Once a competition gets dirty, you can't just tell everyone to "play fair" and expect things to go back to normal.
April 10, 2026
Original Paper
Tipping into Sabotage: Entry, Hysteresis, and Design Boundaries in Contests
SSRN · 6549918
The Takeaway
In business and politics, the shift from healthy competition to sabotage is like flipping a switch that can't be unflipped. Even if the original reason to cheat is removed, the lack of trust creates a trap where everyone keeps sabotaging each other indefinitely.
From the abstract
Stable competition can collapse into sabotage almostovernight—and restoring cooperation takes far longer than destroying it.In promotion tournaments, political campaigns, and procurement contests,the transition from clean to dirty play is abrupt rather than gradual, andboth regimes can coexist in the same competitive environment. Sabotageis a corner choice: the decision to initiate destructive effort is binary, sothe onset is a regime switch. The model delivers a computable tippingpoint, pinned