Lessons from the Portuguese Carnations Revolution of 1974 by a game theory approach

Resumo:

This paper analyses the Portuguese Carnations Revolution by a perspective of Game Theory. It concludes that the Democratization and the Decolonization Games achieved the expected Nash equilibrium in a relatively short period of time, whereas it took a longer period to achieve it on the Development Game. The players are the ruler (R), the people (P), the colonies (C) and the market (M). The 3Ds games are the MFA’s motto: Democratization (D1), Decolonization(D2) and Development (D3) games.

We present the game between the four players in the normal form. Each player can choose between (Di; NDi), for each i=1,2,3. The tentative conclusion is to see how April’s Carnations Revolution is the result of a pure three strategy Nash equilibria, among the four players. For the first tentative effort in modelling we assume perfect information. The results are consistent with the fact that playing 3Ds all players abiding by the rule (D1, D2, D3), and thus MFA’s motto is a pure strategy Nash equilibrium. A new optimal out of equilibrium historical counterfactual short analysis is done, and tries to provide and lay the foundations for a new economic historical method.