The Attack‐and‐defense Group Contests: Best Shot Versus Weakest Link

The Optimal Defense of Networks of Targets

“…In contrast to Clark and Konrad (), we find that when the factors influencing target outcomes are explicitly captured in the model, with unmodeled factors or “noise” playing little or no role, attackers utilize a stochastic guerrilla warfare strategy in all equilibria, which for the special case that the supranetwork consists of a single weakest‐link network involves a single random target being attacked but with positive probability each target is chosen as the one to be attacked . Interestingly, this single attack feature also arises in Chowdhury and Topolyan () who examine a group‐contest version of Clark and Konrad () in which the force allocations of a group of attackers are aggregated according to the maximum effort, or best‐shot, of the group and the force allocations of a group of defenders are aggregated according to the minimum effort, or weakest‐link, of the group and successful attack or defense is a public good across the group of attackers and defenders, respectively . In that context, Chowdhury and Topolyan () find that free‐riding effects among the group of attackers give rise to a single attacker allocating a strictly positive level of force in equilibrium.…”

“…Interestingly, this single attack feature also arises in Chowdhury and Topolyan () who examine a group‐contest version of Clark and Konrad () in which the force allocations of a group of attackers are aggregated according to the maximum effort, or best‐shot, of the group and the force allocations of a group of defenders are aggregated according to the minimum effort, or weakest‐link, of the group and successful attack or defense is a public good across the group of attackers and defenders, respectively . In that context, Chowdhury and Topolyan () find that free‐riding effects among the group of attackers give rise to a single attacker allocating a strictly positive level of force in equilibrium.…”

The Max-Min Group Contest: Weakest-link (Group) All-Pay Auction

“…Kolmar and Rommeswinkel () use a Constant Elasticity of Substitution impact function ranging from perfect substitute to weakest link and pin down the convergence conditions for equilibria. All these studies assume that every group follows the same impact function, but Chowdhury and Topolyan () analyze a group contest in which it is possible for different groups to follow different impact functions and fully characterize equilibria.…”

Resolving attacker-defender conflicts through intergroup negotiation

“…As in individual attack-defense conflicts, intergroup conflict often arises because attackers seek an improvement over their status quo that defenders seek to protect. Thus, such conflicts are captured as team-level variants of the Best-Shot/Weakest Link Game (Chowdhury et al 2013;Chowdhury & Topolyan 2016a;Note 4) and the Intergroup Aggressor-Defender Contest (IAD-C; De Dreu et al 2016a) in which individual contributions are modeled continuously rather than binary. For example, assume an equal number of members in the two rivaling groups, with N = N A = N D .…”