Ongoing relationships make defection costly through forgone future gains

Evidence

While their relationship was ongoing, Trifonov and the lieutenant colonel could each end their cooperation at any moment. Trifonov could have cheated at any time along the way, but then he might have lost more on forgone future interactions than he would have gained on his single, cheating defection, and he would have cheated a very powerful man. This was true so long as the interaction was expected to continue indefinitely. Once the interaction was to end, however, the incentive to the next mover was clearly to withdraw from the cooperation. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 62

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the iterated-game logic that anchors Hardin’s encapsulated-interest model — the mechanism (forgone future interactions) rather than moral character explains trustworthiness.
• XREF: Mirrors the repeated-game logic from Milgrom’s law-merchant work — infrequent or terminating interaction undermines cooperative equilibria.