Chapter 1. Analyzing Politics

Introduction: What is Politics?

Whether you like it or not, politics matters. An American political scientist Harold Lasswell (1936) said politics is about “who gets what, when, and how?” Questions related to politics are everywhere and important. Should the state provide health care services to its citizens? How high should taxes be and who should pay them? Who should own guns? Should capital punishment remain legal, and when is it allowable to use it? When should we go to war with another country? If a war breaks out, who is going to fight the war? Should we erect tariffs on certain imports, and how high should the tariffs be? And, after all, who makes all these important decisions? The study of politics involves understanding the mechanisms for making decisions about “who gets what, when, and how?”

Politics as a Game

Politics is structurally a lot like games. They both involve different people who may have different preferences and have stakes in the outcomes. People’s ability to obtain preferred outcomes at least partly depends on the choices made by others. Everyone, therefore, cares about the choices that everyone else makes, and this encourages strategic interaction among actors. Their choices are also constrained by the existing rules. The key elements and questions that are common in games and politics are: Who are the key players? What do they value? What actions (or strategies) are available to them? What rules constrain or influence actors’ choices and behavior?

The game-like nature of politics is obvious in many situations—when the US president negotiates denuclearization of North Korea with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, when members of Congress consider alternative tax bills, when candidates stock war chests for elections, and when abortion supporters and opponents try to influence laws.

You may associate games with having fun and think that since the stakes of politics are serious, we should not use this word. By no means using the “game” analogy to analyze politics implies that politics is a frivolous activity. You are correct in thinking that politics is a serious game that impacts the lives of many people.

Let’s examine a few examples of politics to understand the game-like nature of politics.

Strategic Voting

Political scientists have long studied strategic voting by individuals. In an election, a naive observer may think that people vote for their most preferred candidate or party. That would be great if the candidates that voters favor most have real chances of winning. Yet, sometimes that is not the case. What if the candidate some voters really like has no chance of winning? In such cases, they may abandon the candidate and vote for another candidate in order to prevent a candidate they dislike from winning. When voters do this, we say they are voting strategically. Strategic voting is a common occurrence and everyone has a potential to be a strategic voter. Knowing this, politicians and parties have also tried to convince voters to vote strategically (of course in favor of them) to block the election of an undesired candidate.

Consider the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. The 2000 presidential election was a very close, contested race between Republican candidate George W. Bush and Democratic candidate Al Gore. Until after votes were tallied, we did not know who the winner was. Initial election returns showed that Gore had won the popular vote, but neither candidate had gained the 270 electoral votes required to win the presidency. It turned out that the results from the state of Florida would determine the winner. In Florida the tally showed Bush was leading Gore only by 537 votes. That margin was so close and the count was disputed, which mandated a recounting of the Florida votes. The outcome of the election was ultimately decided by the US Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of Bush in a 5-4 vote, thus giving Florida’s 25 electoral votes to Bush. With 271 electoral votes, Bush became the 43rd President of the United States.

This presidential election drew a lot of attention and outcry questioning the legitimacy of the United States’ unique institution, the Electoral College. While interesting, our focus is not on who really won the election or whether it was correct for the Supreme Court to decide the election outcome. Although in US presidential elections the candidates from the two major parties draw most attention, there are usually more than two candidates. In 2000, there was a third candidate, Ralph Nader of the Green Party.

Ralph Nader was considered to be more progressive than the Democratic candidate. His campaign addressed the pervasiveness of corporate power, environmental justice, universal healthcare, affordable housing, free college education, and workers' rights and living wages. In the 2000 election, Nader received 2.7 percent of the popular vote nationwide. In Florida where Bush defeated Al Gore only by 537 votes, Nader received 97,421 votes. This led many to claim that Nader acted as a third-party spoiler and was responsible for Gore's defeat. In 2004, Nader ran as an independent candidate. The election was a close race again, between Republican George W. Bush seeking reelection and Democrat John Kerry. This time, however, Nader faced an uphill battle. His campaign had hard times getting people to sign on the petitions to put Nader on the ballot. The 2004 election results indicated that Nader received only 0.38 percent of the popular vote, compared to 2.7 percent in 2000. This is a significant decline in the popular support for Nader. What happened? What changed so much in just four years? Do you think many former Nader supporters voted strategically? Some analysts think so. To prevent the repeat of the 2000 presidential election, it is possible that many former Nader voters abandoned the candidate and chose to vote for the Democratic candidate in order to block the reelection of President Bush.

The Cuban Missile Crisis

In October 1962, President John F. Kennedy learned that the Soviet Union was constructing nuclear missile sites in Cuba, which is located only 90 miles from the Florida coast. There had been charges for months of the Soviets building nuclear missile sites, which both the Kennedy administration and the Soviets had denied. But the missile construction was confirmed when a U-2 spy plane produced clear photographic evidence of medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic missile facilities being built on the island. On October 22, President Kennedy notified Americans in his televised speech about the presence of the nuclear missiles, and explained his decision to implement a naval blockade around Cuba. He made it clear that the United States was prepared to use military force if necessary to defuse this threat to national security. Many people feared the possibility of this escalating into an all-out nuclear war between the superpowers. Kennedy himself estimated the probability of this happening as “between one out of three and even.”

You can readily see the game-like nature of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the overall picture, President Kennedy determined that the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba was unacceptable. The challenge was to arrange their removal without escalating into a nuclear war that seemed imminent in many people’s eyes. Kennedy and his team of advisors and officials (called ExCom) discussed a wide range of options,

ExCom_Cuban Missile Crisis.jpg — [1.1] 29 October 1962 Executive Committee of the National Security Council meeting, White House, Cabinet Room.

from using diplomacy to launching air strikes and full-scale invasion of Cuba. How would the Soviets respond to each of these options? Would diplomacy put enough pressure on Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to remove the missiles from Cuba? If the US launched massive air raids to destroy the missiles, would it provoke a nuclear retaliation? Kennedy and his advisors needed to weigh each option carefully considering the Soviets’ likely response.

You can also see its game-like nature in many tense sub-episodes within the crisis where the framework of a game is useful to analyze the event. Let’s go back to the US choice. After several agonizing days, President Kennedy made his decision: the US imposed a naval blockade of the island to prevent the Soviets from delivering additional missiles and military equipment while giving an ultimatum to the USSR that the existing missiles be removed. Soviet ships prepared to run the blockade. A crucial moment arrived on October 24, when Soviet ships bound for Cuba came close to the line of US vessels enforcing the blockade. Both sides recognized the prospect of an escalation into a nuclear war but both wanted the other to be the one to back down. Political analysts understand this type of brinkmanship using the “game of chicken” where players benefit if the other side yields, and the worst outcome for both is when neither side swerves, resulting in an outright collision (or a nuclear war in this case). So the players’ optimal choice depends on what their opponent is doing: if the opponent yields, they should not, but if the opponent does not yield, then the player should yield. In this particular sub-episode, the Soviet ships stopped and nuclear war was avoided.

Embedded Video — U.S.-China Economic Game of Chicken. Source: Bloomberg Politics

Climate Change Negotiations

Scientists who have been studying the relationship between global climate and carbon in the atmosphere have demonstrated that significant, long-term changes in the global climate have been happening: more intense heat waves, melting glaciers, increasing sea levels, increased frequencies of more violent hurricanes, extended periods of droughts, to name some. The main culprits of this climate change are human activities that increase carbon in the atmosphere, such as burning fossil fuels and destroying forests. Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other substances we release into the atmosphere (called greenhouse gases) function like a blanket, trapping the Sun’s heat, causing the planet to warm. Scientists warn us that unless we do something about it, there will be dire consequences. Since climate change affects everyone in this planet, you would think that it would not be difficult for governments of all countries to come together to work out solutions to curb greenhouse gas emissions. However, global climate change negotiations have faced significant challenges. One of the most recent challenges came from the US government.

On June 1, 2017, President Donald Trump’s announcement that the United States was withdrawing from the 2015 Paris climate change agreement unsettled the world. The Paris agreement established a global target to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, primarily by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. One hundred ninety-five countries have ratified the treaty and agreed to strengthen their efforts to monitor and cut greenhouse gases. Why would President Trump withdraw the US from the agreement, and what effect might it have on other countries and climate change?

President Trump cited the “unfairness” and “economic burdens” of the Paris agreement on the US. He estimated that if implemented, it would cost the US $3 trillion in lost GDP and 6.5 million industrial jobs. So the US would have possible short-term benefits by withdrawing from the agreement so that it could maintain flexibility in how to promote economic growth while free-riding on other countries’ efforts to combat climate change. However, the US is the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China (and cumulatively the largest producer), and without US cooperation, it would be difficult to achieve the agreement’s goals. This puts other countries in a difficult position. Why should they sacrifice their economic growth and budget trying to help achieve the agreement’s goals, especially since without the US, they would be unlikely to achieve them? The political leaders of other countries also face domestic pressures for jobs and energy resources, so they may also leave the agreement, putting the system at risk of breaking down.

This climate change example illustrates a situation known as the prisoner’s dilemma. It explains a situation where people do not want to work together even when it is beneficial to do so, resulting in a socially worst outcome, in this case the continued threats of climate change that is in everyone’s interest to avert. Although the prisoner’s dilemma predicts lack of cooperation and collectively undesirable outcomes, it is possible to change people’s behavior. Under what conditions do you think people or governments are more likely to cooperate?

Recapitulation

As these examples show, politics and games have many elements in common because to make the best outcome, political actors often have to make decisions considering other actors’ actions and reactions within the constraints of rules and institutions. Hence, to understand politics we need to identify key actors, their goals and values, the range of alternative options available to them, and existing rules of the game. That means that it is essential for us to understand where their values come from, as well as the formal institutions and informal practices that may constrain actors’ behavior.

Image Citation

[1.1] Image courtesy of The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston in the public domain.

Notes

Lasswell, Harold D. 1936. Politics: Who Gets What, When, How. New York: Whittlesey House.

Introduction to Political Science

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