A Modal Logic for Coalitional Power in Games

M. Pauly
2002 Journal of Logic and Computation  
We present a modal logic for reasoning about what groups of agents can bring about by collective action. Given a set of states, we introduce game frames which associate with every state a strategic game among the agents. Game frames are essentially extensive games of perfect information with simultaneous actions, where every action profile is associated with a new state, the outcome of the game. A coalition of players is effective for a set of states in a game if the coalition can guarantee the
more » ... outcome of the game to lie in . We propose a modal logic (Coalition Logic) to formalize reasoning about effectivity in game frames, where ³ expresses that coalition is effective for ³. An axiomatization is presented and completeness proved. Coalition Logic provides a unifying game-theoretic view of modal logic: Since nondeterministic processes and extensive games without parallel moves emerge as particular instances of game frames, normal and non-normal modal logics correspond to 1-and 2-player versions of Coalition Logic. The satisfiability problem for Coalition Logic is shown to be PSPACE-complete.
doi:10.1093/logcom/12.1.149 fatcat:qqqcgbnuxfghvcac3rlzesngru