Rendering unto Kaizari:

A Game Theory Application to the Dilemma of Politics

Dominic Burbidge

University of Oxford

Politics is the realm where people come together to get things done. Harold Lasswell

has famously defined politics as ‘who gets what, when, how’,1 emphasising its

practical drama and how it constitutes a space for power and decision-making. At

the same time, politics is a space for cooperation, a process of coalition-building that

demands of actors a striving for unity in order to commonly endorse solutions. As

Philp defines it, politics is ‘a process that plays a central role in the identification of

such goals that simultaneously makes them concrete and normative for others.’2

On the one hand, therefore, we have politics as the imposition of authority.

On the other, we are emphasising voluntary coordination between actors. Are these

different ways of looking at the same thing? If not, what is their relationship? To try

to address this question, we tackle here one specific dilemma: trying to choose

between the two. This is the dilemma of integrity in politics, one that is faced by all

who engage in political action or seek to prioritise the common good over individual

1 Lasswell, H. D., Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (New York: Peter Smith, 1950).

2 Philp, M., Political Conduct (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 2.

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interests. The tension is brought up by Plato in the dialogue Gorgias and it accurately

describes the challenge of being a statesperson of integrity (mwanasiasa mwaminifu).

Our strategy for working though this problem is as follows. We assume that

we seek to be persons of integrity and then we ask: what should we do and how

should we conduct ourselves when confronted by the question of whether to suffer

injustice or to do injustices to others? Interestingly, even if we assume we are indeed

persons of integrity, we run into the problem of not being sure about the integrity of

others. This is where Plato’s question becomes key. If others are not persons of

integrity, we will either have to suffer them frustrating our aims, or we will have to

frustrate their aims and so break our commitment to genuinely cooperating with

them. In other words, we will have to either suffer injustice or to do an injustice. This

is a difficult tension in politics everywhere, and so we will illustrate it here with a

couple of examples. In order to unpack what is the good thing to do in these cases,

we will turn to a game theory analysis in order to offer a second criterion apart from

just being a person of integrity: we must also have the practical wisdom to know

when a situation will demand one to choose between suffering injustice and doing

injustice, and then to actively avoid such scenarios. Only taking this aspect alongside

being someone of virtue makes sense of Plato’s claim without also saying that

persons of virtue are duty-bound to change institutional frameworks without

achieving the consensus of their peers.

3

This is a dense argument and not the easiest to follow but I think engaging

with it will be very profitable for appreciating the difficulty of being a person of

integrity when carrying out political action in Africa today.

The question of whether to suffer or do injustice

To start with, let us be explicit about the question of integrity posited in Plato’s

Gorgias. In the dialogue, Socrates is arguing with Polus about the value of having

power to persuade others through oratory. Polus believes it to be a great skill—in

fact the best—because it means one can always get one’s way, just like tyrants.

Socrates replies:

I say, Polus, that both orators and tyrants have the least power in their cities

[...]. For they do just about nothing they want to, though they certainly do

whatever they see most fit to do.3

In this way, Socrates distinguishes between doing what one thinks one would like to

and doing what one really wants—that is, what would really make one happy. To

try to convince his interlocutor that having power on its own is not good enough,

Socrates gives an example:

3 p. 810, 466d-e

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Well, my wonderful fellow! I’ll put you a case, and you criticize it. Imagine

me in a crowded marketplace, with a dagger up my sleeve, saying to you,

“Polus, I’ve just got myself some marvelous tyrannical power. So, if I see fit to

have any one of these people you see here put to death right on the spot, to

death he’ll be put. And if I see fit to have one of them have his head based in,

bashed in it will be, right away. If I see fit to have his coat ripped apart,

ripped it will be. That’s how great my power in this city is!” Suppose you

didn’t believe me and I showed you the dagger. On seeing it you’d be likely

to say, “But Socrates, everybody could have great power that way. For this way

any house you see fit might be burned down, and so might the dockyards and

triremes of the Athenians, and all their ships, both public and private.” But

then that’s not what having great power is, doing what one sees fit.4

This is an argument that makes sense to us too. We live in rapidly urbanising

places, which give anonymity to the strangers that we pass on the street. We know

only too well how easy it is for ourselves or others to follow the Hobbesian stance of

being prepared to act violently in pursuing one’s interests and this, in turn, makes us

afraid of those who have nothing to lose and seemingly so much to gain by living

with daggers up their sleeves. At the same time, like Socrates, we can complain that

almost everyone can wield that sort of power, and that the power or the decision-

4 p. 813, 469d-e.

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making capacity that we really admire is the one where the tough barriers to entry

act as indicative tests for the one who succeeds. For example, with Socrates we can

describe the following. Suppose I was present at President Barack Obama’s first

swearing-in ceremony, and suppose I managed to get through security with a pistol

in my jacket. I could say to you, “Look, I am more powerful than the president of

America! For whilst he is choosing to swear an oath or not to swear an oath to serve

his people, I can choose whether the president lives or dies!” Your answer might not

be just saying, “But everyone can do what you have done.” It might also be to say,

“Whether you kill the president or not, you could never be the president.” And we

would have to agree, for whatever we think of individual presidents, we have a

common recognition that becoming the president is a hard thing to do, and this fact

alone confers on it a status inaccessible to those who have not achieved it. The same

is true of the way sport is. In sports, we condition all players according to a set of

rules so that we can then identify and celebrate who is best. In reverse, we despite

those who cheat to win, not on the basis that the cheating is harmful in of itself but

because cheating constitutes a practice that confuses us when proclaiming the

winner as having a certain ability or set of virtues. [check Finnis]

This position of Socrates is easy to understand, but what is not immediately

obvious is why Socrates generalises the point by saying it is about choosing to suffer

injustice as opposed to doing injustice. The discussion starts positing these two

options as alternatives because Polus and Socrates turn to the example of putting

someone to death. They debate whether the person who puts someone to death

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unjustly is more or less miserable than the person who is being put to death unjustly.

At the heart of this struggle is how Polus is arguing that exercising individual power

regardless of morality is the best position to be in, whilst Socrates is instead

exploring how being just is perhaps a good in of itself. As the dialogue goes:

Socrates: [...] [D]oing what’s unjust is actually the worst thing there is.

Polus: Really? Is that the worst? Isn’t suffering what’s unjust still worse?

Socrates: No, not in the least.

Polus: So you’d rather want to suffer what’s unjust than do it?

Socrates: For my part, I wouldn’t want either, but if it had to be one or the

other, I would choose suffering over doing what’s unjust.5

At first it is not immediately obvious why these two things are being presented as

alternatives: surely we can do neither? Surely in the first place we can be just rather

than unjust? The point is not that this question always applies but that it is one that

we can always ask ourselves. We can always ask whether we would prefer to suffer

a collapse of our endeavours, or whether we would prefer to see our endeavours

favourably concluded even if we have to act wrongly in making sure they succeed.

Indeed, framing the problem in this way actually meets with a game theory

approach. It assumes, first of all, our commitment to a goal, and then asks which

strategy will realise our goal and so be consistent with our dispositions. Where it

5 p. 813, 469b-c.

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makes an insightful move, and therefore adds more to our understanding, is in

letting our choice of strategy render judgment on the nature of our original

intention.

A game theory approach would require is a two-stage analysis of first looking

at one’s character (preferences) and then the contextual dynamics of what the

situation demands from one’s character. Luckily, this is also Socrates’ approach. At

the end of his discourse he explicitly draws out the different levels:

among so many arguments this one alone survives refutation and remains

steady: that doing what’s unjust is more to be guarded against than suffering

it, and that it’s not seeming to be good but being good that a man should take

care of more than anything, both in his public and his private life...6

We have, on the one hand, an understanding of personal-level integrity and, on the

other, appreciation for context-specific integrity. So we need a way of unpacking

these two dynamics and seeing how Socrates’ question solves the problem of how

they are negotiated.

The best way to introduce the salience of Socrates’ trade-off between suffering

injustice and doing injustice is to give a concrete example. A great deal of political

action exhibits the dilemma so we are at liberty to take an example close to home.

6 p. 869, 527b

8

In Kenya, 2002(?) saw the beginning of one of the largest cases of government

corruption East Africa has ever seen. Known as the Anglo-Leasing scandal after the

name of the private company that had been awarded a 35m USD contract by the

Kenyan government to provide tamper-proof passports.7 The company was

supposedly from the UK but investigations led by anti-corruption tsar John

Githongo found that no such company existed. What makes Githongo’s

investigation of Anglo-Leasing so interesting is the open way in which the corrupt

actions were discussed between him and those most closely involved (and recorded

by Githongo in secret8). As Bachelard describes it,

In discussion with Githongo, the ministers openly admitted that the proceeds

from the contracts were intended to finance the election campaigns.

Moreover, they were not cowed by the prospect of their approach being

reported to President Kibaki, pointing out that as an ex-Finance Minister

himself, the latter “understood how these things were done”.9

By May 2004, investigators had found as many as 18 other such contracts in the

security sector which, together with Anglo-Leasing, misappropriated a total amount

of about 721m USD.

7 Bachelard, J. Y., ‘The Anglo-Leasing corruption scandal in Kenya: the politics of

international and domestic pressures and counter-pressures’. Review of African Political

Economy, Vol. 37, No. 124 (2010), pp. 187-200, p. 191. 8 [INSERT REF TO BBC ARTICLE]

9 Bachelard, 2010, p. 191.

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In his article exploring the Anglo-Leasing scandal, Bachelard seeks to explain

not why the money was taken but why the president at the time, Mwai Kibaki, chose

to resist the strong calls for the resignation of implicated ministers, and went so far

as to have those who had been forced to step down re-instated. The key cabinet

members involved were Vice-President Awori, Finance Minister Mwiraria, Justice

Minister Murungi and Security Minister Murungaru, close allies to the president.

Given the proximity to the closely fought 2007 election and the extent to which

association with the Anglo-Leasing scandal was hounded by the press, it is at first

sight strange as to why President Kibaki supported his colleagues when he could

have instead blamed them for set-backs in development. Here Bachelard’s research

is insightful:

Various interviewees argued that the reason behind these very unpopular and

apparently politically irrational reappointments was that Kibaki felt he

needed those allies for his re-election: Saitoti’s wealth was needed for

campaign financing. And Awori, Mwiraria and Murungi were considered key

allies in mobilising the Luhya and Meru votes. In other words, Kibaki gave in

to the counter-pressures exerted by his ultimate political allies.10

This episode is a powerful example of the tension between doing injustice or

suffering injustice, from the point of view of the decision-maker. We engage in

10

Bachelard, 2010, pp. 195-6

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politics in order to change the way things are done, and yet to have effect we quickly

need to compromise our original principles. We therefore often pursue more power

in the hope that it will eventually give us the room for manoeuvre to return to our

original principles. We think: “When I’m at the top, then I can change things

completely. As for now, I must concentrate on getting to the top.” The problem with

this approach is two-fold. First, we fail to see that being at the top means we are the

most scrutinised, giving us the least space for personal reflection and moral

deliberation. Second, we do not realise how the process of quietening our values in

order to get to the top actually changes our understanding and habituation of those

values in the first place. This is why choosing to do injustice rather than suffer it

becomes a key turning-point: it is a commitment to the means over the ends which

necessarily ruins the ends. In the case of the Anglo-Leasing scandal, the stolen funds

and the re-instating of implicated ministers is said to be needed to secure the next

election. Why? Because changing Kenya for the better depends on being in power.

The point at which one refuses to suffer defeat unjustly (in one’s own mind) is the

same point at which one is prepared to do injustice to others.

Game theory and the group dynamics at play

Over the past 40 or so years (?), game theory has strengthened the social sciences by

including in the modelling of the person a capacity to act in response to others’

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perceived likely behaviour. Although this began as an indirect way of explaining

complicated social outcomes, (?) through concepts such as the Nash equilibrium, it

has been possible to understand how group activity works by incorporating

simultaneity in expectation formation. This intellectual move implicitly adopts a

capacity to think outside of oneself and to imagine how things will turn out given

particular scenarios or strategies.

A game theory approach is insightful in unpacking Socrates’ question. First,

let us assume that the person engaging in political action seeks to do what is good.

Let us assume that they are a person of virtue, that they have a habituated desire to

act with integrity, with courage, with magnanimity and with intelligence. Then,

second, let us assume that those around her are not virtuous. Their habits are badly

formed and they have little knowledge or understanding of the good. They seek

happiness but their decisions in pursuit of that happiness are short-term and often

contradictory. In this context, should the virtuous person seek the power to override

the behaviour of the others? Is the virtuous person duty-bound to unjustly

appropriate power rather than suffer the injustice of leadership by a vicious many?

Why not render unto Kaizari?

This difficulty of leadership within institutional rule is a question that has vexed

many political theorists, perhaps most famously Niccolò Machiavelli. It is worth,

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therefore, taking the time to explore an example of where one esteemed as virtuous

has been scrutinised for acting unjustly rather than being prepared to suffer

injustice: the case of Marcus Brutus. The life and actions of Brutus, as described by

William Shakespeare in the play Julius Caesar, present one of the most discussed

cases of radical political action over compliance with the practices and norms of a

status quo.

Shakespeare’s play tells of how Caesar is making plans to become king; some

of the other leading politicians of Rome become fearful of his ambitions and decide

to murder him. At that time, the Romans live in a republic and not an empire, and

believe power should rest with the senate rather than in the hands of a single person,

a tyrant. The politicians against Caesar conspire to kill him but they are worried that

the people love Caesar so much that in killing him they will be branded traitors and

also put to death. In order to legitimise their plan, therefore, they elicit the support of

Brutus, a man whom all regard as virtuous and unparalleled in his patriotism for

Rome. By bringing Brutus into their fold, they hope to show that their assassination

is not done out of envy but to save Rome from tyranny. However, when they seek

Brutus’ support, the latter is troubled. He is unsure if this is the right thing to do.

Shakespeare intensifies the dilemma by showing how both Caesar and Brutus

were men of virtue. In the face of the Ides of March prophecy that harm would come

his way, Caesar stays committed to his course, exclaiming:

[3]

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W’oga hufa mara nyingi kabla ya vifo vyao;

Mashujaa hawaonji kifo ila mara moja.

(Cowards die many times before their deaths;

The valiant never taste of death but once.)

The fearlessness of Brutus is equally clear, not just in his readiness to battle when

that is required, but also on a personal level. When bitter words are exchanged

between him and co-conspirator Cassius, Brutus affirms:

[6]

Vitisho vyako, Kasio, ni vya upuzi kabisa,

kwani ninayo silaha ya kutosha—moyo safi—na nisowaheshimu hunipita

kama vumbi.

(There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats,

For I am arm’d so strong in honesty

That they pass by me as the idle wind,

Which I respect not.)

So the question is not one of self-interest. Shakespeare is not trying to show

how what we want simply clashes with others and so requires that other people are

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trampled upon. Rather, he shows that Brutus is being tempted to resist suffering the

injustice of Caesar becoming a king by engaging in an injustice—that is, murdering

an honourable man. The turning point in Brutus’ way of thinking comes in his

exchange with his wife, Portia. Brutus has accepted to join the other conspirators in

killing Caesar the following day, and now he cannot sleep. Portia notices he is up

from bed and asks him why. Her husband lies by saying he does not feel well, and

so she complains:

[2]

Nambie, Buruto, hivi kwenye nadhiri za ndoa imesemwa nisijue siri

zinazokuhusu? Kumbe mimi ndiyo wewe kama nusunusu tu? Kukaa nawe

mezani, kukupozea kitanda, na kuzungumza nawe mara fulani fulani? Hivi

niko pembeni tu katika mapenzi yako? Basi kama hivyo ndivyo—hapana

kinachozidi Poshia ni kahaba tu siyo mke wa Buruto.

(Within the bond of marriage, tell me, Brutus,

Is it expected I should know no secrets

That appertain to you? Am I yourself

But, as it were, in sort or limitation,

To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed,

And talk to you sometimes? Dwell I but in the suburbs

Of your good pleasure? If it be no more,

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Portia is Brutus’ harlot, not his wife.)

Something has changed in the Brutus that she knew, as if he now has something

stirring within himself that holds contempt for those he loves, that puts a divide

between the person he is and what he feels he must do. After he partakes in the

killing of Caesar, Brutus justifies his action in a speech to the Roman people, saying:

[5]

Ikiwa pana mtu ye yote rafiki mpenzi wa Kaizari, kwake nasema kwamba

mapenzi ya Buruto kwa Kaizari hayakuwa chini ya mapenzi yake yeye.

Ikiwa, basi, rafiki mpenzi huyo atauliza kwa nini Buruto kumshambulia

Kaizari, jibu langu ni hili: — Siyo kwa sababu sikumpenda sana Kaizari, bali

kwa sababu nilipenda Roma zaidi.

(If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar’s, to him I say, that

Brutus’ love to Caesar was no less than his. If then that friend demand why

Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer: — Not that I loved Caesar less,

but that I loved Rome more.)

Shakespeare does not question the sincerity of Brutus’ claim, but he does show how

it is then punished by war and the death of Brutus. After Brutus has died, one of the

key supporters of Caesar, Antony, remarks:

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[11]

Huyu ndiye alikuwa Mrumi bora wa wote;

Mhaini wale wote, kumwondoa peke yake, walitenda walotenda kwa sababu

ya husuda, walivyomhusudia mtukufu Kaizari;

Ila yeye peke yake, kwa nia safi kabisa na kwa faida ya umma, akawa mmoja

wao.

Alikuwa mwadilifu mwenye maisha manana;

Na vipaji vilikuwa vimechanganyika kwake,

Miungu wangaliweza kusimama

na kusema, kwa ulimwengu mzima, “Huyu alikuwa mtu!”

This was the noblest Roman of them all:

All the conspirators save only he

Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;

He only, in a general honest thought

And common good to all, made one of them.

His life was gentle, and the elements

So mix’d in him that Nature might stand up

And say to all the world “This was a man!”