How Game Theory Applies to Politics

Today I’d like to talk a bit about a subject I’m completely unqualified about. No, not almost anything ever, I’m talking about politics. You see, it’s something that’s been on my mind lately. And I know I’m not the only one – just go to any blog like Daily Kos or Powerline or pick up a newspaper. Plenty of people who are far smarter than me spend a lot of time and energy thinking, talking, and even acting on this sort of thing. Me, about the only time I do anything about politics is when I go to the ballot box. Which, I’ll sorrowfully admit is a time or two less than the opportunities I’ve been given. Politics just turns me off, really. I can’t stand the ugliness and pettiness that goes on, especially in the American system. And, well, to anyone reading this in some way or some when that doesn’t know that’s the country I’m from and, well, I happen to think it’s a very nice one. I know that’s not exactly the most popular of stances – in my country at this time or out – but, well, it’s mine and that I get to have it is just why I like this place so very much. Really, to me anyway, the whole point of our country and the institutions that support it is to let each and everyone have their own ideas and opinions[1]. And me, well, I like to play games. All sorts of games. I can be known as a gamer[2]. And, well, I have. Video games, board games, word games, I like to play them all. But I like to play fair and shake hands when it’s all over because I only play games with my friends or people I’d like to be my friends. The people who don’t I don’t have much to do with, really, and certainly nothing resembling fun.

But, you know, I’ve heard people refer to politics as the “great game”[3] so maybe it’s time I started learning how it is this particular game is played because, after the last elections certainly, I’ve learned that it’s a game that affects pretty much all of us. The table might be rigged but even the house can’t beat a royal flush. So to speak. But anyways, I’m sorry to get off track. I tend to do that a bit every now and then. It’s just my way and it’s why I’m usually a little afraid to speak my mind because there’s usually no one around by the time I’m done. I’d much rather listen, really, because then I hear things I never even knew before.

Like, for example, something I first heard about while playing one game or another. From one smarter person than me or another – there are lots of them, after all, who think things I never have before and if I listen to them sometimes they’ll share those thoughts. And that’s game theory[4].

It’s a fascinating and complex subject – I’m not alone in thinking that so I guess it’s true. And one with a bit more math than is good for me, anyway, as it tries to find mathematical proof for what moves are best in various games. Those mathematicians are wild cats, man, they like to win games without even playing them. And win them so well no one ever has to play them again. Take Tic-Tac-Toe, for example, a game I’m sure most people from where I’m from have played if only in childhood (And, no, I’m not talking about the devastating center+opposite corner gambit. Killed ‘em with that one on the playground.) . But did you know that if you’re playing it and you and your opponent make the best moves possible at any given point in the game that there’s no way the game ends in anything less than a tie? I mean, yeah, anyone who’s seen War Games knows that but so does anyone who’s studied game theory. Because it’s all about figuring outcomes and probabilities and pathways and a bunch of other stuff that you can only write in strange symbols and squiggly lines that only other mathematicians know the meaning of.

But, as simply as I can put it anyway, game theory says that in any given system the best option is to seek whatever gives you the most advantages. And that you should do everything but break the rules to win. The what good players do in any sort of game, after all, and if game theory’s about anything it’s about winning games.

Now, this is an interesting topic because it takes a rigorous scientific approach to things – the cold hard logic of understanding what works and throwing out what doesn’t – and applies it to an area where you wouldn’t think logic and math would play much of a role: people playing games with each other. That’s a realm of emotion and passion and things you can’t really parse down and fit onto a calculator or a blackboard, in my experience anyway. So maybe it might not capture the reason people play (more on that later) but it does seem to be frighteningly accurate in capturing how they’re played. I know I stopped playing tic-tac-toe because it just wasn’t much fun to wind up in a sister-kissing tie all the time. And, well, considering the odds is what people who play games do all the time. Game theory would say we’re managing our risks while finding the highest percentage play, by the way. But it means a lot of things can be considered in a new light. It means for example in a game if you can attack every 2 seconds for 50 damage or once every second for 30 you should grab the faster swing because it’s not a 20 point drop in damage – it’s a 20% raise over a long enough period of time (say…2 seconds). Or that football coaches should be punting much less often. Or that when considering a sword with a +3 enchantment or a cold steel property (Yes, munchkins you can only have the one) there’s a significant choice that depends on what kind of encounters you’re expecting. People even use game theory to make money.

I have this sneaking suspicion that were I to mention game theory to a politician or one of those people who work for them (Not that I’ve ever taken (Coulier the chance, mind) they’ll know what I’m talking about. Probably better than I do, in fact. These are the people who call it the “great game” after all. So it makes sense that they’d treat it as a game and try their best to, well, win. Elections are where they find the most use for it, I’ll bet (And as someone who loves to play games I do like a good bet. I’m not much of a gambler – low tolerance for risk - so the ones I like to make are the ones I know I’ll win.) but it can be of use in so many more areas. Anyhow, since I’ve never spoken with anyone more political than what you’ll find around my dinner table I’ll have to leave that as an open question.

But, well, let me – if you will – make use of an example here. And that’s Karl Rove or the larger electoral strategy (And, I’d like to say it’s the strategy by which he and his ilk governs but I really can’t seem to find any evidence of that at all. And, well, I do so hate to make blatantly inflamatory claims that might somehow damage someone. Not without proof, anyway.) he employs that’s become known as Rovism[6]. Because Mr. Rove isn’t the only architect or even the greatest master of such plays, only the public face of them. I’d avoid him if I could, believe me, if only out of respect for someone who works so hard on the public good[7]. But, well, the whole Rovian scene is perhaps best summed up in the “51% strategy”.

And it’s from that I know that Mr. Rove and his ilk like to play games. Because that’s exactly the kind of thing that number crunching, stat obsessed gamers like myself (It’s true, it’s true. I have to embrace my inner slide rule if I’m to get any better, you know.) do when put into a given situation: They twist and pull at the rules and observe the results until they can figure out a way pile advantage after advantage out of the game’s rules. Fairly or not, really. Intended by the designers or not. Just as long as they can win. And the 51% strategy is all about winning, of course, because it recognizes that in the rules we here in America (and very few places elsewhere) operate under the important thing is not necessarily to get everyone or most people to agree with you. But to get roughly half of them plus one. That’s all you need to win elections, after all. And you can’t do anything if you don’t win elections. So maybe you get a few more than 50%+1. It’s the crisis point in the system so if you’re making the best play you want to give yourself a margin of error to manage your risks – you’re not playing alone, after all, and even if the opponent is a moron they can still get lucky from time to time. Simply put, the 51% strategy recognizes that. You can’t win every battle, every game, every time but you can win enough to put yourself in the best position to win each and every time. Great strat. As long as no one pulls a Jenkins[8] then we should be able to pwn a raid or twelve with it.

So to speak, anyway. There’s a lot of that I can see when I take a good long look at politics what with my background and all. Everyone has this strategy or that plan or this scheme or some sort of slogan – it’s all marketing after all. I mean, the Democratic Party has their own response to the 51% plan in the 50 state plan, if I’m understanding it right. And, I mean, I might not be because it’s another large and complicated idea that will take me some time to really understand. Like game theory which I happen to think I’m at least passably familiar with having studied and, well, lived it for so long. But if I understand it right – and again, this is so mindblowing I might not – the idea is to actually have people in every race in every state. Which, wow, that idea’s so simple it has to be way too complicated for me to really understand. Because according to game theory if you’re having trouble with one particular battle, say, then a good way of limiting your risks is to simply have more of them. You won’t win them all, of course, but each battle gives you an opportunity to gain some fleeting advantage you can use to your benefit in other battles later on down the line. At that same place or elsewhere.

Anyhow, where was I? Ah, yes, getting to the point (I can hear your sighs of relief and the only reason you can’t hear mine is because it’s so loud it’s become background noise) I’m sure I had a point here somewhere. I did when I started this, after all. Now, back to Rovian politics of which the 51% strategy is only one symptom. Er, symbol. Don’t know how I got those confuse there, must be tired with all this unaccustomed speaking of my mind. It’s only one facet, after all, of a larger design. And one which, I feel, is best summed up in the phrase that you’ll be very unlikely to hear pass through Mr. Rove’s lips. He’s a gamer, after all, and gamers (Well, most gamers, anyway) don’t give away a winning strategy. If he’s ever uttered these words he’s no doubt had a moment of internal panic that this deadly weapon of political warfare might fall into someone else’s hands and they might be the wrong person’s hands and so he tried to pass it off as a joke or otherwise minimalize its importance. I tend to listen to people, though, so I know that sometimes the most important thing to listen to is what people aren’t saying – what they’re going very far out of their way to avoid saying, in fact. If I’m playing a game and I don’t want to give it away that’s what I’ll be doing, anyways – misdirection, subterfuge, and false information to keep my opponent from outguessing if not outplaying me. So, after some not-so-careful attention paid to the working of the world over the past few years I’d sum up the Rovian approach to politics in the following phrase: “Turn your opponent’s strength into weaknesses.”

Whatever it is they’re good at or proud of that’s where you attack the hardest. Break that strength up, atomize it, reduce it to its component parts and blast apart their lines of defenses once their center collapses. Such a frontal attack can be a costly, costly thing (in a lot of ways) and it might not always work (nothing does). But when it works, it works well, especially if you’re been stacking up a lot of advantages – resources – to throw at any problem. It’s yet more proof, to me, that I wouldn’t want to be sitting at a poker table with any Rovian because it again shows that they don’t just know the game they think about the game and where its weak points are. It really just pulls the rug out from the other guy and changes the rules of the game on them.

Oh, not the written rules. You can get into a lot of trouble if you break those even if in politics the people playing are the ones who get to write them. I’m talking about the metagame, the game outside the game, where the rules aren’t written down. Because not only is the game being played under a set of rules, so too are the people playing it. Those rules are just a lot more flexible and far less understood because people are hard to fit into the mathematical equations of game theory. You’ll have to look elsewhere and to less empirical means to figure out what’s going on there – all of which is more than a little beyond me at the moment. But, well, I understand a little bit about the metagame and how to play it. Because, basically, it’s about doing what your opponent least wants you to do. And what they least want you to do is what gives you the best chance to win. That’s why Rovians attack strength not because their opponent doesn’t want them to but because they’re not expecting them to attack where they think their defenses are strongest. They’ve been trained to spend their time and effort shoring up their weaknesses, somehow, so they trust their strengths will look after themselves. The value of an aggressive play like Rovian politics likes, so to speak, is that it’s unexpected and unpredictable. It causes the opponent to fall back on the ropes and get on the defensive where they can be battered down again and again.

But, well, the thing about the metagame is that – in a healthy system - there’s always a way of beating another “metastrategy”, if you will. And as someone who likes to play games I can’t help but look at the Rovian way of doing things and trying to see not just how it is to play that way (and play it, of course, better) but how to play a way that will beat it. I’m not a fan of running the Red Queen’s race, after all, but of jumping up (or down, it’s all the same when you go far enough) a yomi level to trump whatever my opponent’s about to throw[9]. Now, Mr. Rove and his ilk are much better and experienced players than I so I have absolutely no idea what a strategy that would consistently trounce them or whatever leaner, stripped down, and meaner version of their plans they can come up with. But what I’m trying to say is that I know where it starts. Do the last thing that Rovian politics would want or expect you to do. Turn your weaknesses into strengths.

As for just how to go about doing so, well, I might have an idea or two but I’ll have to think on them for a bit. And, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I find the best time to think is when I’m listening to other’s have their say.


[1] – And then to have some way of protecting those ideas even as it gets everyone to go along with what most of the people think. We call it “democracy”, by the way.

[2] - Gamers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but our high scores! And what we stand to gain is higher still.

[3] – The people I like called it the “grand experiment” a metaphor I like much better.

[4] – If you don’t mind doing a little legwork of your own there’s GameTheory.net which is an online resource for teachers and students of the game. There’s plenty there if you want to learn more for yourself. I know I’ve made use of them a bit so consider them duly recommended.

[5] - I might have something to say about this topic later on but others have made the case and far better than I – with, like, numbers and stuff - so I won’t bother for now.

[6] – We’ll stay well away from Rovism, thank you very much. That’s embodied by “reality is what you say it is.” Which has a grain of truth in it, to be sure, but any school of thought which even remotely takes Orwellian word games as a guide to follow and not a clarion call warning is one I’ll steer clear of if at all possible. Nothing, not even power, is a means to itself but instead only a method for causation. No, like sanity reality is found in consensus. Reality is what *we say it is. Anything less is the rationalizations of the paid liar. So let’s just put paid to that, shall we?

[7] – Not saying exactly what he’s doing to it, mind. Just that he’s working on it somehow. And that in and of itself is laudable, for me. But, then, I like to play all kind of games.

[8] – G-No, it’s too obvious a joke, I can’t bring myself to do it.

[9] - It’s not the scrubs I worry about beating, I can do that even at a disadvantage. It’s not even people I’m equal with, I think I like my chances there. But it’s the people who are better than me. I want a decisive advantage before I even step on the field.