Tit-For-Tat : A Negotiator's Guide to the Debt Crisis

It’s hard to avoid news of the debt crisis. In fact, I find it almost impossible to follow any longer – I’m just not sure that I can watch any more political posturing without throwing the remote at the television. To save myself the migraine of getting back on the debt soapbox, I’ll refer back to a previous post on the national debt. However, for good or evil, the battle over the debt crisis has been an interesting illumination on negotiations and how they work (or, more accurately, how negotiations break down and shouldn’t be done).

Negotiations happen every day, from the mundane moments of debating a toy purchase with a child or vacation planning with a spouse to the “larger” debates of negotiating salary or wrangling debt. One of the more famous books on negotiation is Robert Fisher’s Getting to Yes, which discusses the concept of BATNA: Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement. The idea is that before going into a negotiation, you have to know your best alternative in order to negotiate effectively. If you’re buying a used car, know what other car you’re interested in if this deal falls through. Then you know how high you are willing to bid before walking away.

Establishing co-operative behavior is also fundamental to negotiating, and has become a key issue in the debt stalemate. Psychologists recommend a strategy called Tit-for-Tat as the most effective in dealing with other parties (as proven by Robert Axelrod). The theory here is that you start out cooperating with the other person, and then respond to the other person’s actions tit-for-tat. If they cooperate in return, continue to work with them. If they “punish” you by attacking/betraying you, punish them back, but only once. Then continue to follow your opponent’s lead, preserving the working relationship and optimizing both parties’ outcomes. In other words: 

1. Never be the first to defect
2. Retaliate only after your partner has defected
3. Be prepared to forgive after carrying out just one act of retaliation
4. Adopt this strategy only if the probability of meeting the same player again exceeds 2/3

Our politicians are stuck in a state of non-cooperation, and part of the problem is that on the rare moments where one party appears willing to cooperate and compromise on an issue, the other party “punishes” them by calling their plan partisan/idiotic rather than reaching out “tit-for-tat” with their own concessions. We then create a “punish” cycle where no one is willing to cooperate for fear of being burned.

Below is a chart adopted by one of my Columbia professors, analyzing approaches to negotiation. Clearly our politicians are set in "competing" mode, with strong concern for their own party's outcome and little concern about their opponent's party or solving the issue at hand.

For risk of sounding a bit too harsh, I do get that this is a hard topic, and that no answer will appeal to everyone. But hello, that is your job as a politician.  That is why we have been negotiating since the dawn of man. Figure out what's really important, give up what isn't, and meet the other party somewhere in between. Or, as a friend of mine posted on facebook yesterday, "Congress and Mr. President: Put on your big boy/girl pants and fix this problem, now!"