Politics and Game Theory
Dear Armchairs, A question has been bothering me for sometime. The question involves the hypothetical scenario as follows. (I am new on this list and I hope I have posed the problem in a clear way): Lets assume that the advertisement behavior during elections of political parties in a two party system can be modeled by a tit-for-tat strategy. The parties have the option to engage in either *positive* advertisement or *negative* advertisement. Positive advertisement involves only highlighting the good aspects of oneself, whereas negative advertising involves only highlighting the 'deficiencies' of the other party. If one party uses negative advertising, the other party will do the same and it will become the dominant strategy for all elections. Such a situation is generally not socially beneficial because many people are so put off by negative advertisement that they choose not to vote. Lets assume that this hypothetical political system is stuck in a situation where the two parties are engaged in negative advertisements and the voters are becoming increasingly frustrated with the system. Now suppose that a *viable and credible* third party enters the race (this party has a realistic chance of winning). The first move of this party is to use positive advertisement. Does economic theory say anything about what would happen next? Should the two original parties continue with negative advertisement or switch to positive advertisement (a switch that is socially beneficial). If the first two ignore the positive advertisement of the third party, will the third party soon decide that its dominant strategy is to use negative advertisement? Can someone clarify this situation for me or direct me to material that may help answer this question? Thanks Arham Choudhury __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
RE: Politics and Game Theory
Arham Choudhury wrote: Can someone clarify this situation for me or direct me to material that may help answer this question? Questions very similar to the ones you asked are examined in the following paper: Skaperdas, S and Grofman, B (1995) Modeling Negative Campaigning, American Political Science Review, 89 (1): 49-61. Alex Robson ANU -Original Message- From: Arham Choudhury [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, 16 December 2002 11:27 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:Politics and Game Theory Dear Armchairs, A question has been bothering me for sometime. The question involves the hypothetical scenario as follows. (I am new on this list and I hope I have posed the problem in a clear way): Let's assume that the advertisement behavior during elections of political parties in a 'two party' system can be modeled by a tit-for-tat strategy. The parties have the option to engage in either *positive* advertisement or *negative* advertisement. Positive advertisement involves only highlighting the 'good' aspects of oneself, whereas negative advertising involves only highlighting the 'deficiencies' of the other party. If one party uses negative advertising, the other party will do the same and it will become the dominant strategy for all elections. Such a situation is generally not socially beneficial because many people are so put off by negative advertisement that they choose not to vote. Let's assume that this hypothetical political system is stuck in a situation where the two parties are engaged in negative advertisements and the voters are becoming increasingly frustrated with the system. Now suppose that a *viable and credible* third party enters the race (this party has a realistic chance of winning). The first move of this party is to use positive advertisement. Does economic theory say anything about what would happen next? Should the two original parties continue with negative advertisement or switch to positive advertisement (a switch that is socially beneficial). If the first two ignore the positive advertisement of the third party, will the third party soon decide that its dominant strategy is to use negative advertisement? Can someone clarify this situation for me or direct me to material that may help answer this question? Thanks Arham Choudhury __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
Re: Politics and Game Theory
I don't know the answer to the problem as you stated it. I did, however, recently work for a state Senate campaign and asked alot of questions. One thing they told me was that negative advertising only puts doubt in the mind of the unaligned voters regarding the opponent rather than winning any voter's support. As an example, here in Michigan, Dick Posthumus was trailing Jennifer Granholm in the polls by quite a bit. The Posthumus campaign ran no positive Posthumus ads for quite some time, instead running negative ads about Granholm in the hopes of getting unaligned voters to abandon her. Once the polls showed that alot of unaligned voters had become undecided again, the Posthumus campaign started in on the positive Posthumus ads to win those undecided voters over. In the end the results were close. I know that doesn't help solve the problem as you worded it, but perhaps the payoffs are different from what your example assumed. So any candidate trailing in the polls will run negative ads to make the unaligned voters become undecided again. Once that is accomplished, all candidates must begin competition all over again for those votes. With three viable candidates, I suppose the two trailing ones must play a game of brinkmanship, waiting for the other to go negative, and cash in on the newly dislodged voters. -jsh __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
Re: Politics and Game Theory
I've long thought that the notion of negative campaigning is largely a product of the statist-liberal media oligopoly. They don't much care for other people--like candidates with whom they disagree--providing you with information so they criticize such candidates for negative campaigning if such candidates give you information like the fact that their opponents are statist-liberals. If a statist-liberal candidate calls his opponent a conservative however, that's not negative campaigning. With the s tatist-liberals in the media regularly labelling candidates as conservative or arch-conservative anyway, the statist-liberal candidates rarely need to say anything anyway. David In a message dated 12/15/02 7:59:51 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Dear Armchairs, A question has been bothering me for sometime. The question involves the hypothetical scenario as follows. (I am new on this list and I hope I have posed the problem in a clear way): Let’s assume that the advertisement behavior during elections of political parties in a ‘two party’ system can be modeled by a tit-for-tat strategy. The parties have the option to engage in either *positive* advertisement or *negative* advertisement. Positive advertisement involves only highlighting the ‘good’ aspects of oneself, whereas negative advertising involves only highlighting the 'deficiencies' of the other party. If one party uses negative advertising, the other party will do the same and it will become the dominant strategy for all elections. Such a situation is generally not socially beneficial because many people are so put off by negative advertisement that they choose not to vote. Let’s assume that this hypothetical political system is stuck in a situation where the two parties are engaged in negative advertisements and the voters are becoming increasingly frustrated with the system. Now suppose that a *viable and credible* third party enters the race (this party has a realistic chance of winning). The first move of this party is to use positive advertisement. Does economic theory say anything about what would happen next? Should the two original parties continue with negative advertisement or switch to positive advertisement (a switch that is socially beneficial). If the first two ignore the positive advertisement of the third party, will the third party soon decide that its dominant strategy is to use negative advertisement? Can someone clarify this situation for me or direct me to material that may help answer this question? Thanks Arham Choudhury
