Cantor’s game

 

 In Sunday’s Washington Post, Eric Cantor, a former House Majority Leader in the United States, explains that Republican politicians condone such lies as tales of rigged elections because of a “classic prisoner’s dilemma.  If the majority of Republican elected officials work together to confront the false narratives in our body politic…all Republicans will be better off. If instead most elected Republicans decide to protect themselves against a primary challenge through their silence or even their affirmation, then like the two prisoners acting only in their own interests, we will all be worse off.”

Cantor forgets that the prisoner’s dilemma is a dominant solution.  Regardless of what other GOP politicians do, your best strategy is to go along with the false narratives. Even if you and everyone else know that working together will benefit all, you will defect.

Sometimes a little math can actually help. The table below gives the payoffs for your game with another Republican politician.  In each cell, the first number is the payoff to you, and the second number is the payoff to the other GOP leader.  For example, if you denounce lies and the other Republican condones lies, then the payoff to you is zero points, and the payoff to the other Republican is 3. What will you decide to do?  Well, look at the second column, in which the other politician denounces lies.  If you also denounce lies, you will receive 2 points.  But if you condone them, you will receive 3 points. Since 3 is better than 2, you will tolerate false narratives when your fellow Republican denounces them.

Now suppose instead that the other GOP leader condones lies.  If you too denounce them, you will receive zero points.  If you condone whoppers, you will receive 1 point.  Again, your best strategy is to condone.

Since the other Republican faces the same dilemma as you do, he too will tolerate lies.  (Check it out for yourself by comparing payoffs to the other Republican in each row.) So the solution to the game is for you and your peer to condone baseless stories…even though you both would have gained by denouncing them (each player would get 2 points rather than 1).  This is the solution even if you and the other Republican know that the two of you would have gained had you both denounced lies.

   

You/Other GOP leader	Denounce lies	Condone lies
Denounce lies	2, 2	0,3
Condone lies	3,0	1,1

 

Cantor continues: “…Denouncing the false narratives and the conspiracy theories is the first step to winning back the college-educated, suburban and young voters Republicans have lost.” Without a doubt. But the problem is to convince every GOP politician that all others will act decently if she does. Lacking a solution to that problem, the Grand Old Party will blow itself up.

A similar game occurs in much of Central Asia as well as in the trans-Caucasian region and, for that matter, in Belarus and Russia.  Members of the party in power will assert that elections are free and fair, especially when they aren’t.  If all members will concede that elections are unfair, the party may gain supporters in the long run for its honesty. But if one member of the ruling power comes clean, he will lose the President’s support, regardless of whether his colleagues also tell the truth. So the safe thing for the member is to go along with the gag.   – Leon Taylor tayloralmaty@gmail.com

 

Good reading

Eric Cantor.  Many of my fellow politicians won’t tell voters the truth. The result was Jan. 6. Washington Post, January 31, 2021.

Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff.  Thinking Strategically.  Norton, 1993.