SITUATION: COMPETITION FOR ELECTED OFFICE
The word ‘politics’ is derived from the word “poly,” meaning “many,” and the word “ticks,” meaning “blood sucking parasites. —LARRY HARDIMAN
Consider the path to the U.S. presidency. The Republican and Democratic can- didates are deciding where to place their campaign platforms along the polit- ical spectrum that runs from liberal to conservative. Let’s suppose that the Democratic candidate has three feasible platforms: liberal, moderately liberal, and moderate. Let’s suppose that the Republican candidate has three as well: moderate, moderately conservative, and conservative.
A candidate’s payoffs are assumed to depend implicitly on the candidate’s ideological preferences—what platform he would like to see implemented— and what it’ll take to have a shot at getting elected. Assume that most voters are moderate. The Democratic candidate is presumed to be liberal (i.e., his most preferred policies to implement are liberal), but he realizes that he may need to choose a more moderate platform in order to have a realistic chance of winning. Analogously, the Republican candidate is presumed to be conser- vative, and she, too, knows that she may need to moderate her platform. The payoff matrix is shown in FIGURE 2.12.
FIGURE 2.12 Competition for Elected Office
4,4 6,3 8,2
3,6 5,5 9,4
2,8 4,9 7,7
Republican candidate
Democratic candidate
Moderately liberal
Liberal
Moderate