A game theoretic glance at the health care reform debate in the Senate offers lessons for advocates.
Attempts at successful persuasion need to take into account how people make decisions – not just what messages or messengers decision makers find compelling, but how those messages are strategically weighed. Decisions are not made in a vacuum; decisions are made in the context of something else. And, as I keep on about, people are not purely rational decision makers, carefully adding up expected utilities and carefully measuring options. We’re bears of little brains who muddle through the best we can.
One way to examine this muddling through is through the lens of game theory. (Think Professor John Nash in A Beautiful Mind). Game theory conceives of the world as a series of games – given an option, how will two or more people rationally respond? A disadvantage of game theory is that is tends to assume strictly rational behavior, something in which none of us engage; any theory of behavior with roots in mathematics will fall short because most of us are bad at math. But the tool can help advocates understand why some decisions are, or are not, being made and potentially how to force decisions in preferred directions.
A recent piece by Christopher Beam in Slate, The Senator’s Dilemma: What game theory can teach us about the fate of health care reform is an example of such an explanation. The essay looks at incentives and disincentives to Senate behavior and tries to explain the fate of health care using two games, the classic “prisoners dilemma” and “the battle of the sexes.” In both games the players want a mutually beneficial outcome, but the immediate or obvious course of action results in one, or both, not getting what they want.
The prisoner’s dilemma is not an ideal fit for political decision making because the preferred outcome benefits both players, but that is rarely the case in politics. As I wrote earlier this week, elections are zero-sum games for the participants. There is no “win/win” at the polls (as there is in prisoners dilemma).
The battle of the sexes is less elegant but more applicable. The game provides cautions about trying to get bi-partisan support (unless both husband and wife agree to go to an opera about boxing or a football game). What one wants necessarily denies what the other wants. There is no such thing as a sort of public option, or semi-mandates. A better strategy for both the spouses (and the Senate) is to find a third thing that is so far uncontested – find a place where there is no conflict, but that leaves open the option for conflict later. In this way both parties can work together to solve a problem while continuing to fight to deny the other political advantage. Common ground on health care would leave open the option to engage in partisan attacks on jobs for example.
This new ground may be less than ideal, but it doesn’t require giving up previously claimed gains; the solution might only be 80% of what each side wants, but in getting that 80% neither was required to give up 20%. In the battle of sexes example, one could imagine leaving the opera at intermission and seeing the second half of the game, which requires both sides giving up a lot. Another solution is to go to the beach – neither spouses first choice, but it requires neither partner to surrender either.
