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The Failed Game Theory Of Democratic Electoralism
If they impose no consequences for cheating, their opponents will cheat their way to victory.
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Let me stipulate a few things I think most people, even many Republican voters, would agree with:
Principles are supposed to run deep. Politics allows for all kinds of hypocrisy and maneuvering and compromise, but everyone who serves the public should have lines they’d never cross.
Democracy is a system for assuring that governments advance the will of public majorities; it is not a rulebook to scour for loopholes.
But a democracy is and must be rule-bound. And everyone—wealthy citizens, poor citizens; ruling-party politicians and their opponents—must be held to the same set of rules.
If rule-breaking is not met with consequences adequate to deter further rule-breaking, incentives will encourage more rule-breaking, eroding democracy until the system breaks down altogether.
My argument today: Republican elites walked away from each of those first three points. As they did, Democrats failed to grok the fourth point for far too long; even now they can’t quite accept that they alone have the means and authority to impose consequences.
They have tolerated Republican illiberalism, and, in their infinite patience, lost the respect of every political faction in the country—those on their own side, and those across the ideological divide. Democracy has thus eroded, and the system is breaking down.
To rehabilitate democracy, and restore it to a sustainable place, the Republican Party will have to deradicalize. Either they will have to embrace a patriotic duty to share power and play fair from the top down; or their constituents will have to demand bottom-up change from them; or a combination of the two.
That is unlikely to happen so long as discarding all principle continues to be politically lucrative for Republicans. And part of the reason it’s been politically lucrative for Republicans is the absence of accountability.
Democrats obviously lack law-enforcement powers at the moment, which means they can’t seek justice for literal crimes. But for decades now, Republicans have treated the laws and norms that govern our system as problems to be hacked rather than as rules of a game that can be played vigorously, but must be played with good sportsmanship.
The default response to that kind of seething contempt for the game can’t be: appeal to the refs and hope for the best. In soccer, players angle for advantage by flopping to the ground theatrically, hoping the ref will penalize the opposition. In politics, there are no formal refs. There are voters and journalists, whose judgements matter a great deal. It’s certainly important to appeal to voters and to “work” the media “refs”—a topic I’ll return to in a subsequent newsletter. But news cycles come and go, and voters are (politely speaking) somewhat mercurial.
There has to be an element of direct risk to rule breakers. In hockey, if the ref doesn’t catch you high-sticking, you don’t necessarily get away with it: There’s also a good chance you’ll get punched in the face.
What does it mean for principles to be principles?
It doesn’t mean stubborn, self-destructive inflexibility. It means finding balance when competing principles come into conflict. Democrats are committ