Political Corruption and Public Activism: An Evolutionary Game-Theoretic Analysis

We study a two-population evolutionary game that models the role of public activism as a deterrent to political corruption. In particular, suppose that politicians can choose whether or not to engage in corruption, lowering the public good in exchange for personal gain, and citizens can choose whether or not to engage in public activism for corruption reform, influencing the rate of detection and severity of punishment of corrupt politicians. We study the Nash equilibria of this game and also conduct static and dynamic evolutionary analyses.

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