Nepe, First, let me rant against your attitude, before I get to the mathematically sexy model. Only a Marxist like you think of this sort of PUBLICLY held kura-kani in terms of "who's right and who's wrong; and who's winning and who's losing in this debate". Only the-world-is-in-either-black-or-white mindset like yours tend to cast everything in starkly adversarial terms in a cheap effort to advance your political agenda. [This sort of thing is, by now, EXPECTED of you. And I might as well say that I have long STOPPED thinking of you as an intellectually honest person --- just someone who dutifully studied science up to a point and is now neither creative nor driven to advance knowledge in an open-minded and intellectually honest manner. But that's the way you are, right?] But those who keep an open-mind about this sort of thing WELCOME and even HUNGER FOR brutal criticisms/improvements/additions of his/her ideas so that further/deeper thinking might result. After all, what's the point of SHARING one's thougts in public if those ideas do not make others think hard enough to invite DIFFERENCES of opinion/disagreements so that one can revisit/remodify/deepen one's own thinking? Isn't this how knowledge advances, even in that part of New Jersey, Mr. So-called Scientist? That said, thanks for bringing this to Sajha. The name of the person here is NOT important; his thoughts are. After all, it's not everyday that one sees integral signs on Sajha. So chalk that up another reason to give money to Sajha. :-) ***** That said, the model -- like all game-theoretic models -- makes sense ONLY within its NARROW, tight logic. In order to advance kurakani in an open-minded way, let me offer some thoughts. QUOTE: "Both player understand that the king is likely to give up at some finite time T (No one can rule forever, afterall)." This is debatable on two counts. Yes, the present king can't rule for ever. But, in theory, he can be succeeded by his son, thus making the transition from him to the son a continuous affair, and thus elongating the time T. Alternatively, possibilities do not exist in one direction only : there exist (theoretical) possibilities that the Maoists might give up or that the parties might also give up being together with the Maoists. QUOTE: "If it is sufficiently late, then former coalition might think it will be better off taking part in the election." This appears to be the king's strategy -- to make everything sufficiently late. I would assign a greater weight to this condition. QUOTE: "Let F1(t) be the cumulative density function for the king’s surrender, such that there is a time T which is finite and at which F1(T)=1. As for coalition, if it goes Maoist’s way, it will never concede, but if it is prevailed by the parties, then there is a cumulative density function F2(t) of their giving up. We also assume that their discout rate is same, r." Again, this is a one-track logic, which holds the party-Maoist allaince constant or casts it in a positive light, while letting everything ONLY (around the king) change. Why not leave room for the Maoists' surrender or to the collapse of the alliance -- for there exist theoretical possibilities for such options too. To keep the math tidy, the model makes more debatable assumptions, such as: QUOTE "Now, if they don’t give up at T’, the king will think that the alliance has coopted the Maoists agenda and will surrender immediately." Another HUGE assumption: "Also, note that there are no subintervals in [0,T] at which both the parties and the king has flat cumulative distribution functions, nor can they put a positive weight at any point, creating some jump in their cdf." These assumptions fail to take account of, at the very least, what my critic AA (see above) wrote: That the assumptions take the 7 parties as a monolithic entity, and thus fail to take into account of inter and intra-party dynamics that affect the strength/durability of the alliance. The alliance is not something fixed; it too is buffeted by seen and unseen forces In summary: A good model; makes one to think. But, like most-game theory models, makes a set of assumptions and then confines the use of logic and math to stay within the boundaries created by those assumptions. Then again, game theory is an analytical tool with its limitations, and NOT a fool-proof crystal ball (as Nepe appears to make it out to be). The model's conclusion is PRIMARILY the same as mine: "Parties must be credibly theatening to the King". Keeping an open mind, in my NT article, I refrained from dictating the terms of that threat to the parties; while the model-maker, behind all the fancy math, lets his biases show by refusing to consider alternative scenarios and hammering only one point home: That the King must surrender. No wonder Nepe loves and hugs him. Thanks, and feel free to disagree. oohi ashu