Prisoner's Dilemmas

I argue that the creation of political parties in the United States Congress both addresses and enhances the collective action issues known as the prisoner’s dilemma, agency loss, and the tragedy of the commons, due to their constant clashes of ideological ambitions. The formation of Congress was most likely the first act of collective action before the official constitution was drafted. Two opposing sides, one the heavily populated states argued for a legislative body based on population. And the second, which was a coalition of less populated states, wanted an equal number of representatives. The two sides came together, debated the merits of each proposals, and finally came to a mutual compromise. Thus, this is how the modern day United …show more content…
The prisoner’s dilemma is “a situation in which two (or more) actors cannot agree to cooperate for fear that the other will find its interest best served by reneging on an agreement” (Kernell 12). This goes back to the idea that every individual has different ideals on how government should run, also known as person’s preferences. When a group of people with similar preferences come together to advocate them, it becomes a political party. Because each party has a distinct preference compared to another party, they try everything they can to protect their preferences in legislation. In congress, a prisoner’s dilemma would be one side not working with the other on compromise, but instead, trying to find a way to bypass the wishes of the other side and do what is best for themselves. Interestingly enough, this is more of an issue within party ranks rather than across the aisle. Because each individual has a distinct set of preferences, different viewpoints, severity of party ideals can differ within members of a party. For instance, a certain group of senators in the Democratic party can have viewpoints that are more conservative than that of the liberal party leadership and majority. Quite often, when left to their own intentions, these moderates would vote more towards the Republican side on certain issues. In order to ensure these …show more content…
The key to understanding this definition is the idea that the government runs on a set of resources. These resources include money in the form of the limited amount of revenue that the government has at its disposal for spending from taxes. A lot of the time, it is congress 's responsibility to allocate these funds to the places in the country that need them the most. However, recently there has been a growing movement by congressmen to distribute handouts called constituent services. A constituent service is when a representative personally addresses a constituent 's concern pertaining to another branch of government. A common example is when a constituent calls their congressperson and request that they help them receive their social security check on time. A representative begins using their political influence in order to coerce an agency to comply. Most often than not, a representative does this for a wealthy campaign donor than an average voter. The issue behind this is described in a New York Times article titled; “Congress For Many, or The Few?” by Fred A. Bernstein where he briefly describes the problem as “A vast constituent-services machine, likely costing billions of dollars a year, is letting congress micro-, not macro-manage, the executive branch” (Bernstein 2012). Congress is ineffective at preventing tragedy of the