caa a22 4500 386342733 CHVBK 20180307111759.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e198903 xx s 000 0 eng 10.2307/1956435 doi S0003055400082265 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.2307/1956435 Tsebelis George University of California, Los Angeles The Abuse of Probability in Political Analysis: The Robinson Crusoe Fallacy [Elektronische Daten] [George Tsebelis] The decision to stay at home when you have no umbrella and rain is probable is an appropriate problem for decision theory. The decision to speed when you are in a hurry and the police might be patrolling is a game against a rational opponent. Treating the latter like a problem for decision theory is what I call the Robinson Crusoe fallacy. It is quite common and leads to incorrect conclusions. If the game has no pure strategy equilibrium, changes in the payoffs to a player affect not that player's strategy but the strategy of the opponent in equilibrium. For example, modifying the size of the penalty does not affect the frequency of crime commitment at equilibrium, but rather the frequency of law enforcement. I provide examples of this fallacy in regulation, international economic sanctions, and organization theory and argue that it stems from inappropriate use of the concept of probability. Copyright © American Political Science Association 1989 American Political Science Review Cambridge University Press 83/1(1989-03), 77-91 0003-0554 83:1<77 1989 83 PSR https://doi.org/10.2307/1956435 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.2307/1956435 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Tsebelis George University of California, Los Angeles NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- American Political Science Review Cambridge University Press 83/1(1989-03), 77-91 0003-0554 83:1<77 1989 83 PSR CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge