A Senator's Dilemma

After discussing the prisoner's dilemma in class, I searched for a prisoner's dilemma in politics. In her blog post, Colette described how a prisoner's dilemma might transpire in Congress. Other thinkers see a prisoner's dilemma playing out in the Supreme Court confirmation hearings. In his article, “Games Congress Plays: The Judge Kavanaugh Edition,” Evans argues that the Democrats erred by confirming Gorsuch after the Republicans refused to confirm Garland. (Please note that this article was published before the allegations of sexual assault against Judge Kavanaugh). Evans views the confirmation hearings as a prisoner’s dilemma game with multiple rounds in which players with full information can take disciplinary action against their opponents when the opponent defers to a non-cooperative strategy. In a multi-round prisoner’s dilemma, players can arrive at the cooperative strategy by using a system of punishment and reward in which an opponent’s choice to act non-cooperatively is punished on the next round with a non-cooperative response or the opponent’s choice to act cooperatively is subsequently rewarded with a cooperative response.

While on the surface, Supreme Court confirmation hearings appear to adhere to the tit-for-tat strategy we expect to see as a result of a multi-round prisoner's dilemma, this situation is anything but. In the true prisoner’s dilemma, both players must have a dominant strategy and the mutual pursuance of that dominant strategy must result in a pareto-inefficient outcome. In the Supreme Court confirmation hearings, however, neither player, let's call them R and D, has a dominant strategy whose mutual pursuance results in a pareto-inefficient outcome. Therefore, while the Supreme Court confirmation hearings may result in a dilemma for some senators, they are not a true prisoner's dilemma.