Flanagan's "Game Theory and Canadian Politics"

The blueprint for today’s Conservative Party can be found in Tom Flanagan’s work Game Theory and Canadian Politics (1998).  The discovery that Harper’s erstwhile mentor has written a book on Game Theory - not a very interesting one, mind you (a selective read is recommended) - makes the evidence of the proverbial smoking gun become clear. Game Theory explains the so-called Fair Elections Act.

This blog first broached Game Theory in my review of Lawrence Martin’s Harperland, and I returned to the matter more philosophically with my discussion of “Harper and Hobbes”. Rather than repeat myself excessively I invite the reader to consult the aforementioned entries, but allow me to point out that Game Theory began  in 1944 with the publication of The Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour, the joint work of John von Neumann (a mathematical genius) and Oskar Morgenstern (an economist).  It was also later developed by Princeton’s John Nash (“A Beautiful Mind”), for which he won a Nobel Prize.

Stephen Harper would have encountered Game Theory in his study of economics, and this fact has been missed by his many observers – and critics.  Game Theory is also rooted in the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, particularly his Leviathan (1651), published in the wake of England’s Puritan Revolution – and the execution of King Charles I in 1649.  Central to both Hobbes and Game Theory is what Flanagan describes as its “Methodological Individualism” which is inherent in “Rational Choice”: “… rational choice is sceptical about speaking of vague aggregates such as ‘society’ or ‘the nation’ because such terms are often used to disguise very real differences among the people who make up the collectivity.”[1]  Game theory argues from the premise of “rational actors seeking to maximize their own self interest”[2] (two questionable assumptions, indeed), and Flanagan twists himself into knots (indicating shallow imagination) over the altruism of Mother Teresa.

According to Game Theory there is essentially nothing but rational self-interest, a rather paranoid vision of the world, which helps to explain Harper’s penchant for secrecy (and John Nash’s bout with schizophrenia).  Game theory also argues that is rational not to cooperate, which implies – logically speaking, of course - that a Game Theorist would never trust his or her Doctor, who must have an ulterior motive.  True to form, Game Theory flouts public health concerns and gives legitimacy to those who avoid vaccinations, dubiously described by Flanagan as “a rational exercise in pursuit of self-interest.”[3]  Apparently Flanagan – and Game Theory - forget David Hume’s famous contention in A Treatise of Human Nature (1739) that “reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”[4]

As discussed, Game Theory also has no sense of collective values: Medicare can be privatized and the CBC slashed, raising the question of what is Canada, outside of Harper’s symbolic esteem for the military and (of course) the “cult” surrounding our Prime Minister’s excessive “leadership” (thus tearing a page from Hobbes’s Leviathan).  Because Game Theorists have no sense of the public, how is it that the “Harper Government” deigns to speak in terms of elected “public service” – surely a relic from a bygone age.  Conservative “parliamentarians” are actually living a public lie at the public’s expense by acting only in their self-interest: hence the so-called Fair Elections Act.

It is important to note that Pierre Poilievre, the Democratic Reform Minister who is responsible for the “Fair” Election agenda, attacks our Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand in vitriolic terms derived from Flanagan’s book: “he wants more power, a bigger budget and less accountability” as quoted by the Globe and Mail in their record eighth editorial opposing the Fair Elections Act.[5]  Compare this with Flanagan’s text who writes in his conclusion of Game Theory and Canadian Politics: “Nevertheless, the evidence of self- interest is all around us … [for example] public servants seeking bigger budgets and career advancement.”[6] In other words, Poilievre’s speech writers are dipping into Flanagan to justify their case.

Meanwhile Flanagan laments in his forthcoming book Persona Non Grata that Harper is “Nixonian” and treats people as “disposable”, surely one of the hazards of Game Theory when only the “individual” counts – society be damned.[7]  Allow me to recommend by way of conclusion some folk wisdom, which comes from an observation of nature (Game Theory is also big in biology today): a tree does not grow in solitude; trees need other trees around them to survive and flourish.  In other words, we as people cannot thrive as self-interested individuals alone, a fact which indicates that the asocial and atomized model behind Game Theory as it applies to Canadian politics should be jettisoned lest it poison the public any further.

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[1] Thomas Flanagan, Game Theory and Canadian Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), p. 5.

[2] Ibid., p. 164.

[3] Ibid., p. 73.

[4] David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Ernest G. Mossner (Toronto: Penguin, 1985), p. 462 (Book II, Section 3 “Of the influencing motives of the will.”)

[5]  Globe and Mail, “If only evidence could vote,” Saturday April 12, 2014, p. F9.

[6]  Flanagan, Game Theory and Canadian Politics, p. 164.

[7]  Globe and Mail, Thursday April 10, pp.A1,A4.

On Harper and Hobbes, Trade Secrets with China, and Ancient Canadian Wisdom

This is to let Canadians know that Stephen Harper actually does adhere to a system of thought, albeit a very short-sighted one.  His political philosophy borrows most not from Machiavelli but from Thomas Hobbes, in particular his book Leviathan (1651) written in the wake of England’s Civil War. King Charles was executed in 1649, the House of Lords was abolished shortly thereafter, and the Puritan regime of Cromwell began organizing a new state, known as the Commonwealth. Meanwhile continental Europe terminated the Thirty Years’ War with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.

While Hobbes can be seen to be in league with Cromwell, he was in fact a Royalist (even when England’s Kings were Catholic). But his political philosophy was indeed considered a “scientific” response to the apparent need for legitimacy of authority while preserving liberty (the latter being a dubious success). Hobbes’s central premise is that man is anti-social, and that man in the state of nature (“where there is no common power”) is approximately equal but always at war (“every man against every man”).[1]  Fear in the state of nature is commonplace, which is why people lock their doors at night, and the life of man is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” (which perhaps sounds like aspects of  Africa - to which Harper has reduced foreign aid).[2]  Man’s (natural) liberty, the anti-social, or individualistic, assumption of the nature of man is the key reason why Harper is no friend of ‘socialist schemes’ (like the Kyoto Accord) or the United Nations, as well preferring the company of pandas to people.[3]

Hobbes’s solution to man’s disorder in the state of nature is to unite the multitude in awe of one person, otherwise known as a “COMMONWEALTH”, or in Latin “CIVITAS”, better known as the “great LEVIATHAN”.[4]  One of the purposes behind the concept of the great Leviathan was to convert the crowds into an undivided people, and here we see some roots to Harper’s nationalism.[5]  Despite the fact that Hobbes was considered “scientific”, inspired by Euclid and a friend to Galileo (late in his life), and respected for his own mathematical often geometrical mind, which he saw as a means of lifting mankind from the chaos of conflict, Hobbes actually reinvents feudalism on a state scale, arguing for an (in effect, unequal) “relation between Protection and Obedience”.[6]  Similarly he seems to argue with logic, but the sovereign Leviathan is a great source of fear nonetheless, not unlike in Canada today where citizens are afraid to speak out against their great “Protector”.[7]

What Hobbes lacks in his political thinking is precisely what is missing in Harper: the idea of social reciprocity.  In other words Hobbes attempts to rebut Aristotle, in particular his idea that “man is by nature a political animal” (and that we each have a soul), arguing instead that man can be apolitical, or passive, opening up room for deterministic dominance by the Leviathan, Canada’s problem today.[8] Hobbes’s case for “every man against every man” is also a seedbed for Harper’s prevalent use of Game Theory and the classic problem of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, which suggests that it is rational not to cooperate, which in turn is at the root of Negative Political Advertising (because it works, at least in the short run).[9]  Hobbes (unlike Montaigne) also has no appreciation for the game of tennis (and he says so), because in tennis one is expected to “serve” and “return”.[10]  Similarly Harper does not respect Parliament (whose etymological root word is the French parler – “to talk”).  When Harper prorogued Parliament (twice), he turned to Hobbes who answered: “Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.”[11]

Canada’s Leviathan is again at work, and here perhaps I digress but get to today’s point. The rather unannounced comprehensive trade agreement with China (FIPA), signed in Russia on 9 September 2012 by Harper (note the signatory context of two other countries with their own great Leviathans), granting China “Foreign Investment Protection and Promotion” in Canada is now on the floor of the House of Commons – no thanks to the Prime Minister.  If Harper succeeds, Canada loses – and China gains, true to our resource-based colonial status.  Canada’s current federal Conservative Party (true to its anti-social form) was born in 2003 on a broken contract, a scrap piece of paper gone awry.  Ten years later Canada’s Conservative Leviathan shows unwillingness to make public in Parliament a 31 year written contract with China (with no chance for abrogation until the 15^th year) – Harper can do business with the Chinese state but not speak to Canadians.  Why the slyness?

Parliament is no protection, and the great Leviathan is busy protecting himself and China, but is he actually protecting Canadians? Does this “Protector” in all his considerable secrecy really deserve “Obedience” – or is Harper (borrowing from Descartes) a “Great Deceiver”?    Here is a point by Hobbes that Harper clearly has missed: “The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last … no longer than the power lasts by which he is able to protect them.”[12]  In other words, there really needs to be a “relationship” between the Canadian public and their Leviathan, quite possibly an institutional one too, certainly if there is going to be any “Protection”, a central flaw in both Hobbes’s and Harper’s thinking.[13]

Finally, in pursuit of this sense of “reciprocity” may I suggest sporting lessons for our great Leviathan - not hockey, not Game Theory, not tennis but canoeing lessons.  The canoe has traversed Canada like nothing else over the centuries, from our First Nations, to our French and British explorers, to our Scouts and recreational groups and families today.[14]  So let’s add to this and borrow not from Hobbes but from Hume who makes the well-known case for two men rowing a boat in his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals in 1751, an exact century after Leviathan was first published, for the essence of the metaphor resonates especially well for this country.[15]  In other words canoeing is primarily about equilibrium, balance, stability, agreement, convention and “common measures of exchange” – all vital to Canada’s history and its original state of nature – and to Canadians today.[16]  It sounds like co-operation in Canada is even natural, and this idea would be of benefit to one individual in particular. Are you listening, great Leviathan?

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[1] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. A.P. Martinich (Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2002),p. 97 (xiii, 13); p. 95 (xiii, 8)

[2] Ibid., p. 96 (xiii,9).

[3] Christian Nadeau, Rogue in Power: Why Stephen Harper is Remaking Canada by Stealth, tr. Bob Chodoas, Eric Hamovitch and Susan Joanis (Toronto: Lorimer, 2011), p. 110.  Nadeau is apparently the first to write on the link between Hobbes and Harper, but I find the work generally uninspired.

[4] Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 129 (xvii,13)

[5] Quentin Skinner “Hobbes on Persons, Authors and Representatives” in Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan, ed. Patricia Springborg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 163.

[6] Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 523 (“Review and Conclusion”, 17)

[7] Johan Tralau, “Leviathan, the Beast of Myth: Medusa, Dionysos, and the Riddle of Hobbes’s Sovereign Monster” in Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan, p. 77.

[8] See Tom Sorrell “Hobbes’s Moral Philosophy” and Cees Leijenhorst “Sense and Nonsense about Sense: Hobbes and the Aristotelians on Sense Perception and Imagination” in Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan. See also Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon, The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York: Modern Library, 2001), p. 1129 [Aristotle, Politics, Book 1, Chapter 2].

[9] For Hobbes and Game Theory see Jean Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

[10] For Hobbes on tennis, see Leviathan, p. 156 (xx,19).  It would appear that Hobbes is writing with Montaigne in mind.

[11] Ibid., p. 97 (xiii,13)

[12] Ibid., p. 166 (xxi,21)

[13] Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition, p. 203.

[14] See for example Bruce Hodgins, John Jennings, Doreen Small (eds), The Canoe in Canadian Cultures (2001).

[15] David Hume, Hume’s Moral and Political Philosophy, ed. and intro. Henry D. Aiken (New York: Hafner Press/Macmillan, 1948), p. 278.

[16] Ibid.

Lawrence Martin's "Harperland" -- A Review

It takes about a day to read Harperland, and so Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin serves Canadians well chronicling the abuses of power, connecting the dots, building the narrative with momentum to Harper’s second prorogued Parliament, and beyond. Written in straightforward English, this reader yearned for a subordinate clause or two but delights in the many rich quotations of sources, from those once inside government, along those outside of it.

Harper is described as a man who viscerally hates Liberals (too prone to moral ambivalence), proud to be a “movement conservative,” and – in his ever-strategizing mind – one who loves to resort to wedge politics in order to divide and win. Acknowledging William Johnson’s earlier biography (Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada, 2005), Lawrence Martin selects from the latter three succinct sentences to nail down the Prime Minister’s flaws, which resonate: “He constantly displays an excess of partisanship. From the time he was elected to the Commons, his attacks on Chrétien, and now Martin, have been over the top. There is harshness, a lack of humour, humanity and moderation that disregards the traditions of Parliament where all members have a right to be treated as honourable.”

Everyone knows Harper is a control freak, and it is amusing to read how, in the early years of his government, some Conservative MPs fretted over what colour tie to wear to work. Compare this to the era when Pierre Trudeau liked to wiggle his toes freely in sandals without socks. But there is a serious side to this development, apart from secret government handbooks. Judge John Gomery, who presided over the Sponsorship Scandal (about which Lawrence Martin had much to say as a journalist) explains, rightly so: “there’s more concentration of power in the Prime Minister’s Office than we’ve ever had before ....” Moreover, the anonymous members of the PMO “are not subjected to any rules of law ....” In reading Harperland, there was certain pleasure in discovering I was not alone in likening our Prime Minister to Vladimir Putin.

When in Opposition, Harper once wrote in the Montreal Gazette: “Information is the lifeblood of a democracy.” Yet why do we witness a volte face when in government? Why all the censorship with regard to the Afghan detainees, for example? In order to explain Mr. Harper more fully, we need to move from his political mind to his economic training. One weakness in Harperland is that Mr. Martin does not consider Harper’s background as an economist. Similarly Dion makes this mistake by characterizing Harper as a (so-called politically illiberal) “Straussian”, after Leo Strauss, the late German-Jewish political thinker at the University of Chicago. In other words, Mr. Martin should have looked at Dion’s characterization more carefully - and not have accepted this particular idea at face value.

To put it simply, Harper is an economist. Yes, he actually read Friedrich von Hayek, whom Margaret Thatcher admired, keen as she is on things Austrian. He likely read (or followed) Milton Friedman, but the association of Harper and Strauss is a bit thin (and, thus, so is Dion’s assessment of Harper). In other words, I am inclined to agree (and only once in a lifetime) with Harper’s erstwhile mentor, Tom Flanagan: Harper was not a “Straussian” even though he may have mimicked some attributes.

What is missing from our understanding of Harper is his predilection for game theory, something he would definitely encounter as a student of economics. Consider the 1944 classic Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern. Or consider John Nash, once inspired by Neumann, subject of the book A Beautiful Mind who also made brilliant advances to game theory at Princeton – and is best known for the concept known as “Nash’s Equilibrium.” Neumann taught that Poker (as opposed to chess) was a game where there was never any perfect information: good Poker players are supposed to bluff, and Harper is an optimal bluffer, who in his vast spare time, teaches card games to his children.

Ken Binmore’s book, Game Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2007), explains that it is best that information be restricted: “Better knowledge is only sure to be an unmitigated good to a player if it is secretly acquired.” In other words, Harper is not contradicting himself in the light of all his government secrecy; he was simply deceiving us earlier, performing when in Opposition. Game theory can be found in Harper’s love of sport (namely hockey); it can be seen in his disregard for Parliamentary conventions and procedure; it can be seen in his use of a religious reputation; it can be seen in his implicit socio-biology, as game theory has infiltrated Darwinian evolution. And, again borrowing from Binmore, it can be seen in Harper's hypocrisy (and hysteria) over the Dion-Layton coalition (with Bloc support): “ ... there remains a great deal about coalition formation that we do not yet understand.”

Game theory aside, Harperland is an important work for Canadians still needing a picture of just how bad (and consistently bad) Ottawa's Parliamentary life has become over the last four years. Read it and be critically informed. “Peace order and hood government,” indeed!