Your Prisoner’s Dilemma argument seems appealing—until you realize that electoral politics is an iterated game. The two players ought to be able to achieve an agreement. It is definitely not a zero-sum game. Both parties have a shared interest in keeping the country governable. They have apparently already discovered the virtues of Tit-for-Tat retaliation. Now if only the electorate were to provide a little added payoff to whichever side first makes an effort to be ‘nice’.
I once attended a business (soft skills) training seminar in which a variant of the Prisoner’s Dilemma was played. Two teams played PD against each other. But, within each team, it required a consensus decision (100% vote) to cause the team to cooperate. If any team member votes to defect, then the team as a whole must defect. The relevance to the question of civility between political parties should be obvious.
until you realize that electoral politics is an iterated game.
Only if you model each political party as the same entity over time. But Presidents are term-limited and losing in a general election often means a leadership change for the party. For some individual legislators the relevant time horizon is never more than two years away (and as in your training seminar, it only takes a few bad apples).
It is definitely not a zero-sum game. Both parties have a shared interested in keeping the country governable.
But this is a game-of-chicken-like incentive. They have incentive to swerve when the cars get too close, like maybe they’ll sit together for a speech after one of them is nearly killed in an assassination attempt; but that isn’t sufficient for general cooperation.
Now if only the electorate were to provide a little added payoff to whichever side first makes an effort to be ‘nice’.
Sure, it would be nice if defecting was counter productive- but the fact that the electorate always falls for the defection is what makes it a prisoner’s dilemma.
In any case, at this point both parties (though, I’d say the Republicans in particular) have pre-committed to defecting for the foreseeable future. When you use dehumanizing rhetoric to describe the opposition your allies will see compromise as treachery. In this case, you’ll face a well-funded primary challenge from your party’s ideological extreme. This can be useful if you want to be pre-committed into voting a particular way- but obviously it is extremely dangerous when used in a semi-iterated prisoner’s dilemma with certain high risks associated with D/D.
Every time I interact with you I think for a minute that you must be from Russia… heh.
Oh, I’m even more alien than that. I used to be a Republican!
Ha!
Though just to be clear since I might have gotten a downvote or two for the grandparent… I don’t mean to just be trashing Republicans. I think my claim that they are more pre-committed to defecting for the foreseeable future is justified by an objective consideration of the strength and organization of their class of activists and ideologues versus that of the Democrats. I don’t think it is mind-killing bias leading me to the conclusion that the Tea-party has had much greater success recently than the netroots or whatever you want to call the equivalent on the Left. I didn’t mean anything evaluative beyond that (I have my opinions but those probably are subject to bias).
(For the record I used to be a partisan, Left-wing Democrat. Now I’m vaguely aligned with that party but mostly for cultural and foreign policy reasons. Where I live, your vote doesn’t count if you’re not a Democrat. Ideologically I’m basically at the liberal-libertarian nexus.)
Your Prisoner’s Dilemma argument seems appealing—until you realize that electoral politics is an iterated game. The two players ought to be able to achieve an agreement. It is definitely not a zero-sum game. Both parties have a shared interest in keeping the country governable. They have apparently already discovered the virtues of Tit-for-Tat retaliation. Now if only the electorate were to provide a little added payoff to whichever side first makes an effort to be ‘nice’.
I once attended a business (soft skills) training seminar in which a variant of the Prisoner’s Dilemma was played. Two teams played PD against each other. But, within each team, it required a consensus decision (100% vote) to cause the team to cooperate. If any team member votes to defect, then the team as a whole must defect. The relevance to the question of civility between political parties should be obvious.
Only if you model each political party as the same entity over time. But Presidents are term-limited and losing in a general election often means a leadership change for the party. For some individual legislators the relevant time horizon is never more than two years away (and as in your training seminar, it only takes a few bad apples).
But this is a game-of-chicken-like incentive. They have incentive to swerve when the cars get too close, like maybe they’ll sit together for a speech after one of them is nearly killed in an assassination attempt; but that isn’t sufficient for general cooperation.
Sure, it would be nice if defecting was counter productive- but the fact that the electorate always falls for the defection is what makes it a prisoner’s dilemma.
In any case, at this point both parties (though, I’d say the Republicans in particular) have pre-committed to defecting for the foreseeable future. When you use dehumanizing rhetoric to describe the opposition your allies will see compromise as treachery. In this case, you’ll face a well-funded primary challenge from your party’s ideological extreme. This can be useful if you want to be pre-committed into voting a particular way- but obviously it is extremely dangerous when used in a semi-iterated prisoner’s dilemma with certain high risks associated with D/D.
Every time I interact with you I think for a minute that you must be from Russia… heh.
Thx for that insight. I’ll try to use it in my continuing struggle to promote discounting of expected future utilities.
Oh, I’m even more alien than that. I used to be a Republican!
Ha!
Though just to be clear since I might have gotten a downvote or two for the grandparent… I don’t mean to just be trashing Republicans. I think my claim that they are more pre-committed to defecting for the foreseeable future is justified by an objective consideration of the strength and organization of their class of activists and ideologues versus that of the Democrats. I don’t think it is mind-killing bias leading me to the conclusion that the Tea-party has had much greater success recently than the netroots or whatever you want to call the equivalent on the Left. I didn’t mean anything evaluative beyond that (I have my opinions but those probably are subject to bias).
(For the record I used to be a partisan, Left-wing Democrat. Now I’m vaguely aligned with that party but mostly for cultural and foreign policy reasons. Where I live, your vote doesn’t count if you’re not a Democrat. Ideologically I’m basically at the liberal-libertarian nexus.)