The purpose of the paper is to concisely present basic applications of game theory models for a scientific description of political violence. The paper is divided into four parts. The first part discusses the key theoretical issues including: the assumption of the players’ rationality, the assumption of the players’ common knowledge of their rationality, the Nash equilibrium concept, Pareto optimality, the Nash arbitration scheme and the concept of evolutionarily stable strategies. The second and third parts contain examples of uses of selected models of classical and evolutionary games in the studies on political violence. The following two interaction schemes were used to that end: the Prisoner’s Dilemma and Chicken. The paper ends with a summary and discussion. The key feature of the discussed models is their methodological simplicity, as demonstrated by the lack of need to use complicated mathematical methods. This is why the paper is mainly addressed to individuals who had not studied game theory before or who have insufficient knowledge in the field to conduct own studies.

Impact of Changes in the Electoral System in 2018 on the Political Position of Presidential Parties in Municipalities over 20,000 Inhabitants

The aim of the paper is to assess the impact of changes introduced in 2018 to the electoral system used in elections of the councils of municipals over 20,000 inhabitants on the political position of the parties backing selected mayors and presidents of cities. This research perspective is justified by the special role of these groups resulting from the system of the commune, in particular the method of election and irrevocability of the executive, that is forced to try to gain control over the decision-making process in the council. The study used the Shapley-Shubik strength index as that reflects the actual strength of a political party in a collegiate body better than the number of seats or participation in a mandate set. The results of the survey confirmed that the analyzed change weakened the position of the presidential parties in most of the analyzed aspects.