May 1

Sarah May
Professor Menaldo
POL S 204
12 Nov 2019
Question 1: Coordination Games and Modern Politics

THE STAG HUNT AND THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES

The idea behind the Stag Hunt is that there are two hunters and they can choose to hunt

either a stag or a rabbit. They can catch a rabbit alone, but they both must hunt the stag in order

to catch it. The stag offers more meat and is preferable to the rabbit. The payoffs look like this:

Rabbit Stag

Rabbit 3,3 3,0

Stag 0,3 5,5

The Stag Hunt is a pure coordination game. That means that it is in each players’ best

interest to make the same choice because they get higher payoffs when they do. However, there

are equilibriums when each player hunts the stag and when each player hunts the rabbit. In each

of these scenarios, neither player has an incentive to switch their decisions because they cannot

improve their payoffs by doing so. The stag equilibrium is preferable because they get higher

payoffs, but it’s possible to get stuck in the outcome where they both hunt rabbits for fear the

other player won’t choose stag, and they will end up getting nothing.

The Battle of the Sexes describes a situation where a husband and a wife are going to

meet somewhere, but they can’t discuss where. They can go to a boxing match or an opera. They

both prefer to go to either event together, but the husband prefers the boxing match and the wife

prefers the opera. Drawn out it looks like this:

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Boxing Opera

Boxing 2,1 0,0

Opera 0,0 1,2

The Battle of the Sexes, while still a coordination game, is more complicated than the

Stag Hunt because one equilibrium is preferable to player one and the other equilibrium is

preferable to player two.

APPLICATIONS TO MODERN POLITICS

Institutions

Institutions are the rules set for members of a society and the way they’re enforced,

leading to a social order and behavioral norms. There are two types of institutions: formal and

informal. Formal institutions are rules and procedures that are generally perceived as official and

codified in law, such as the U.S. Presidential system. Informal institutions are shared within a

society and consist of unwritten rules for the society’s members. Institutions come in many

different forms, but institutions’ main goals are to coordinate individuals’ behavior and to

mediate disputes, so either of these games could theoretically represent institutions’ roles in

society. The question is whether institutions are better represented by a pure coordination game

like the Stag Hunt or a semi-antagonistic game like the Battle of the Sexes.

Take for example the informal institution of footbinding in China as described by

Mackie. Despite growing dissatisfaction with the social norm, it continued to be difficult for

unbound women to marry until the mid- 20th century, due to the positive social connotations of

footbinding. By the late 19th century, people had begun to let go of these positive associations
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with footbinding and realize instead the health detriments it posed. However, footbinding had

been the norm for so long, very few families were willing to not foot bind their daughters for fear

that it would hurt their chances of finding a good husband. It wasn’t until anti-footbinding

societies began making their members swear oaths not to footbind their daughters or let their

sons marry footbound women that people began to abandon the norm (Mackie).

The case of footbinding shows a good example of a belief trap: when there are two

equilibrium outcomes and due to precedent, people become trapped in the inferior equilibrium.

This instance is best represented by the Stag Hunt as it is a pure coordination game. It is in both

men’s and women’s interests to get married, so they both get equal payoffs when they

coordinate. However, the payoffs they receive when feet are unbound are more than the payoffs

for when feet are bound because they do not bear the health costs of bound feet. However, every

institution may not be so well represented by this game.

Consider for example a formal institution: a constitution. The writers of the constitution

all have various interests that they will be lobbying for during the deliberation process (Elster). It

is in every writer’s best interest that they settle on a constitution that can be ratified because

otherwise there is anarchy. However, those who win more power or pork are relatively better off

than those who lose. Because this is a coordination game with relative winners and losers it is not

a Stag Hunt but a Battle of the Sexes.

It would be unrepresentative of reality to claim that all institutions could be described

with just the Stag Hunt or the Battle of the Sexes. Rather they cover a range between the two,

from pure coordination to relative winners and losers.

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Nationalism

Nationalism, an emotional connection among members of a nation-state, is largely based

on common culture and pride for a shared community. Whether that common culture is created

by the government in order to foster a sense of nationalism or it’s the remnants of a conflict that

eliminates rival cultures to create one “pure” national culture, nationalism is a game with

winners and losers.

Consider for example a country where two languages are prominently spoken. The native

speakers of language A prefer to speak that, but the native speakers of language B prefer to speak

their own language. It’s confusing for half the country to speak one language and half the

country to speak another so they must coordinate and speak the same language. No matter what

language they choose, one side is going to be worse off because they’re not speaking their

preferred language. However, if they coordinate around one language both sides will be better

off than if they spoke different languages.

This cultural conflict over not just language but also class systems, capital cities, and job

hiring practices is a Battle of the Sexes; both sides must cooperate but there are relative winners

and losers, and whichever group has more political power is likely to get their language declared

the national language.

Political Violence within States

One of the main problems that institutions seek to address is coordination when

individuals have an incentive to behave opportunistically.

According to Fearon’s theory, when a majority group takes power in a country, there is a

fear amongst the minority group that they will be oppressed or mistreated. The majority group is
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incentivized to keep pork from the minority group because then they have more for themselves,

so any agreement that majority makes to share with the minority is non-credible. The minority

can choose to fight the majority in hopes of seceding and improving their situation but then they

will incur the costs of fighting. If they choose to fight, they have to do it before the new majority

power consolidates authority and has a stable military that can easily defeat the rebels (Fearon,

Commitment Problems and the Spread of Ethnic Conflict).

The majority’s decision on how much pork to give the minority is a Battle of the Sexes;

both sides have an incentive to coordinate because neither side wants to incur the cost of battle,

so they must reach an agreement on the distribution of pork. There are relative winners and

losers to this because whatever pork the minority gets, the majority doesn’t. They both get

nothing if they can’t settle because the government’s resources instead have to go to war, not

discretionary spending (Fearon, Commitment Problems and the Spread of Ethnic Conflict).

The minority’s decision to fight or stay peacefully may be considered a Stag Hunt

because if both sides coordinate peacefully they don’t incur the costs of battle, and if both

coordinate non-peacefully they still have something to gain (autonomy for the minority and

unshared pork for the majority). The problem with this assessment is that if they don’t coordinate

(one of them takes military action, but the other doesn’t), one side will benefit more than the

other, but they won’t incur the costs of battle because they face little or no opposition. Therefore,

their payoff will be higher than the payoff if they coordinate peacefully. This means that neither

side can trust the other to stick to the peaceful outcome because they could improve their payoffs

by deciding to take military action. Therefore, political violence is a Battle of the Sexes because

there are always relative winners and losers in any credible outcome.
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ANALYSIS: HOW DO THEY COMPLEMENT EACH OTHER?

The main difference between these two games is that the Battle of the Sexes contains

relative winners and losers while the Stag Hunt does not. However, the important factor in

analyzing their representation of politics is not their differences (the incentive to act selfishly),

but rather the factor they share: the incentive to coordinate with others. Politics is not a unilateral

game; it requires coordination for successful results. Otherwise, everybody loses.

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Question 3:

EARLY HUMAN COALITIONS AND THE ARTIFICIALITY OF ETHNICITY

Yuval Harari summarizes the difference between natural occurrences and biological

myths with “biology enables, culture forbids.” Harari’s work centers heavily around the

imagined orders that homo sapiens began forming as they became literate and began forming

larger and more complex societies. He wrote that humans created these orders as a way of

organizing larger communities and coordinating better societies, but that often leads to imagined

hierarchies and circles of prejudice that those caught in their pull view as “natural orders” despite

their artificial human creation. “Biology enables, culture forbids” provides a quick way to

discern which orders really are natural, such as homosexuality, versus the orders and norms that

humans have created, such as homophobia (Harari).

One may view ethnicity, despite being a trait that people cannot choose, as one of these

imagined orders. Ethnic coalitions usually serve as a divide between groups, an indicator of “us

vs. them.” They tend to forbid extensive association with other ethnic coalitions rather than

enable them. This indicates that rather than being a natural occurrence, ethnic coalitions are

manmade orders. If these groups are truly artificial, it stands to reason that there must be an

incentive for creating them. The question must be asked then why humans create these ethnic

coalitions and how it benefits the members of these groups to be exclusive.

THE MOBILIZATION OF ETHNIC COALITIONS AS POLTICAL GROUPS

Ethnic identity is membership in an ascriptive group, usually associated with descent

(Week 6, day 1, slide 3). The ascriptive aspect of it is arguably the most important, as that is

what makes ethnic coalitions so exclusive: there are a limited number of possible members and
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it’s hard to change your ethnic identity to gain membership to a particular group. This exclusivity

is the main incentive for creating and mobilizing ethnic coalitions in politics.

Fearon argues that political coalitions have an incentive to keep their numbers small

because the political “pork” (power, resources, etc.) they receive will have to be distributed

amongst all the members of the group. If there are less people in the coalition, they have to

distribute it over a smaller population and pork per capita is higher. Because ethnicity is hard to

change or choose, this provides the perfect type of coalition; its numbers are naturally limited

and it protects against members that may join solely for the purpose of receiving pork (Fearon,

Why Ethnic Politics and "Pork" Tend to Go Together). This provides the incentive for forming

ethnic coalitions.

Like any other institution, ethnic identities have distributional consequences; some

groups will receive more than others. Elites looking to mobilize political coalitions that will give

them the most benefits recognize the need for a minimum winning coalition because the

members of a group big enough to win but small enough to gain the most per capita pork also

recognize the benefits they stand to gain by being mobilized. Therefore, ethnic coalitions are

highly incentivized for both elites and the members of the groups themselves.

However, ethnic identities are so varied, individuals commonly consider themselves as

belonging to more than one ethnic group. Politicians can’t mobilize every group because it

would create so many small niche groups, no group would be big enough to win pork. Posner

argues that politicians choose which groups they mobilize based on political salience, which is in

direct relationship to relative percentage of the population. Groups that make up a high enough

portion of the population are much more important players in the game for pork than smaller

groups, so there’s a higher incentive for politicians to mobilize these groups. Sometimes this may
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involve creating a common identity for multiple small groups in order to create a winning

coalition, as is the case in Zambia with the Chew and Tumbuka tribes. In Malawi, both tribes are

a sizeable enough portion of the population to be political salient on their own and are therefore

political rivals. However, in Zambia, they are allies under the banner of “Eastern Zambians”

because individually they don’t have enough political clout to earn pork. Therefore, there was an

incentive for Zambian elites to unite them into a group large enough to have political salience

(Posner).

The methods of mobilizing ethnic coalitions tend to be rooted in access to resources.

Partly because the size the coalition determines whether they can win pork and the distribution of

the pork within the group but also because identity in one of these groups determines an

individual’s access to resources. For example, in Kenya, the government tied customary identity

to land rights, making it extremely difficult for an individual without a clear ethnic identity to

gain access to those resources (Week 6, day 1, slide 16).

Aside from land rights, the mobilization of ethnic groups is often tied to cultural

nationalism. For example, in Kenya, Nandi speaking tribes were united by their common

language as well as their feeling of resentment for being pushed off their land by British

colonialists (Week 6, day 1, slide 19). By uniting, they highly increased their chances of being

able to stake a claim to state resources because their political salience was much higher. Their

chiefs did this by standardizing a Nandi vernacular and creating common Nandi-language

resources that brought members of each distinct tribe together under one banner. This created a

common Kalenjin identity that may never have existed if it hadn’t been for the actions of elites

who sought to create a group capable of claiming government resources for their own (Week 6,

day 1, slide 24).

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This mobilization is also commonly achieved by pitting two salient ethnic groups against

each other, further solidifying a common identity within the groups themselves. The Chewa-

Tumbuka example shows this as well as the Kalenjin conflict with the Kikuyu during the

Kikuyu’s independence movement. This conflict solidified the Kalenjin’s enmity with the

Kikuyu and further established them as one distinct group, rather than just a coalition of tribes.

All of these examples show how the artificial bounds drawn around ethnicity benefit

humans; they allow them to claim resources and keep them for themselves because they have a

clear line with which to exclude others from sharing those resources.

CONFLICTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF ETHNIC COALITIONS

The problem with these ethnic coalitions is that when the minimum winning coalition

wins, there are other ethnic coalitions that lose and begin to fear that they will be denied

resources and pork in a government dominated by a rival ethnic majority. This leaves them with

the option to stay and accept whatever role the majority designates them or to attempt secession

and gain independence (Fearon, Commitment Problems and the Spread of Ethnic Conflict).

It also benefits elites to stir up political conflict between ethnic minorities. By

encouraging ethnic violence, as President Moi did with the Kalenjin in Kenya in order to

eliminate any possible challengers to his position, political elites can ensure that they remain the

ones in power. It also provides them the opportunity to keep more pork for themselves or the

members of their groups by excluding other possible allies from membership in a “minority

group.” This exclusion is almost arbitrary in nature, as most minority groups, including the

Kalenjin, are incredibly diverse within themselves. They are already a coalition of many smaller

groups and identities; they’re only allied for the sake of political salience. There is not

necessarily a greater difference between any two smaller groups within an ethnic coalition than
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between one of those groups and a group that is excluded by the ethnic coalition. The only

explanation is that it benefitted the first two groups to be political allies at the time of their

mobilization and it did not benefit them to include another outside group.

CONCLUSION

Despite ethnicity not being a chosen trait, the fact that it encourages exclusivity and

frequently forbids involvement with members of rival ethnic group indicates that it is an

imagined order rather than a natural one. This is further supported by Fearon’s argument that

elites have a strong incentive to mobilize ethnic coalitions due to their exclusivity. These

constructed hierarchies lead to ethnic conflict designed to keep identities separate and therefore

more politically salient.

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Works Cited

Elster, Jon. "Forces and Mechanisms in the Constitution-making Process." Duke Law Journal (1995-
1996): 364-396. Web.
Fearon, James D. "Commitment Problems and the Spread of Ethnic Conflict." n.d. 107-126.
—. "Why Ethnic Politics and "Pork" Tend to Go Together." (1999): 1-24. Web.
Forster, Peter G. "Culture, Nationalism, and the Invention of Tradition in Malawi." Cambridge University
Press (1994): 477-497. Web.
Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Canada: Signal Books, 2014. Web.
Mackie, Gerry. "Ending Footbinding and Infibulation: A Convention Account." American Sociological
Review (1996): 999-1017. Web.
Posner, Daniel N. "The poltical salience of cultural difference: Why Chewas and Tumbukas are allies in
Zambia and adversaries in Malawi." American Poltical Science Review (2004): 529-545. Web.

Lectures Cited
Week 6, day 1