Marital Bargaining: Applications of Game Theory and Implications for Legal Policy

Book Abstract: This work is the result of a workshop organized by Mavis Maclean and held between May 26 and June 2, 1999, at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law (IISL) in O ati, Spain. It analyzes the concept of the family in the context of increasing challenges and questions created by multicultural societies in ever more complicated international and transnational legal contexts. How is the family defined across cultural and national divides? To what extent and under what conditions should any particular state intervene? The collected essays in this volume seek to answer these and other difficult questions through grounded empirical research and insightful appreciation of how political systems function in various countries. An underlying concern is to explore to what extent and under what terms will the family endure in the future as a basic unit of social management and control.