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from the voters-to-be-prosecuted-for-conspiracy-to-corrupt dept.
Steven I. Weiss writes in The Atlantic how game theory can shed light both on what is happening in Washington and on how the bargaining power of its negotiating parties may evolve over time and comes to the conclusion that hypocrisy is essential to the functioning of Congress - in fact it's the only tool legislators have after they've rooted out real corruption. "Legislators do not pay each other for votes, and every member of a parliament in a democratic society is legally equal to every member," writes Congressman Barney Frank in his new memoir, Frank: A Life in Politics From the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage. For legislators, cooperation is a form of political currency. They act in concert with other legislators, even at the expense of their own beliefs, in order to bank capital or settle accounts: "Because parliamentary bodies have to arrive at binding decisions on the full range of human activity in an atmosphere lacking the structure provided by either money or hierarchy, members have to find ways to bring some order out of what could be chaos," writes Frank. So trading votes, also known as logrolling, is how the business of politics is conducted. "Once you have promised another member that you will do something—vote a certain way, sponsor a particular bill, or conduct a hearing—you are committed to do it." According to Frank legislators have to act in ideologically inconsistent ways in the short run if they want to advance their larger objectives in the long run, as those larger objectives can only be achieved with teamwork. And the other members of their legislative team are only going to play ball with them if they know that they'll take one for the team, that they'll vote for something they don't like because the team needs it.
Game theory sets out conditions under which negotiating parties end up cooperating, and why they sometimes fail to do so. It does so based on analyzing what drives individuals in the majority of bargaining situations: incentives, access to information, initial power conditions, the extent of mutual trust, and accountability enforcement. Instead of seeing political flip-flopping as a necessary evil, Frank suggests it is inherent to democracy and according to Frank if there's any blame to be doled out in connection with political hypocrisy, it's to be placed on the heads of voters who criticize legislators for it, instead of accepting it as a necessary part of democratic politics. "Legislators who accommodate voter sentiment are denounced as cowardly, and those who defy it are just as fiercely accused of rejecting democratic norms," writes Frank. "I will run for office and I will tell you what I think, and then I will go ahead and do what I think right, and if you don't like what I'm doing, then you can kick me out."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Monday July 13 2015, @07:17PM
I've generally heard the concept termed "horse trading", and it has nothing to do with hypocrisy. Rather it is simply born of the understanding that to get something of value, you tend to have to give something of comparable value in exchange. Ideally you would "sell" your vote on something of low priority to you in exchange for someone else's vote on something of high priority to you, but low priority to them. In practice though you'll often have to sacrifice something of high priority to you, possibly even of higher priority but less realistically achievable than what you're getting in exchange. That's not hypocrisy, that's just business, and anyone who has ever had to settle for their second- or third-choice car/house/computer/etc. so that they can still afford to eat should be familiar with the concept
Where corruption comes in is when, as is so often the case, a representative "sells" things of high priority to their constituents in exchange for things that primarily benefit them personally - either directly, or through various forms of bribery - be they explicit, or as is common in the US the promise of future campaign contributions or lucrative employment such as the "revolving door" between legislatures and large lobbyist organizations.