text: Motivated by the difficulty of effecting fundamental change in the architecture of the Internet, in this paper, we study from a theoretical perspective the question of how individuals can join forces toward collective ventures. To that end, we draw on an elementary concept in Internet systems engineering, namely, that of incremental deployability, which we study mathematically and computationally. For example, we show that incremental deployability is at least as general a concept as the Nash equilibrium (in that the latter can be derived from the former). We then draw on this foundation to design and analyze institutional mechanisms that are not only promising to bootstrap emerging Internet architectures but they also have broader applications in social organization beyond its predominant market (and finance)-based character.
  @cite_36: 1. The stag hunt Part I. Location: 2. Bargaining with neighbors 3. Stag hunt with neighbors Part II. Signals: 4. Evolution of inference 5. Cheap talk Part III. Association: 6. Choosing partners 7. Coevolution of structure and strategy.
  @cite_24: Preface to the second edition Preface to the original edition Acknowledgments 1. Sex and justice 2. Fairness and commitment 3. Mutual aid 4. Correlated convention 5. The evolution of meaning Postscript Notes References Index.
summary: The archetypical model to study the evolution of cooperation in society is the prisoner's dilemma. The stag hunt is the archetypical model for the study of coordination. But as @cite_36 notes the models are related: Iterated prisoner's dilemma with an infinite number of stages can assume the form of a stag hunt. The literature on the game-theoretic study of cooperation and coordination (starting with ) has been concerned with the emergence of cooperative phenomena without a centralized entity to facilitate their manifestation. For example, @cite_24 studies how signaling systems can facilitate coordination. In this paper, we study the emergence of cooperation with the assistance of an exterior to the players entity that is able to enforce commitments but our analysis suggests that players may coordination while altogether eschewing commitments.