Beyond the Prisoners' Dilemma
Making Game Theory a Useful Part of Undergraduate
International Relations Classes1
George Ehrhardt
While game theory has a well-established place in the international relations literature, it still has
not found a similar place in the undergraduate classroom. With few exceptions, it only appears in
introductory textbooks as the nuclear arms race application of the prisoners' dilemma.
The fault for this gap, I believe, lies with those of us who use game theory in our own work.
We have failed to lay out exactly what game theory can offer the undergraduate curriculum, and
have not demonstrated how to integrate it into a standard class. In this paper, I hope to correct
this situation by describing what game theory can add to undergraduate understanding and
offering concrete advise for its implementation