SITUATION: PROMOTION AND SABOTAGE
Suppose you are engaged in a contest in which the person with the highest performance wins a prize. Currently, you’re in second place. What can you do to improve your chances of winning? One thought is to work hard to improve your performance. But what might prove more effective is engaging in a “dirty tricks” campaign to degrade the performance of the current front-runner. The goal is to end up on top, and that can be done either by clawing your way up or by dragging those ahead of you down.
Such destructive forms of competition arise regularly in the political arena. The next time the U.S. presidential primaries roll around, pay attention to the campaigning. Candidates who are behind will talk about not only what a good choice they are for President, but also what a bad choice the front-runner is. They generally don’t waste their time denigrating the other candidates—just the one who is currently on top and thus is the “one to beat.” It has been sug- gested that sabotage by weaker competitors has arisen as well in nondemo- cratic governments. For example, although Zhao Ziyang appeared destined to become the leader of the Chinese Communist Party after Deng Xiao-Ping died in 1997, two more minor figures—Jiang Zemin and Li Peng—took control in- stead. Sabotage presidential primaries may have been at work.
To explore when and how a front-runner can be dethroned through dirty tricks, consider a setting in which three players are competing for a promotion.5