Rational Rhetoric in Politics

Abstract

During the debate over ratifying the U.S. Constitution, both the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists offered inconsistent arguments. They violated principles of transitivity (e.g., statements such as “A furthers B” and “B furthers C” coexist with the statement “A hinders C”). Using cognitive mapping to extract the network of causal assertions offered during the debate, and transaction resource theory to identify game-theoretic structures in these maps, including coordination, bargaining, and social dilemma games, we find that violations of transitivity have only two sources. They arise in bargaining games, where concessions not only entail costs but also reduce the prospect for a costly conflict, and social dilemmas, where cooperation not only entails individual costs but also increases the amount of public good produced. Thus conflicting valuations of concessions and cooperation generate an ambivalence that is reflected in transitivity violations. Hence these violations serve as markers within the maps that indicate the presence of either bargaining games or social dilemmas. These games also reflect situations in which debaters have incentives to engage in strategic manipulation of information.