Some Contributions by Thomas Schelling to the Understanding of Social Processes

Abstract

Often related to rational actor theory, game theory and the context of the Cold War, Thomas Schelling has produced an iconoclastic work and occupied an original position in the American scientific field, if only because of his strong propensity for interdisciplinarity. Keen to scrutinize the “imperatives of action”, his work opens up stimulating avenues for research as long as they are crossed with those of other authors and types of approach. For example, his concept of focal point can renew the approach of charisma. Finally, his theory of interdependent decisions and his insistence on the importance of tacit coordination question the exclusive (upward or downward) conceptions of causation, prompting us to think in terms of spiral causation and specular games, those mirror games in which actors are taken and where the processes of self-amplification originate.