An analysis of political apathy in Singapore using game theory. (Now playing one of my all time favorite song from Faye Wong, Bored.  You can listen to a mono version of this song here.)

   This article was originally part of the article on Singapore being a matrix but I took it out to so that the latter would not be cluttered with too many new ideas.  This advice is often given to academics writing journal articles so I am practicing here in advance J.

    In the Matrix, I have commented briefly that the reason why I prefer not to stay in Singapore to change Singapore into the way I think it should be is because I think Singaporeans on average do not like people to do such things.  Actually, just listening to the comments that the average Singaporean say about Dr Chee Soon Juan should be sufficient proof of the above point but let me apply what I learn in game theory so that I can make a new contribution to the theory on why Singaporeans are apathetic

    Many reasons have been given on why Singaporeans are apathetic,  most of them blamed it on either education or Asian culture.   Here I offer a new perspective:  The current state of apathy is basically an outcome of the classic prisoner's dilemma.   

Literature review

    This article makes use of the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Dominant Strategy concepts.  Let me first review these two concepts.  The following section is not my writing but it is taken from Roger A McCain's online text:

The Prisoners' Dilemma

Recent developments in game theory, especially the award of the Nobel Memorial Prize in 1994 to three game theorists and the death of A. W. Tucker, in January, 1995, at 89, have renewed the memory of its beginnings. Although the history of game theory can be traced back earlier, the key period for the emergence of game theory was the decade of the 1940's. The publication of The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior was a particularly important step, of course. But in some ways, Tucker's invention of the Prisoners' Dilemma example was even more important. This example, which can be set out in one page, could be the most influential one page in the social sciences in the latter half of the twentieth century.

This remarkable innovation did not come out in a research paper, but in a classroom. As S. J. Hagenmayer wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer ("Albert W. Tucker, 89, Famed Mathematician," Thursday, Feb. 2, 1995, p.. B7) " In 1950, while addressing an audience of psychologists at Stanford University, where he was a visiting professor, Mr. Tucker created the Prisoners' Dilemma to illustrate the difficulty of analyzing" certain kinds of games. "Mr. Tucker's simple explanation has since given rise to a vast body of literature in subjects as diverse as philosophy, ethics, biology, sociology, political science, economics, and, of course, game theory."

The Game

Tucker began with a little story, like this: two burglars, Bob and Al, are captured near the scene of a burglary and are given the "third degree" separately by the police. Each has to choose whether or not to confess and implicate the other. If neither man confesses, then both will serve one year on a charge of carrying a concealed weapon. If each confesses and implicates the other, both will go to prison for 10 years. However, if one burglar confesses and implicates the other, and the other burglar does not confess, the one who has collaborated with the police will go free, while the other burglar will go to prison for 20 years on the maximum charge.

The strategies in this case are: confess or don't confess. The payoffs (penalties, actually) are the sentences served. We can express all this compactly in a "payoff table" of a kind that has become pretty standard in game theory. Here is the payoff table for the Prisoners' Dilemma game:

Table 3-1

The table is read like this: Each prisoner chooses one of the two strategies. In effect, Al chooses a column and Bob chooses a row. The two numbers in each cell tell the outcomes for the two prisoners when the corresponding pair of strategies is chosen. The number to the left of the comma tells the payoff to the person who chooses the rows (Bob) while the number to the right of the column tells the payoff to the person who chooses the columns (Al). Thus (reading down the first column) if they both confess, each gets 10 years, but if Al confesses and Bob does not, Bob gets 20 and Al goes free.

So: how to solve this game? What strategies are "rational" if both men want to minimize the time they spend in jail? Al might reason as follows: "Two things can happen: Bob can confess or Bob can keep quiet. Suppose Bob confesses. Then I get 20 years if I don't confess, 10 years if I do, so in that case it's best to confess. On the other hand, if Bob doesn't confess, and I don't either, I get a year; but in that case, if I confess I can go free. Either way, it's best if I confess. Therefore, I'll confess."

But Bob can and presumably will reason in the same way -- so that they both confess and go to prison for 10 years each. Yet, if they had acted "irrationally," and kept quiet, they each could have gotten off with one year each.

Dominant Strategies

What has happened here is that the two prisoners have fallen into something called a "dominant strategy equilibrium."

DEFINITION Dominant Strategy: Let an individual player in a game evaluate separately each of the strategy combinations he may face, and, for each combination, choose from his own strategies the one that gives the best payoff. If the same strategy is chosen for each of the different combinations of strategies the player might face, that strategy is called a "dominant strategy" for that player in that game.

DEFINITION Dominant Strategy Equilibrium: If, in a game, each player has a dominant strategy, and each player plays the dominant strategy, then that combination of (dominant) strategies and the corresponding payoffs are said to constitute the dominant strategy equilibrium for that game.

In the Prisoners' Dilemma game, to confess is a dominant strategy, and when both prisoners confess, that is a dominant strategy equilibrium.

Issues With Respect to the Prisoners' Dilemma

This remarkable result -- that individually rational action results in both persons being made worse off in terms of their own self-interested purposes -- is what has made the wide impact in modern social science. For there are many interactions in the modern world that seem very much like that, from arms races through road congestion and pollution to the depletion of fisheries and the overexploitation of some subsurface water resources. These are all quite different interactions in detail, but are interactions in which (we suppose) individually rational action leads to inferior results for each person, and the Prisoners' Dilemma suggests something of what is going on in each of them. That is the source of its power.

Having said that, we must also admit candidly that the Prisoners' Dilemma is a very simplified and abstract -- if you will, "unrealistic" -- conception of many of these interactions. A number of critical issues can be raised with the Prisoners' Dilemma, and each of these issues has been the basis of a large scholarly literature:

My comments

    Now its back to yours truly J.  I find Roger's presentation very suitable for the layperson to understand.  The second and third point in red  are especially meaningful for my analysis below.  As you will realize, the reason why the current state of apathy persists so long in Singapore is because the PAP effectively controls the information flow by the 'almighty' Singapore Press Holdings.  That strategy effectively prevents Singaporeans from communicating to one another.  

The analysis

    "Repression, Sir is a habit that grows.  I am told it is like making love-it is always easier the second time!  The first time there may be pangs of conscience, a sense of guilt.  But once embarked on this course with constant repetition you get more and more brazen in the attack.  All you have to do is to dissolve organizations and societies and banish and detain the key political workers in these societies.  Then miraculously everything is tranquil on the surface.  Then an intimidated press and the government-controlled radio together can regularly sing your praises, and slowly and steadily the people are made to forget the evil things that have already been done, or if these things are referred to again they're conveniently distorted and distorted with impunity, because there will be no opposition to contradict." (Lee Kuan Yew as an opposition PAP member during 1956 speaking to David Marshall)

     Before we move to the proper analysis, let me define 2 terms before we move on:

Definition 1: A Singaporean is apathetic if he accepts the status quo

Definition 2: A Singaporean is active if he stands up against the PAP

    I admit I may be committing the fallacy of false dilemma here since there could jolly well be people who accept the status quo because they genuinely think the PAP is the only party capable of governing Singapore but let's just rule that out for now by stating the following assumption:

Assumption 1: All Singaporeans do not like the PAP

    Other assumptions that my analysis would depend on are:

Assumption 2: The PAP are in complete control over the country, i.e. they can punish anyone they want.

    It is important, at this point, to note that my results depend crucially on these 2 assumptions.  Assumption 1 may indeed be trivially wrong; actually from the way I see Singaporeans being so enthusiastic when they attend opposition rallies but so withdrawn during PAP ones, makes it easier to understand why assumption 1 may not be far from the truth.  However, the more interesting case is when assumption 2 is wrong.  If there is ever a time in Singapore when PAP's complete control is broken, we should see a different Singapore than at present.

    These 2 definitions, together with my assumptions, will lead to the following important proposition and its related corollary:

Proposition 1: All Singaporeans will be better off being apathetic

Corollary 1: The outcome in proposition 1 is to make all Singaporeans worse off

    It may seem strange that an outcome where it pays for every Singaporean to act in a certain manner turns out to make every Singaporean worse off.  This is the famous prisoner's dilemma result which is easy to prove.

    The proof is as follows: Assumption 1 says that It pays for all Singaporeans to be active and make the PAP more responsive to our needs.  The problem is that being apathetic is always the best individual outcome irregardless of whether others are apathetic or not, i.e. being apathetic is a dominant strategy.  For example, if you are active while others are not, it is easy for the PAP to nip you in the bud, from assumption 2; examples are made out of people like JB Jeyaratnam, Tang Liang Hong, as well as Dr Chee Soon Juan.

    Otherwise, if you are apathetic and the others are active, you could free-ride on their efforts, and avoid any possible retribution from the PAP machinery, given also by assumption 2.  In this latter scenario, active people like Chee Soon Juan and James Gomez are seen to be providing a public good by opposing the status quo.  

    Unfortunately, there will be hardly any results to free ride when active Singaporeans are very few in numbers.  From assumption 1, since people do not like the PAP, an overall result of all Singaporeans being apathetic, because of assumption 2, makes everybody worse off.  This also proves corollary 1.  Thus, I hope I have established that being apathetic is a dominant strategy for Singaporeans.  This is a more formal explanation of the behavior of Singaporeans in category 2 of the matrix.

    The main problem for all of us Singaporeans is that the PAP is smart and well aware of this prisoner's dilemma that we Singaporeans are facing.  Thus, it is easy for them to use the  'divide and conquer' strategy, coupled with total control over the media, given by the above quote from Lee Kuan Yew.

    Of course, let me not take sole credit for this entire analysis.  I have to attribute the author of this famous fable, "Who is going to bell the cat?"  the proper credit for my analysis above, as it was clearly anticipated so many years earlier by this author, was it Aesop?

     The classic dilemma in this famous fable is that:  collectively, the cat is afraid of all the rats taking action together to bell her, but the cat also knows that, as long as the rats are unable to unite among themselves, any single one of them attempting to do so can be easily crushed.   By controlling the information flow, through the 'almighty' Singapore Press Holdings, the PAP has effectively prevent Singaporeans from uniting together to bell her, which is precisely what Roger said in his red points earlier.

  Of course, I must give credit to the PAP for also winning, or at least made us believe it has won, the economic argument by providing for Singaporeans basic material comfort, best explained by Cherian George here.  In fact, Cherian's views provides a very good balance to my above analysis, giving reasons why assumption 1 must be taken with a pinch of salt.

Conclusion

   Nevertheless, I hope my above model manages to shed some light to the commonly observed phenomena; that many Singaporeans complain non-stop about the PAP yet are reluctant to take proactive steps to challenge the PAP.  It may jolly well be because of Asian Values or because of the stifling Singapore educational system.  My contribution here is in providing a more general and less ad-hoc argument: that apathy among Singaporeans is just another example of the prisoner's dilemma.  Even if Asian Values do not exist or if our educational system is not as stifling, apathy may still exist.  Singaporeans prefer to be apathetic because they want to avoid the fate of Dr Chee and Tang Liang Hong, and at the same time, they hope to free ride on their efforts; an outcome that is perfectly rational.