UCLA game theorist on government shutdown: “it’s not brinkmanship”
Many are calling the federal government shutdown the result of “brinkmanship.” But as a game theorist, I beg to differ. Brinkmanship is not just threatening to do something terrible. Essential to brinkmanship is deliberately giving up control.
Given the power he has to end the standoff, Boehner might be thinking that he can control the shutdown’s downside risk, satisfying the far right as much as possible until the national polls start to really turn against the Republicans. Perhaps the reason we are in this mess is because we can relatively easily get out of it. But this doesn’t get him as much leverage.
If Boehner were to engage in true brinkmanship, he might threaten, for example, to resign as Speaker and throw the House into chaos. By threatening to deliberately lose control, he can say to the Democrats that they can either negotiate with him or negotiate with the true crazies. In other words, Boehner’s ability to singlehandedly end the standoff makes his bargaining power lower, not higher.
Republicans who want to win a national election someday have to figure out how to discipline or pay off those House Republicans who care only about primary challenges in their quite conservative local districts. But maybe this is impossible. Maybe there are no custodians of the Republican brand nationally. It is hard to imagine how Republicans as a whole benefitted from the endless chaotic debates in the 2012 Republican primary, for example. If no one is in control of the Republican party nationally, then brinkmanship is not possible because deliberately giving up control requires having control in the first place.