Why Global Integration May Lead to Terrorism: An Evolutionary Theory of Mimetic Rivalry

We study the emergence of the recent form of terrorism using evolutionary game theory. The model is an economic interpretation of René Girard's theory of mimetic rivalry. This theory presents terrorism as the result of competition between countries, when the desire to imitate the leading country is frustrated by the impossibility of doing so. We define a multi-country setup where interaction takes place in an international trade game, which is a coordination game. Countries follow a simple behavioral rule trying to reduce the gap between the maximal payoff obtained and their own payoff. In a coordination game, this may lead to mimetic rivalry behavior, that is the deliberate choice of a strategy degrading the situation of the leading country. Paradoxically, we find that the desire of convergence may lead to a more partitioned world economy.