Okay, let’s talk about the Prisoner’s Dilemma. In game theory, the Prisoner’s Dilemma is used try to understand, hypothetically, how people choose their options in different situations. The classic situation posits 2 prisoners and what they can achieve if they choose to either confess (cooperate) or not (defect).

As you can see, by the chart (I’ve added some colour to mine, nice effect I think), the best possible outcome for both prisoners is if they both confess (cooperate). As an example of another outcome, if prisoner B doesn’t cooperate and prisoner A does; then B wins and A loses. If neither of them confesses, however, it doesn’t go any better for either prisoner: their outcome is mediocre for both of them.

If you play successive iterations of this game, the prisoners will be able to ‘get even’ with one another and make strategic decisions not available in the one-off game. Then, all kinds of outcomes can happen. The point of the game is that the ‘rational actor’ will always choose to not to cooperate., because that’s the only way he/she can get all the beans: I win, you lose. Of course, the rational actor can only make these decisions in the context of the game: in life, human decisions are far more complicated.

Now, it’s possible, if the game is iterated enough times you can achieve cooperation (it’s called a Nash equilibrium); but not cooperating still pays off the best in the zero-sum game.

Now, let’s move from the Prisoners’ dilemma to a representational democracy with winners-take-all elections. You would think that system, the U.S. form, would be the ultimate zero-sum game. However, it isn’t and it was designed to not be a zero-sum game (although the Framers had never heard of zero-sum).

You see the problem is that even though one party might control both houses of Congress, they will only have the majority. A majority, in U.S. politics, is not enough to absolutely control the outcome of policy. Why? The Framers decided that they didn’t want a majority to overwhelm the wishes of a minority (In this case, because the Framers were the minority, but more on that another time). So, in order to get anything done in Congress, both sides must cooperate. That’s why, when there is a majority that wants to push through its policies without cooperating with the other side they’ll end up with gridlock.

Okay, I will explain why zero-sum only achieves gridlock. In either house of Congress, a member might want to get a particular piece of legislation passed. It might be something that is important to his/her district/state, but not a priority to his/her party leaders. So, what does the member do? Perhaps she/he will walk across the aisle and asked another rep for help. It’s an “I’ll scratch your back, if you’ll scratch mine,” kind of cooperation known as “logrolling.” It can end up being a win-win situation for those reps who cooperate with one another.

So, when you have no one crossing the aisle; you can end up with gridlock. If the party leaders are especially strong and the ‘troops’ well-disciplined; this is usually true. In order to have successful logrolling, the party must not be exerting too much control.

Now, with proportional representational representation in, say, a parliamentary system, there is far more cooperation possible. But, if there aren’t regular elections, this can be a far less stable system (again, more on that another time). But, under any representational system cooperation is how things get done

So, what about our rational actor? As I have said, the rational actor is always rational. People don’t do irrational things (unless they’re actually irrational, but we’re not dealing with mentally instability here). It’s just that their rationality is tempered by all sorts of real-life dilemmas. So, our rational actor rep will cooperate because he/she wants something done in return. Ergo, cooperation is the bulwark of a representational form of governing.

Does that clear it up? Raise your hand if there are any questions. None? Okay, class dismissed.

Please give what you can to Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders).

And, of course