Politicians and The Prisoners Dilemma: Part 3 of 4
The incentives for the individual politician and any single party are not aligned, indeed are in conflict with the national interest. Part 3 of 4 Published 29 July 2022.
The Code Of Conduct recommendations apply to individuals. But that leads to a critical element of the problem. You can’t fight a tightly centrally organised system (the Leninist CCP) by having a fragmented organisation where there are incentives for different actors to undercut the common interest, a form of “prisoners dilemma” where caving in to CCP actors benefits the individual to the detriment of the nation.
Prisoners Dilemma
The term “prisoners dilemma” refers to the problem of two actors (rival politicians or rival parties in the example depicted above) who stand to benefit if they take an action that the other does not, but have no trust or communication between themselves. The results are generally that they both lose by not coordinating their action and attempting to pursue their self interest.
In Australia’s situation, we all benefit if all parties and political representatives stand united against coercion and influence, but an economist would predict, based on the game theory prisoners dilemma model, that the odds of this happening would be low, as different parties
Compete with each other
Distrust each other
Don’t communicate with each other
Plan on short term timetables (electoral cycles)
The timeframe problem may be important as in a repeated game, players sometimes learn to collaborate. In a one shot game (ie a first attempt at winning a seat in government) players are expected to seek personal gain above all else.
How then can we construct mechanisms to herd the cats in the right direction, or resolve the prisoners dilemma of disunited political actors? This is discussed below and in the final article four that concludes this series.
Start with Parties:
The Liberal party exists as different parties in different states bearing the same name. Even individuals in the same state Liberal party seem to be acting independently. Labor appears to have factions with different strategies, and the Greens are a collection of individuals with no common view on much at all.
Strategy:
Parties need to find a way to discipline their elected and administrative officials, to work cohesively to implement the party strategy on China. Foreign affairs is no longer foreign. It is playing out inside Australia and China affects every field; trade, investment, migration, education, environment, even concerning foreign relations with nations other than China, China is the biggest issue. This plays out at every level of government and other levels of society (not dealt with in this discussion). Domestic focused China Strategy is more than just resisting influence, proactive strategies need to be implemented to counter the CCP and take the initiative.
Parties need an integrated and centralised strategy for how they implement China strategy in the local environment, and it must be enforced across Federal, State and Council levels. The days when individuals could do their own thing must end. Opposition leaders must work with Prime Ministers to resolve any disagreements on China strategy behind closed doors, and in general, all parties should speak the same message with their different voices, at all levels.
Responsibility:
Currently no-one in any of the Australian political parties is in charge of managing China policy at a party level. There needs to be a team. There probably are individuals or teams who think about getting Chinese community votes and funding. This needs to be the same team, but the priority has to be the national interest.
Ultimate responsibility and reporting needs to be to Party State and Federal Presidents. Up until now, politicians could pander to CCP related interests and there was no cost, only benefit in votes and funding if they got the formula right. This needs to change. If they sell out the nation, then there need to be costs, in lost votes, lost funding, from other parts of the community, and lost preselection.
Article 4 in this series outlines strategies for ordinary people to make a difference in getting the right behaviours from our politicians.