Tag Archives: Foreign Policy & Security

Deterrence, military intervention, international bargaining, treaty compliance, and the application of formal theory to questions of war, diplomacy, and security.

Cotton Pickin’?

Posted on by

[This is the first ever guest post on Math Of Politics. If you’re interested in posting on Math Of Politics, drop me an email.]

By Scott Ainsworth.

To understand the Cotton letter, we need to think about the operation of treaties. Treaties are like contracts, designed to solidify current behaviors or constrain future behaviors for some period of time. Treaties fail when the prescribed behaviors are no longer individually rational for at least one of the parties to maintain. Failures can occur almost instantly – consider some of the recent treaties regarding Ukraine. Alternatively, treaties can teeter on the verge of failure (or success) for quite some time.[1] Of course, individual rationality is best understood in the eyes of the beholders, and holders of political office come and go (as Cotton reminded everyone). Is political succession problematic for treaties? Elections are known, but who will win the next presidential election is unknown. In the words of a former defense secretary, these are known unknowns. But there are also unknown unknowns. What the hell is happening in this world? Summing up, some exogenous shocks are more exogenous than others. Treaties are not automatically vulnerable (or invulnerable) to exogenous shocks, but it is easier to brace for the known unknowns than the unknown unknowns.

So, why did Cotton remind the Iranian leaders that the U.S. has regular elections and that treaties can fail?

Ostensibly, Cotton was worried about the sort of treaty being negotiated. To what type of treaty will leaders submit? A desperate leader might agree to a treaty with very little lasting power. Consider 24 or 48-hour ceasefires. Does the success or failure of Obama’s last two years depend on securing any sort of agreement with Iran? I think it’s reasonable to suggest that Obama secures few immediate brownie points for his negotiations with Iran, so the possibility of long-term gains likely play the dominant role. But if Obama is not focused on short-term political gains, he needs a treaty with some lasting power.[2]

Of course, a treaty with lasting power must be somewhat invulnerable to regular electoral shocks – our known unknowns. To think that Obama would agree to a treaty that will be undone as soon as he leaves office is to suggest that Obama has only short-term gains in mind. Long-term gains would be impossible because political succession would ensure the renegotiation and demise of Obama’s treaty. Unless presidents cannot imagine the world after they leave office, some subgame calculations seem warranted. My guess is that the president and the Iranian leaders were both comfortable assessing the implications of elections and other known unknowns.

So, why did Cotton write the letter? I can see two possibilities.

Possibility 1. Cotton et al. truly do presume that the Iranian leaders are unaware of the role of executive agreements in U.S. international affairs. This is possible, but unlikely. Newcomers to chess might like to think “he won’t see this,” but chess is a game of complete information. Everything is upright, literally above board. Similarly, executive agreements do not hide in the nether reaches of constitutional authority.

Possibility 2. Cotton et al. do believe that Iranian leaders are aware of the role of executive agreements. Cotton simply wants to emphasize that any agreement would be tied to a particular Democratic president and not a succeeding president. This could make sense if Cotton were to believe that the negotiators are not employing subgame perfection. Suppose Cotton does manage to convince the Iranian leadership that the agreement is designed for failure. If Cotton were convincing, the Iranians could heavily discount long-term costs and implications.[3] Reluctant or hardline Iranians might be more willing to accede to a treaty that is projected by the political cognoscente to collapse in two years. Agreeing to a ten-year treaty is trickier. Thanks, Senator Cotton.

In the end, perhaps Cotton et al. did not use any subgame thinking of their own. That is, the authors of this infamous letter are complaining about a path of the game tree, but they are unaware that the offending path is well removed from the equilibrium path.[4] It is reasonable to consider and debate possible equilibrium paths. Different equilibria typically treat parties very differently. Not all equilibria are worthy of our support. But to debate something off the equilibrium path seems to be a waste of everyone’s time – unless it is meant for crass political consumption. That the Iranian leadership failed to bite is telling. That 47 senators are still running a “Nobama” campaign is also telling. That a newly minted senator can secure 46 Republican signatures for a letter of questionable value bodes ill for the Grand Ol’ Party. There are few gains from debating the merits of non-equilibrium paths.

With that, I leave you with this.

_______________________

Scott Ainsworth is Professor of Political Science at The School of Public and International Affairs at The University of Georgia

[1] By some measures, negotiations with Iran have been ongoing for over a decade.

[2] The Iranians, who have their own concerns about political succession, are also likely focusing on long-term gains.

[3] As an analogy, consider a bank note. Suppose a large 30-year bank loan is problematic for a borrower. If mysteriously the bank were to dissolve with 50% likelihood after two years, the borrower’s long-term situation is less problematic. If mysteriously the bank itself were to dissolve entirely, the borrower’s situation is not problematic at all.

[4] This is not the time to consider trembling hand perfection or other equilibrium refinements that might allow one to imagine being off the equilibrium path.

Default In Our Stars: Kant-ankerous Varoufakis

Posted on by

The Greek Tragedy is a “thing.” And lately it has reemerged.  The question at the heart of this post is how one should bargain when between a rock and hard place.[0]  This point was raised and discussed very well by Henry Farrell in this piece, which was responding to this op-ed in the NY Times by Yanis Varoufakis, the finance minister of Greece and, in earlier times at least, a game theorist. Varoufakis claims in his op-ed to essentially disown game theory in pursuit of bigger, and of course more noble, goals.

I am not actually interested in what Varoufakis’s true goals are here.  Instead, I am going to attack the face validity of the claim that he is not “busily devising bluffs, stratagems and outside options” — because I am going to argue that he was (at least arguably[1]) strategically using that very op-ed as a strategem to make it seem less likely that he is bluffing because the op-ed alters his outside options.

Varoufakis claims in his op-ed that “[t]he trouble with game theory, as I used to tell my students, is that it takes for granted the players’ motives.”

wait…give me a second…
…oh my goodness…
…I just vomited a little in my mouth.

Look, sure… the first 6 weeks of introductory game theory does this, just like physics first starts out neglecting air resistance.  But, really, does game theory “take for granted” the players’ motives?

Answer: OH HELL NO, GAME THEORY DOES NOT TAKE PLAYERS’ MOTIVES FOR GRANTED.

The Ironic Emergence of Concerns About Reputation.  The classic case of game theory not taking for granted players’ motives is something known as “the chain store paradox,” which poses the question of when and whether someone would be willing to incur losses to themselves so as to establish a reputation for toughness.  In the interest of being succinct, that is exactly what Varoufakis is (putatively) attempting to establish in the op-ed.  The fact that game theory is entirely and completely consonant with such behavior was established no later than 1982, when both David Kreps & Robert Wilson and Paul Milgrom and John Roberts independently established that game theory can and does predict that individuals will have an incentive to fake having “tough” or “principled” beliefs so that otherwise “irrational decisions” make sense to or be believed by an opponent.  As the articles by Kreps, Milgrom, Roberts, & Wilson[2] show, it is often the case that a “pure bottom line” player will have an incentive — in repeated negotiations/interactions — to act as if the player has a purpose other than “the bottom line”, regardless of whether this other thing (in Varoufakis’s case, it’s something called “doing the right thing”) is something that is deemed “irrational.”  The reason for this, in intuitive terms, is reputation.  In a sense, Kreps, et al. saved game theory 33 years before Varoufakis attempted to throw it under the bus by showing that, against some naive expectations, it is consistent with common sense.  The Bully on the playground need not actually like hitting people, he might just be someone who really likes not being hit and accordingly “pays it forward” by beating a few people up so as to make others think that he or she likes fighting, thereby making others in the future less likely to challenge him or her.

Thomas Schelling is a genius, and properly credited by Farrell for offering erudite understanding of the dynamic that Farrell discusses.  However, Farrell focuses exclusively on “appearing irrational” in his discussion.  Moving beyond simple “Varoufakis versus the EU” narratives, Schelling, and others (including Bob Putnam and Andy Kydd), have commented on the importance of hiring mediators that are themselves biased/irrational.  The basic idea is the same as that behind why you hire a hit man that you don’t know and can’t be recalled—hiring a crazy “agent” is a commitment device that makes your negotiating partner change his or her valuation of holding out against your demands.[3]

Following this logic, presumably Varoufakis was installed as finance minister precisely because he is a very good game theorist.  And, to boot, he was installed by a government that itself is worried not only about interactions with the EU, but also with the citizens of Greece in upcoming elections.  The question, then, is whom do you hire to go bargain your way out of the absolute poop-storm of debt and austerity that surrounds you?

On one hand, you could install a technocrat that wants to make markets easy and handle things in a mechanistic and (economically/technically) efficient way.  But, to be short about it, economic/technical efficiency is irrelevant to most voters.  Such a technocrat would have a hard time sealing the technocratic deal struck with lenders by selling it to the voters in the form of the ruling coalition.  Accordingly, such a technocrat would have little leverage at the bargaining table with the lenders in the first place.[4]

On the other hand, you could hire a true believing, firebrand populist who will quickly and unabashedly pursue a “forgive, haircut, or default” strategy with the EU.  That person would cause other problems: short term populist gains, but long term fiscal problems that would probably undermine the ruling coalition.  And (unless that person is strategic, see below) the firebrand will also exert little bargaining power because his goals are too extreme and he or she would prefer to walk away.

Finally, you could install someone who is widely believed to be an excellent bargainer.  You know, like an internationally recognized game theorist.  Then suppose that this individual announces that he or she does not believe in being strategic, that he or she is just committed to getting the “right” outcome for the country.  (From the op-ed: Varoufakis promises to “reveal the red lines beyond which logic and duty prevent us from going,” alleges that the “circumstances” dictate that he “must do what is right not as a strategy but simply because it is … right,” and even invokes Immanuel Kant!) Finally, suppose that the voters to some degree “believe” the game theorist insofar as they become more willing to support a somewhat technocratic deal, falling somewhere short of absolute forgiveness.

The arguments of Kreps, et al. imply that a smart game theorist should say the things that Varoufakis said in his op-ed.  If voters respond as supposed above (i.e., believe the statements even a little bit), this increases the credibility with which he can negotiate with the lenders.  Note that the voters’ beliefs that the game theorist actually has stopped believing in being strategic should be stronger if the game theorist takes a very public stand (say, you know, in an op-ed in a globally read newspaper) to that effect,[4] and especially if, as I have pointed out, he aims his arrow at what at least once was his bread and butter.[5]

Conclusion: Varoufakis Doth Protest Too Much.  I actually applaud Varoufakis for the strategy I see him playing (not that he should care, of course).  Nonetheless, I think that he went farther than he needed to go by parroting a frequently tossed-about and grossly inaccurate criticism of game theory.  Of course this is ironic.  I can only hope that at some point in the future, Varoufakis might fess up to the gambit.  Regardless of whether he does or doesn’t “believe in” game theory, I am under no impression that he does not believe in being strategic.  Especially not after reading his op-ed.

_______

[0] This post is about game theory, and good game theorists would advise one to think about how not to wind up being between a rock and a hard place in the first, ahem, place.

[1] I am getting tired of the academic tradition of admitting that perhaps I might not be right.  Of course, I might not be right.  But, that said, this is one of those “every 18 months or so” arguments where I can say “well, if I’m not right, then I am right, because that’s the crazy kind of bull-hooey that emerges in strategic situations.”  And, yes, “bull-hooey” is jarring technical jargon, which is why I put it in a footnote.

[2] These four giants of game theory are, because of their multiple contributions to this incredibly seminal 1982 issue of the Journal of Economic Theory, sometimes referred to as the Gang of Four, a reference that will hopefully still please at least a few people in the set of “game theory and awesome rock fans.”  But seriously, each of these four have contributed huge ideas separately and in combination to game theory for 3+ decades, and for Varoufakis to pretend otherwise is absolutely offensive.  I only say that because he has coauthored a textbook on game theory.  He should know better (for example, see Secction 3.3.4 of the linked textbook).  I also say this because I have the privilege of writing a blog that is at best occasionally clicked on by (some of) my family members.  But, again, I LEARNED THIS STUFF AS AN UNDERGRADUATE.

[3] A great piece about how this works between chambers of Congress was written by Sean Gailmard and Tom Hammond.

[4] This is arguably an example of what some social scientists call “audience costs.”

[5] This is akin to the notion of “burning one’s boats,” in which one eliminates or reduces the attractiveness of backing down at some future point so as to make one’s demands more credible in the present.

Why Separate When You Can…Lustrate!?!

Posted on by

Today’s post by Maria Popova and Vincent Post, “What is lustration and is it a good idea for Ukraine to adopt it?” made me think about the difference between what I will call policy and discretionary purges.

It is not easy for a nation to fix itself after a period of authoritarian rule.  There are many individuals who actually compose the government, and it is not clear that they share the ideals of the new government and, even if they do, the worries about career concerns and adverse selection that I raised a few minutes ago here suggest that changing behaviors might be hard even if the vast majority of bureaucrats/judges/legislators agree with democratic norms, the rule of law, the relative inelegance of bashing your opponents’ heads in, etc.

So, one practical approach to fixing an institution in the sense of massively and quickly redirecting its aggregate behavior (as produced by the panoply of individual decision-makers’ choices) is what we might call wiping the slate clean.  Clear the decks, Ctrl-Alt-Delete the whole shebang.

Another way is to find the people who are the problem(s) and eliminate them.  The prospect of removal might, in equilibrium, convert some who were previously scofflaws into temperate and sage clerks, after all.

I want to make a quick point.  Removal of officials is practically hard (because those who fear removal will hide evidence and otherwise obstruct the Remover’s attempts to ferret them out).  But, more intriguingly, removal of officials is politically hard…for the Remover. In cases like the Ukraine, this isn’t because removal of any official is likely to be unpopular (it’s probably the reverse…just ask Vergniaud). Rather, the problem is one of adverse selection in terms of those who are judging the motivations and trying to predict the future actions of the Remover.[1]

To think about this clearly and quickly, consider the baseline case where the Remover “cleans house,” removing everyone, and then consider the deviation from this in which the Remover “forgives” one official, who I will call “Official X.”[2]

What should we infer?  Does the Remover really have information that exculpates Official X?  Or perhaps Official X paid a bribe?  Or perhaps Official X is blackmailing the Remover? Or perhaps…       You can see where this is going.  The Remover is at risk of being suspected of being or doing something untoward if he or she has and uses any discretion.  Accordingly, the Remover would prefer to not have discretion.

The same logic applies, obviously, to a plan of “well, let the Remover prosecute those who `should’ be removed.”  Unless the Remover’s hands are tied with respect to whom to prosecute, people will always have reason to wonder “well, Official Y got prosecuted….but not Official X….”

Is Lustration a good idea?  I don’t know.  And I will mention that Popova and Post are making a different point, which is really about the extent and severity of lustration.  My point here is just that “statutory/mandated purges” are very different from “executive/discretionary purges” and, somewhat counterintuitively, it may very well be in the interests of “the Remover” to have his or her discretion taken away.[3]

__________

[1] Note that, as always, this is equivalent to a problem of credible commitment on the part of the Remover to “not use his/her biases” when deciding whom to remove.

[2] The logic holds generally (i.e., when the Remover forgives/pardons more than one official), but this focuses our attention in a nice way.

[3] I’m trying to keep these short, but I’ll note that this incentive is stronger for a Remover who believes that the external audiences who are trying to judge the Remover’s information/character/etc. are really uncertain about the Remover’s information/character/etc.  This is because high levels of initial uncertainty imply that the discretionary actions of the Remover will have a larger impact on the beliefs held by the members of the audience, and the adverse implications of discretion on these beliefs is the justification for the Remover wanting to limit his or her own discretion.

My Ignorance Provokes Me: I know Where Ukraine is and I Still Want to Fight

Posted on by

It’s been too long since I prattled into cyberspace.  This Monkey Cage post by Kyle Dropp  Joshua D. Kertzer & Thomas Zeitzoff caught my contrarian attention.  In a nutshell, it says that those who are less informed about the location of Ukraine are more likely to support US military intervention.  This is an intriguing and policy-relevant finding from a smart design.  That said, the post’s conclusion is summarized as: “the further our respondents thought that Ukraine was from its actual location, the more they wanted the U.S. to intervene militarily.”  The implication from the post (inferred by me, but also by several others, I aver) is that this is an indication of irrationality.  I hate to spoil the surprise, but I am going to offer a rationalization for this apparent disconnect.

First, however, the study’s methodology—very cool in many ways—caught my eye, only because (in my eyes) the post’s authors imbue the measure with too much validity with respect to the subjects’ “knowledge.”  Specifically, the study asked people to click on a map where they think Ukraine is located.  The study then measures the distance between the click and Ukraine.[1]  Then Dropp, Kertzer, & Zeitzoff state that this

…distance enables us to measure accuracy continuously: People who believe Ukraine is in Eastern Europe clearly are more informed than those who believe it is in Brazil or in the Indian Ocean.

I disagree with the strongest interpretation of this statement.  While I agree that people who believe Ukraine is in Eastern Europe are probably (not clearly, because some might guess/click randomly on Eastern Europe, too) more informed than those who “believe it is in Brazil or in the Indian Ocean,” I would actually say that the example chosen by the authors suggests that distance is not the right metric.  For example, someone who thinks Ukraine is Brazil is clearly wrong about political geography, but someone who thinks that Ukraine is located in the middle of an ocean is clearly wrong about plain-ole geography.

More subtly, it’s not clear that the “distance away from Ukraine” is a good measure of lack of knowledge.  In a nutshell, I aver that there are two types of people in the world: those who know where Ukraine is and those who do not.  Distinguishing between those who do not by the distance of their “miss” is just introducing measurement error, because (by supposition/definition) they are guessing.  That is, the true distance of miss is not necessarily indicative of knowledge or lack thereof.  Rather, if you don’t know where Ukraine is, then you don’t know where it is.

Moving on quickly, I will say the following.  It is not clear at all that not knowing where a conflict is should (in the sense of rationality) make one less likely to favor intervention. The key point is that if anyone is aware of the Crimea/Ukraine crisis, they probably know[2] that there is military action.  This isn’t Sochi, after all.

So, I put two thought experiments out there, and then off to the rest of the night go I.

First, suppose someone comes up to you and says, “there’s a fire in your house,” and then rudely runs off, leaving you ignorant of where the fire is.  What would you do…call the fire department, or run through the house looking for the fire?  I assert that either response is rational, depending on other covariates (such as how much you are insured for, whether you live in an igloo, and if you have a special room you typically freebase in).  The principal determinant in this case in many situations is the IMPORTANCE OF PUTTING OUT THE FIRE, not the cost of accidentally dowsing one too many rooms with water.

Second, the Ukraine is not quite on the opposite side of the world from the US, but it’s pretty darn close (Google Maps tells me it is a 15 hour flight from St. Louis).  So, let’s think about what “clicking far from Ukraine when guessing where Ukraine is” implies about the (at least in the post) unaddressed correlation of “clicking close to the United States when guessing where Ukraine is”?  This picture demonstrates where each US survey respondent clicked when asked to locate Ukraine.  Focus on the misses, because these are the ones that will drive any correlation between “distance of inaccuracy and support for foreign intervention” correlation. (Because distances are bounded below by zero and a lot of people got Ukraine basically right.)

There are a lot of clicks in Greenland, Canada, and Alaska. I am going to leave now, but the general rule is that the elliptic geometry of the globe (and the fact that the Ukraine is not inside the United States[3]) implies that clicking farther away from Ukraine means that you are, with some positive (and in this case, significant) probability clicking closer to the United States.

So, suppose that the study said “those who think the Ukraine is located close to the US are more likely to support military intervention to stem Russian expansion?”  Would that be surprising?  Would that make you think voters are irrational?

Look, people have limited time and aren’t asked to make foreign policy decisions very often (i.e., ever).  So, let’s stop picking on them.  It is elitist, and it offers nothing other than a headline/tweet that draws elitists (yes, like me) to your webpage.

Also, let’s not forget that, as far as I know, there is no chance in the current situation of the United States government intervening in the Ukraine. So, even if voters are irrational, maybe that’s meta: we have an indirect democracy for a reason, perhaps?

_______________

[1] If I was going to get really in the weeds, I would raise the question of which metric is used to measure distance between a point and a convex shape with nonempty interior.  There are a lot of sensible ones. And, indeed, the fact that there isn’t an unambiguously correct one is actually an instantiation of Arrow’s theorem.  Think about that for a second.  And then thank me for not prattling on more about that.  [That’s called constructing the counterfactual. –Ed.]

[2] And, as the authors state, “two-thirds of Americans have reported following the situation at least “somewhat closely,”

[3] Just think about conducting this same survey with a conflict in Georgia.  Far-fetched, right?  HAHAHAHA

I’ll Show You…By Not Showing Up

Posted on by

All is not well in Thaliand, where the opposition Democrat Party is calling for its supporters (some of whom have been actively protesting for months now) to boycott today’s parliamentary elections.

Boycotting elections is not uncommon: indeed, opposition parties have recently boycotted elections in Bangladesh and the main Islamist opposition party is calling for a boycott of upcoming elections in Algeria. The point of this post is, from a strategic standpoint, why would a party call for its supporters to not only not vote for it, but to not vote at all? [1]

I will discuss two theories that can justify election boycotts.  The first concerns the opposition party’s strength, and the second concerns the ramifications of an election result being overturned.  In general, the two are distinguished by whether the boycotting party expects to “win” the election or not.

In both cases, to make the stories succinct, suppose that some proposed “reform” is the main political issue and, without any loss of generality, let’s suppose that the ruling party is proposing the reform and the boycotting party opposes it. (This labeling doesn’t matter, but keeps the language simple.)  I’ll start with “opposition party strength” explanation.

I’m So Popular…Nobody Showed Up.  For the first explanation, suppose that the opposition party expects that it will lose the election—it suspects its supporters are outnumbered by the other party, and suppose that the ruling party will press ahead with the reform if it believes that (say) 60% of the citizens support the reform.

If the opposition party does not boycott, and the ruling party wins with (say) 62% of the vote, then the ruling party will proceed with the reform.  The opposition party loses both electorally and in policy terms.

If the opposition party does boycott, then, while the ruling party will still win, the election result is less informative about the true latent support for the reform.  In particular, as opposed to the baseline case—where abstention by a voter is more than likely due to indifference about (say) the reform—each “non-vote” might represent opposition to the reform.  Thus, boycotting the election can lead to the ruling party being less certain about the underlying support for the reform and either modifying, or demurring from, the reform. [2]

Notice that this justification is based on signaling, and the logic is clearest when there is essentially no hope for the opposition party to win the election.  If the opposition party might win (i.e., it has nearly the same number of supporters as the ruling party), then it must trade-off the potential increased probability of stymieing the reform (in the case of a loss) against the reduced probability of both winning office and stymieing reform.  The second justification is more applicable when the opposition party suspects that the election won’t matter in any event.

It Didn’t Have to Play Out This Way. Sadly, election results are not sacrosanct.  Suppose that the opposition party suspects that, if it wins the election, the ruling party might disregard the election result and impose the reform anyway.  Such an undemocratic move might lead to various ancillary “bad” things unrest and/or a coup.  To keep it simple just suppose that the opposition party prefers the reform to be implemented after being “ratified” (even in a boycotted election) rather than implemented against a contrary election result.  In this case, because voting is costly, voting for the ruling party is otherwise distasteful, or for the purpose of recording an implicit score of (non-)support for the reform, the opposition might benefit from boycotting precisely when it suspects it might “win” the election. [3]

Elections Aren’t Just About Winning. Each of the arguments sketched out above rely on a key characteristic of elections: they aren’t the end of the game.  Rather, an election results is always to some degree a signal about the electorate’s preferences about the issues being confronted at that time.  Of course, the arguments also highlight how the proper interpretation of the “signal sent” by an election result need not be straightforward: as is usual, the fact that something might serve as a signal can infect the incentives of those sending it (in this case the opposition party) in counterinitutive ways (for example, see this point here).

More generally, the arguments provide two alternate routes to understand the legitimating power of participation.  That is, many people understandably say that free, open, and active elections are a foundation of a healthy and legitimate government.  This argument is often (to me, at least) based on the idea that people don’t want to participate in something that they don’t feel connected to and/or “served well by.”  This isn’t a silly argument—it does have a self-enforcing quality that is reminiscent of equilibrium.  But even if one is happy to accept that logic as “just so,” the next step is to examine incentives that logic provides to political actors in pursuit of policy and office.

With that, I leave you with this.

_______________

[1] Especially in multiparty systems (especially with nontrivial electoral “thresholds” for representation and/or public financing), there are clear reasons for a party to call for it supporters to vote for a different party.  This phenomenon, known colloquially as strategic voting, is about coordination, and I will note it and set it to the side: strategic voting does not justify abstention unless there is some type of quorum/participation requirement.

[2] I’ll keep moving, but a moment’s thought suggests that, in some circumstances, this argument also suggests an incentive for the boycotting party to call for a boycott but send some of its supporters to the polls anyway.  The details are a bit complicated, and such an incentive (or, “comparative static of the ruling party’s beliefs as a function of the actual turnout”) might not work out in equilibrium, because the ruling party’s inferences get complicated and depend upon what it knows/believes about the opposition party’s gambit in this regard.  Nonetheless, it is a neat possibility.  TO ME.

[3] One could embellish this argument quite easily (to account for smaller parties also subscribing to its logic) by having the opposition party increasingly dislike the reform being implemented over larger proportions of votes “against” the reform.

The Politics of Going Public

Posted on by

The Syrian crisis and the debt ceiling/government funding crisis have one thing in common in my mind.

Narrative.

In each situation, President Obama has a chance to “look Presidential” by being decisive. To be short about it, “Presidents order military strikes based on moral/strategic prerogative” and “Presidents tell Congress that the business of governing goes on.”

But what’s different about this situation?

I and others have thought and discussed the two crises ad nauseam.  But their interaction is the point of this post.  While I discussed this earlier, I will take a different, ahem, take in this post.

Syria comes first: Obama might or might not have personal beliefs about what is best to do there but let’s accept as plausible that “doing nothing” requires no explanation: the default of “don’t put Americans in harm’s way” is a safe and understandable (even when wrong) option. To do something requires explanation (especially after Iraq).  There are some layers there, given the various subtle differentiations between “airstrikes” and “boots on the ground,” but the point remains: if Obama wants to do more than a one-off strike on Syria, he needs to explain to America (read: insure himself in Congress) why this is a good idea.

Now we turn to the coming budget showdown: Obama will have no choice but to face a choice here.  Let’s stipulate that Congress ain’t going to hand him a sequester-free continuing resolution (longhand in today’s world for “federal budget”). So, he will face meaningful calls for veto threats, stonewalling, and general resistance to whatever Congress sends to his desk. And, of course, if Congress sends him nothing, then he is forced to face the question of how to avoid/deal with default.

Ugh.  I mean, $400K is a lot of sugar, but that job SOUNDS LIKE IT SUCKS RIGHT ABOUT NOW.

All that said, and while I have already said/implied that I think committing troops/materiel to Syria would put the GOP in a tough spot while also saying that he may very well (and understandably) not know what to do, I want to point out that Obama lingering on the sidelines on Syria, as morally slippery as that may be, might be the right strategic call.  While he dithers and is lampooned by Putin, Gates, and Panetta, Obama is reserving the flexibility to “go public” with a fuller narrative.  When and if the debt/funding crisis comes to his doorstep, Obama arguably has the ability to distract/dissimulate/refocus the public on “the big (Presidential) moments” as he sees fit.  This won’t work with certainty, of course, there are always Benghazis/Wacos/Katrinas to wreck a hard-working President’s day.  But, I’ll just point out that there’s one thing more Presidential than stepping in front of the camera and making the hard call and, as usual, it is referenced in Kenny Rogers’s “The Gambler.”

Real leaders know when to hold their Presidential opportunities until they are at their most ripe as Presidential moments.  From a strategic perspective, Obama has one distinct and enduring advantage over Congress: he not only gets to decide, but he also can—within reason—decide when and in front of whom to decide.

With that, I leave you with this.

Damn, He Asked US About Damascus or, ‘CJT Meets WMD’

Posted on by

Why did Obama seek Congressional authorization for military intervention in Syria?

There are a number of theories, ranging from the facile to the subtle (and probably including the subtly facile).  The “best” explanation, from my perspective at least, is that President Obama is signaling something about his ability to prosecute a potential conflict (for example, consider this spin of a classic argument, provided by Roseanne McManus).[1]

But here’s a slightly different take, removing foreign relations from the equation.  (In particular, a problem with the signaling argument is that I find it hard to believe that foreign powers actually believe that Congress would hamper active and ongoing military operations, particularly those that are at east potentially trying to secure chemical weapons in the middle of a strife-torn nation that neighbors Israel.)

The basics of the story is that Obama might simply not know what to do. When I say this, I say it knowing that I have no idea what he should do, either.  This is in contrast to my beliefs prior to the 1990 Gulf War (I thought it was a good idea), Afghanistan (I thought it was a good idea), and Iraq (I thought it was a bad idea).

If Obama wants an honest opinion about what to do there, who should he turn to?  Well, in some sense, he should turn to “the voters,” as the real dilemma, it seems, is intervention is seen as right by the citizens.  (This isn’t cynical: this is “classically” democratic in the sense of saying that, collectively, “we” should do what we collectively think is right.)

So, to get a true opinion about this, who would Obama turn to?  Well, he could turn to voters directly, but I will lay this to the side for practical reasons. Instead, he might turn to the directly elected representatives of the people: Congress.

There is a well-known result in political science known as the Condorcet Jury Theorem (CJT), which says (in part) that a majority vote over two alternatives about which everybody has similar (but only imperfectly known) preferences will tend to result in a better choice than if we simply had one person choose on his or her own.[2]

So, the logic of the CJT suggests that, if the consideration is simply “Strike Syria” or “Don’t Strike Syria,” `polling’ Congress will result in a better outcome for President Obama (and all of us) if we also presume (reasonably to me) that the citizens of the US share the same preferences–though we might have different beliefs right now—over the outcomes in Syria.[3]

So far, so good.  But what of the more subtle question: the CJT depends upon the individuals voting sincerely over the two alternatives.  That is, for Obama’s tact to result in “information aggregation” within Congress would require that members of Congress actually do something like poll their constituents, put in the effort to come up with an informed estimate of whether these constituents prefer intervention or not, and then vote this information sincerely.[4] Note that, to the degree that citizens care about the outcome, they might hold their members accountable for this (high-profile) vote if and when those members seek reelection.  Thus, let’s just suppose that a member, if forced to vote on the issue, would rather vote in line with the majority of his or her constituents.

So, why would Congress do this?  After all, some have claimed that Obama is/was looking for a fall guy.  Why not just demur?

Well, on the one hand, the sad reality is that people are and will continue to die in Syria.  Regardless of how, if Congress does nothing AND Obama also demurs, then the blood is arguably then (at least partly) on Congress’s hands.  Hawks in Congress missed a chance to assert our massive and massively expensive military might, Doves missed a chance to vote against war, and the many moderates on this issue in both parties are sitting there looking even more ineffective.

Secondly, Obama’s gambit has set this up as a de facto “Constitutional Moment.” If Congress doesn’t act at all, the presumption that Presidents do and should have great flexibility with respect to unilateral military action will presumably only be bolstered. For similar reasons, Congress can’t/shouldn’t say “do whatever” or “well, you’re going to decide what you decide anyway.”  Thus, unless Congress wants to simply vote “no,” which then results in a high profile and public acceptance of the “blood on the hands” problem above or a de facto Presidential override (thus bolstering the Presidential autonomy dimension), they must “own” this moment.  While this might bias members towards a “yes” vote, this classic article (gated) by my colleague Randy Calvert suggests that this bias—in favor of the President’s stated opinion—actually makes it more likely for a collective decision of  “no” to be persuasive.[5]

So, where are we?  Well, I’ll simply quote President Obama:

Yet, while I believe I have the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorization, I know that the country will be stronger if we take this course, and our actions will be even more effective. We should have this debate, because the issues are too big for business as usual. 

With that, I leave you with this.

____________________

Notes:

[1] Also, in terms of domestic/institutional/public law signaling, Eric Posner provides an excellent take on the real institutional impact of President Obama’s request for Congressional authorization.

[2] There’s a lot of technical details concerning when the theorem actually holds, but I leave those to the side: I mean, hey, this is just a blog post.

[3] I am leaving aside the distinctions between pure majority rule (as in the classical CJT) and the details of Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution.  These distinctions are relatively unimportant, particularly given the fact that Obama is not actually bound by the decision of Congress, so it doesn’t even need to duly pass anything to achieve the goals supposed in this post.

[4] I am also leaving aside the question of coarsening of citizen-level information through the binary vote choices of the 535 members of Congress. For example, if each member votes in line with a delegate model and simply votes the majority support of his or constituents, then a majority of Congress might support intervention with as few as 25% of voters actually supporting it (or vice-versa), but this is both unlikely and beyond the scope of this post.

[5] If I’m blogging, I’m self-promoting, so let’s keep it going.  I have an article (published and gated here; ungated working paper version here) that considers how this type of situation might similarly bias the information that Obama is getting from his advisers.  Similarly, Sean Gailmard and I have an article (published and gated here; ungated working paper version here) that examines how and why the quality of the information presented to Obama in situations such as these might be slanted/altered through bureaucratic procedures and their circumvention.

No War Left Behind?

Posted on by

When President Obama requested Congressional authorization for military intervention in Syria, he not only “scored one for the Constitution,” he also—not coincidentally—scored one for his party.

First of all, he provided an opportunity for the GOP to lay bare the division within their ranks: on this dimension, there are effectively “I hate Obama, so I vote `no'” and “We need to be an effective superpower and project our rightly garnered might wherever the executive sees fit” camps.

Second, and more provocatively, he also drummed up a prologue to the forthcoming budget fight(s) between him and Congress.  In short, the GOP can either say “no” to intervention in Syria (and hence have the blood of whatever comes from that tragic crisis at least putatively on its collective hands), or the GOP can authorize something that it then must try—if it plays hardball with budgetary/debt ceiling recalcitrance—to explain why it won’t fund.  I have a hard time seeing either one being palatable to the GOP, much less in tandem.

The sad part of this, of course, is that it centers on the lives and dreams of people far away, who get no vote in how it could ever be settled.  Nonetheless, these are the times we live in: work for what you think is right, and pray that the chips fall on the side you support.

With that, I leave you with this.

A Whip Applied Twice Is Half A Whip

Posted on by

Politico is reporting that Pelosi has sent a fifth letter urging House Democrats to support authorization for military intervention in Syria:

“Pelosi, who says she won’t whip Syria vote, sends fifth letter in a week to colleagues…”

The tweet suggests—to me at least—that the repeated (public) calls to support authorization for military intervention in Syria amounts to whipping, even if not in name.  I write briefly to suggest that this is exactly the wrong inference to be drawn.

To cut to the chase, the notion of a whip in legislative politics is that of party pressure: of exercise of a command-and-control mechanism from party leadership on party rank-and-file: to “get in line,” as it were, on a given matter.

What is special about whipping is that it is not good old-fashioned lobbying: it is supposedly more impressive and effective precisely because it works.  We might disagree about why, but whipping is different than simple lobbying because it is based on partisan-caucus membership, as opposed to “good old fashioned pressure/persuasion.”

This picture is, in classically mysterious terms, enforced/sustained only by the use of it being quite nonobvious.  Parents among us will understand the importance of this feature when you think about expressions like “oh, when Dad used to get that look in his eye…,” “I did it because I knew Mom liked it done that way,” or—most fittingly—“oh, you never heard Mom/Dad say it twice.”

Here, “the parent,” Nancy Pelosi, has said it publicly five times.  At some level, people might say—well, clearly she wants to have the effect of whipping the vote while saying she isn’t.  Really?  To believe this is to equate whipping the vote with getting the votes.  That’s like saying Peyton Manning didn’t care if he threw 7 TDs or had Ronnie Hillman run 3 TDs in, 2 TDs come from Danny Trevathan interceptions (okay, maybe too soon), and have the NFL grant him 14 legacy points.

NO.  PEYTON. CARES.

Almost every leader cares not only about outcome, but also about the perception of how that outcome was achieved.  (See: why did Saddam Hussein—quite nonuniquely—hold elections that he was sure to win?)

If Pelosi was going to whip this, there’s no fifth letter.  Hell, there’s no first letter.  She’d simply remark in an off-the-cuff way, “the President will receive the support his request deserves from the House Democratic Caucus,” and that would be it.

Some have said—quite plausibly—that Pelosi can’t whip the vote even if she wanted to.  Maybe.  In fact, I think that’s probably right.  But, as my previous post elucidated, it’s not clear she wants to.  And, at this point in her career, I don’t think she has much to work for except her legacy and/or what she thinks is right.  Is intervention in Syria right?  I definitely don’t know.  But I do know that, in all likelihood, she wasn’t just randomly choosing whether and when to write public letters to her colleagues over the past couple of days.  She’s the freaking Minority Leader in the House.  This ain’t her first rodeo.

Of course, there’s a good story—in addition to, and not contradictory to, mine—about why she might not whip her caucus than “she doesn’t have the juice.”  In a nutshell: this story is called, “Hey Johnny B., how you like this upside-down version of Article I, Section 7?”

And with that, I leave you with this.

If You Whip Me, The Voters Will Whup Me

Posted on by

Quoting Politico …

“[House Minority Leader Nancy] Pelosi said Wednesday at an event in San Francisco she does not plan to whip a Syria resolution when it comes to the House floor…”

Leaving aside the moral and strategic questions about the advisability of striking Syria (far beyond my competence), the dynamic unfolding here is intriguig from a Math of Politics standpoint.  Why would Pelosi not whip Democrats to support a president of their party to support an item of the highest profile that he has requested?

There are plenty of ready-made (and randomly-ordered) solutions: (a) Pelosi doesn’t have “the juice” to deliver and wants to cover for the potential of failure, (b) a win for the authorization measure would be at best a wash in terms of political gain for Democrats, given the divided control of Congress, (c) Pelosi is more dove than hawk, or even (d) Obama might prefer to “blame shift” nonaction onto Congress (slash potentially accentuate his own foreseen presidential unilateral action in Syria).

These are all quite viable, but—with the exception of (d)—fairly first-order.  That is, they don’t look at the bigger picture.  Very quickly, let me introduce a fifth option, (e).

(e) Democrats who vote in favor of authorizing military action in Syria would prefer—for reelection purposes—to be seen as doing so sans party pressure as far as possible.

Here’s the quick model: a moderate voter in 2014 is considering whether to vote D or R.  They have a D incumbent and are essentially choosing whether to take the “known” commodity or vote for a relatively unknown replacement from the other party.  Regardless of the voter’s position vis-a-vis military intervention in Syria, this voter (by the presumption that he or she is moderate) would prefer to reelect an incumbent whose preferences are aligned with her own and would be capable of acting on them in times of (electoral) uncertainty.

It seems, at this point, that Americans are not clearly for or against military intervention in Syria. Timing and question wording each make survey responses mover “too much” for anyone to be sure about how a vote in favor of any resolution that authorizes military action will be ultimately interpreted by “the decisive voter” in 2014 in most districts.  (Think Iraq and Afghanistan, and then think Egypt and then think Libya, and then think Rwanda.  And then, seriously, take a moment to both hug those you love and pray for everyone in Syria and elsewhere.)

So, back to the First World Problems of Congressmen (this piece from The Onion is, as usual, apropos and adroit), let’s consider the inference that a voter would make about his or her representative upon seeing a vote for military action after observing/believing that there was party pressure (“whipping”) to conjure/cajole such votes:

“My incumbent might or might not support military action.  Conversely he or she might be predisposed to follow the party line, because his or her vote might be the result of party pressure.”

On the other hand, if there is no party pressure, [1] the voter would infer

“My incumbent was subject to no party pressure.  Accordingly, I treat his or her vote as a relatively uncontaminated signal of his or her position on [whatever the voter thinks the Syria vote represents].”

The second scenario is obviously more transparent and, accordingly, (perhaps naively) normatively appealing.  But it is strategically riskier for the incumbents.  Why would Pelosi do it, rather than providing cover for the incumbents, as is the normal presumption about the optimal approach for electorally secure leaders with respect to tough votes?

Well, I think a key point here is that many Democrats in the House are in “safe districts,” where their greatest “net electoral threat” based on their vote(s) on Syria comes from the left (i.e., in the primary).  Accordingly, voting in favor of military action in Syria is actually easier for incumbents if there is no party pressure: self-described “liberals” distrust Obama (and presumably, Pelosi if she trotted out a whip to support Obama) on Syria. In a somewhat surprising sense, Pelosi applying no party pressure to Democrats may make it easier/more likely for Obama to secure votes from House Democrats than if she went public (or didn’t deny) that the party apparatus was whipping votes to support the President.

I thought this would be short: in my mind, the model is quite stripped down…sparse even. But context matters…and with that, I leave you with this.

___________________________

[1] I will not go into the signaling/auditing game that follows from thinking about Pelosi’s incentives with respect to whether to truthfully announce her intention to whip.  That’s also very interesting, but much more complicated.  And, hey, this is just a blog.  At some point, we all have to be sincere or at least presume that everybody else is. #Godel