states, thereby allowing the hypergame in graph form to accommodate both transitive and intransitive preference structures. A general stability analysis procedure is developed to analyze a hypergame under any level of perception. Within this approach, two techniques are developed: one to analyze each DM's subjective game or hypergame and another to analyze and predict the equilibria for the overall hypergame. Moreover, to study the effects of DMs' misperceptions on the outcomes of the dispute, the overall hypergame equilibria are categorized based on the type of misperceptions into eight classes of equilibria. To test and refine the hypergame methodology as well to apply it in practice, three case studies are investigated. In particular, the 2011 conflict between North and South Sudan over South Sudanese oil exports, as well as the 1956 nationalization of the Suez Canal dispute, are investigated within the paradigm of a first-level hypergame in graph form, which is a decision situation in which at least one DM has a misperception about the conflict situation, and neither the DM who misperceives the circumstance nor any of the other DMs are aware of this misunderstanding. Additionally, a detailed case study about the hydropolitical conflict among the Eastern Nile Countries over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is investigated within the structure of a second-level hypergame in graph form, in which at least one DM is aware of another DM's misperception. Interesting strategic insights found in these case studies confirm the distinct advantages of utilizing the new hypergame methodology in graph form

The Second-Order Impact of Relative Power on Outcomes of Crisis Bargaining: A Theory of Expected Disutility and Resolve

How does structure shape behavior and outcomes in crisis bargaining? Formal bargaining models of war rely on expected utility theory to describe first-order effects, whereby the payoffs of war determine actors’ “resolve” to fight as a function of costs and benefits. Value preferences of risk and future discounting are routinely treated as predefined and subjective individual attributes, outside the strategic context of bargaining or independent from expected utility. However, such treatment fails to account for context-conditional preferences sourcing from actors’ expectations of relative gain or loss. Drawing on a wealth of experimental evidence from behavioral economics, but without departing from rational choice or compromising theoretical parsimony, this dissertation proposes a systematic differentiation of value preferences conditional on anticipated gain/loss, i.e., the endogenous shift in power bargaining is expected to produce. Whereas the utility of gain incentivizes a challenge to the status quo, the disutility of loss imposes reactive resolve via asymmetrical risk-acceptance and lower discounting of future payoffs. The proposed theory of reactive resolve, thus, reveals the second-order impact of structural conditions on behavior and outcomes in crisis bargaining. Short of this behavioral effect, bargaining models exhibit a tendency of automatic adjustment of benefits which fails to capture the very essence of conflict and encourages erroneous hypotheses about the role of superiority, such as the nuclear superiority hypothesis reviewed and rejected as part of this research. The prescriptive and predictive inaccuracy of the standard rationalist approach is evident in the solution of the most fundamental bargaining problem - a credible commitment problem arising in the context of “bargaining over future bargaining power” (Fearon 1996). By formally integrating and simulating expected gain- and loss-induced preferences, this study demonstrates substantial deviations from previous results. Based on the findings, several theoretical and empirical implications are derived concerning the mechanism of crisis escalation, the relationship between the distribution of power and the likelihood of war, and the challenge to coercion. The prescribed mechanism is then empirically tested against cases of compellence and deterrence, including two of the most significant cases of nuclear crisis, using process tracing as a qualitative tool of causal inference

A Temporal Framework for Hypergame Analysis of Cyber Physical Systems in Contested Environments

Game theory is used to model conflicts between one or more players over resources. It offers players a way to reason, allowing rationale for selecting strategies that avoid the worst outcome. Game theory lacks the ability to incorporate advantages one player may have over another player. A meta-game, known as a hypergame, occurs when one player does not know or fully understand all the strategies of a game. Hypergame theory builds upon the utility of game theory by allowing a player to outmaneuver an opponent, thus obtaining a more preferred outcome with higher utility. Recent work in hypergame theory has focused on normal form static games that lack the ability to encode several realistic strategies. One example of this is when a player’s available actions in the future is dependent on his selection in the past. This work presents a temporal framework for hypergame models. This framework is the first application of temporal logic to hypergames and provides a more flexible modeling for domain experts. With this new framework for hypergames, the concepts of trust, distrust, mistrust, and deception are formalized. While past literature references deception in hypergame research, this work is the first to formalize the definition for hypergames. As a demonstration of the new temporal framework for hypergames, it is applied to classical game theoretical examples, as well as a complex supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) network temporal hypergame. The SCADA network is an example includes actions that have a temporal dependency, where a choice in the first round affects what decisions can be made in the later round of the game. The demonstration results show that the framework is a realistic and flexible modeling method for a variety of applications

Preference Uncertainty and Trust in Decision Making

A fuzzy approach for handling uncertain preferences is developed within the paradigm of the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution and new advances in trust modeling and assessment are put forward for permitting decision makers (DMs) to decide with whom to cooperate and trust in order to move from a potential resolution to a more preferred one that is not attainable on an individual basis. The applicability and the usefulness of the fuzzy preference and trust research for giving an enhanced strategic understanding about a dispute and its possible resolution are demonstrated by employing a realworld environmental conflict as well as two generic games that represent a wide range of real life encounters dealing with trust and cooperation dilemmas. The introduction of the uncertain preference representation extends the applicability of the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution to handle conflicts with missing or incomplete preference information. Assessing the presence of trust will help to compensate for the missing information and bridge the gap between a desired outcome and a feared betrayal. These advances in the areas of uncertain preferences and trust have potential applications in engineering decision making, electronic commerce, multiagent systems, international trade and many other areas where conflict is present. In order to model a conflict, it is assumed that the decision makers, options, and the preferences of the decision makers over possible states are known. However, it is often the case that the preferences are not known for certain. This could be due to lack of information, impreciseness, or misinformation intentionally supplied by a competitor. Fuzzy logic is applied to handle this type of information. In particular, it allows a decision maker to express preferences using linguistic terms rather than exact values. It also makes use of data intervals rather than crisp values which could accommodate minor shifts in values without drastically changing the overall results. The four solution concepts of Nash, general metarationality, symmetric metarationality, and sequential stability for determining stability and potential resolutions to a conflict, are extended to accommodate the new fuzzy preference representation. The newly proposed solution concepts are designed to work for two and more than two decision maker cases. Hypothetical and real life conflicts are used to demonstrate the applicability of this newly proposed procedure. Upon reaching a conflict resolution, it might be in the best interests of some of the decision makers to cooperate and form a coalition to move from the current resolution to a better one that is not achievable on an individual basis. This may require moving to an intermediate state or states which may be less preferred by some of the coalition members while being more preferred by others compared to the original or the final state. When the move is irreversible, which is the case in most real life situations, this requires the existence of a minimum level of trust to remove any fears of betrayal. The development of trust modeling and assessment techniques, allows decision makers to decide with whom to cooperate and trust. Illustrative examples are developed to show how this modeling works in practice. The new theoretical developments presented in this research enhance the applicability of the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution. The proposed trust modeling allows a reasonable way of analyzing and predicting the formation of coalitions in conflict analysis and cooperative game theory. It also opens doors for further research and developments in trust modeling in areas such as electronic commerce and multiagent systems

Attitudes and Coalitions in Brownfield Redevelopment and Environmental Management

Conflict analysis tools are applied to brownfield negotiations in order to investigate the impacts of coalition formation and a decision maker’s (DM’s) attitudes upon the successful resolution of brownfield disputes. The concepts of attitudes within the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution (GMCR) is defined and subsequently are used, along with coalition analysis methods, to examine the redevelopment of the Kaufman Lofts property and the resolution of a post-development dispute involving Eaton’s Lofts, both located in downtown Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. Within the model of the Kaufman Lofts redevelopment, the project is broken down into three connected project conflicts: property acquisition, remediation selection and redevelopment; with the graph model applied to all three conflict nodes. The application of attitudes shows the impact of cooperation between local governments and private developers in the formation of a coalition that mutually benefits all parties. Coalition analysis, applied to the redevelopment selection conflict between Heritage Kitchener and the private developer in the Kaufman Lofts project, illustrates the importance of close collaboration between the local government and the developer. Systems methodologies implemented here for the examination of brownfield redevelopments are examined and contrasted with the economic and environmental tools commonly used in the redevelopment industry. Furthermore, coalition formation within GMCR is used to examine the negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol, to demonstrate that formal conflict resolution methods can be utilized in other areas of environmental management

Studying Economic Sanctions Using The Graph Model for Conflict Resolution

The methodology of the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution (GMCR) is improved to show how a Graph Model can account for strength of sanctions, to introduce a trigger option to simplify a model, and to connect a Graph Model with the concept of BATNA (Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement). Two real life applications are provided to illustrate these advances: the OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries)/US Shale oil producers conflict, and the North-South Sudan oil pipeline dispute. Sometimes disputants attempt to manipulate behavior by threatening sanctions. Clearly, the success of this threat depends on the strength of the sanctions. This type of conflict is represented in this thesis by two identical graphs with different preferences reflecting the strength of the sanction. Both of the real world conflicts examples are analyzed in this way. The concept of a Conflict Trigger (CT) is introduced to simplify a Graph Model. If the CT is selected, the number of states in the model can be significantly reduced, thereby, simplifying the analysis. The North/South Sudan conflict illustrates the employment of a CT for reducing the complexity of the analysis. BATNA is a widely utilized principle used in the analysis of negotiations. Because many negotiations can be captured in a Graph Model, it is reasonable to ask how BATNA is connected. The four steps of BATNA are compared to a typical Graph Model of a negotiation to identify similarities and differences. The use of BATNA’s reservation value in combination with a Graph Model of a negotiation gives insight into when a negotiator would accept an offer. The application of BATNA in the North/South Sudan conflict demonstrates its value

A Multi-Stage Graph Model Analysis for the International Toxic Waste Disposal Conflict

A generic conflict model is developed to analyze international toxic waste disposal issues, and then, to provide feasible strategic resolutions for this serious environmental dispute. With the rapid growth of the global economy, toxic waste traffic from the advanced to developing nations has become a serious side effect of this globalization. The illegal transboundary movement of toxic wastes not only aggravates the burden on the poorer nations, but also negatively impacts the worldwide environment. In this thesis, the ongoing toxic waste disputes are divided into two stages consisting of the dumping prevention and dispute resolution stages. The analyses based on the methodology of Graph Model for Conflict Resolution are used in both stages in order to grasp the structure and implications of the conflict from a strategic viewpoint. The in-depth modeling of the toxic waste dumping disputes, which consist of historical and generic situations, specifies the involved parties and their options. By synthesizing the economic, political and legal factors, the relative preferences for each party can be determined. The Graphical User Interface (GUI) of the Decision Support System (DSS) GMCR II simplifies the processing of calculations. The analytical research furnishes investigators or other interested parties with possible resolutions for the disputes arising from an international waste dumping event. Sensitivity analyses are also conducted to provide a comprehensive understanding of the different situations that may occur in real-world cases. The case study of the Ivory Coast waste dumping controversy is used to demonstrate how to practically implement the generic multi-stage graph model