The Political Deadlock: A Tale of Two Alliances

When the political deadlock of two rival alliances resulted in the State of Emergency in Bangladesh, everyone sighed, “why, O why they couldn’t sit for negotiation?”

I tried to find an answer to this question through the eyes of prisoner’s dilemma and explained it in a simple Game Model.

The Teams
Let’s label the two alliances as Left and Right. Left means the Mega Alliance including AL and other leftist politicians; and Right representing the Four Party Alliance which among others included BNP and Jamat.
We know that there were also contradicting stakeholder groups among each Team, for instances, senior vs. young, and orthodox vs. liberals. But those were respective stories within the alliances. To make our game simple, we are not considering these in-house clashes and assuming that when a Team took a decision in the game, it represented the whole Team.

The Choices of the Teams
When the two teams came in confrontation regarding the electoral reform, each had two options- either to cooperate or to refuse. So for each team, following were the options:

Left Team: Cooperate: This would mean that the left team will cooperate with the government, stop the anti-government movement and agree to go for election. Refuse: Obviously this would mean carrying on the movement against the government.

Right Team: Cooperate: This would mean agreeing to major demands of the Left team to reform the electoral system and ensure a free and fair election. Refuse: The other choice was to refuse the demand for reform and run the election with a devotee administration.

		Right Team
		Cooperate	Refuse
Left Team	Cooperate	Free & Fair Election (.5, .5)	Manipulated Election (0, 1)
	Refuse	Chaos but Competitive Election (1,0)	Chaos with No or Single-Team's Election (0,0)

Possible Endings
There were four possible outcomes in the game:
A. Left Cooperates, Right Cooperates: This means, right team agrees to reform the electoral system and left team withdraws the movement. Both teams take part in a non-partisan, free and fair election. Sudden positive initiative to reform the electoral system will go in favor of the Right team. Though the Left team will have the support from those who did not like the right team for last five years, Left tem will however loose the momentum for stopping the anti-government movement at the last moment. People will decide whom to vote. So for both teams, its fifty-fifty chance (.5, .5).
B. Left Cooperates, Right Refuses: This would mean that the Left will agree to go for election without any significant reform in the system, which is already controlled by the Right. In this case, the Right team will win the election, and Left will fail to create any post-election resistance soon, as they agreed to take part in the election in the current system (0, 1).
C. Left Refuses, Right Cooperates: In this option, Left will continue their movement against the government. The government on the other hand will agree to reform the election system to conduct a free and fair election. Chances are that the Left team will propagate this cooperation of Right as their ‘victory’ over them and outcome of the anti-government movement. In this case, Left can very well defeat the Right in a free and fair election (1, 0).
D. Left Refuses, Right Refuses: This is the worst case scenario. Both teams will avoid ‘politics’ and ‘diplomacy’ and take the risk of using muscle power. Either there will be no election without opposition or there will be a single-team’s election without legitimacy. It is impossible now in a globalized world to establish a One-Party system. So, whatever happens, no team wins!

Final Outcome
Obviously, option A was better for everyone. But we are not in a Utopia! So, no one really cared! Right team did not want to take the risk of a fair election by reforming the electoral system. Perhaps, Right were also thinking that the Left will not hold the temptation of claiming the ‘credit’ for victory and humiliating Right, if Right agrees to reform.
For Right, ‘cooperation’ could bring two results, fifty-fifty chance (.5, .5) or loose (1, 0). On the other hand, refuse could bring win (0, 1) or lose (0, 0). So refusing seemed lucrative to them, as there is a chance for wining!
Same for Left, ‘‘cooperation’ could bring two results, fifty-fifty chance (.5, .5) or loose (0, 1). On the other hand, refuse could bring win (1, 0) or lose (0, 0). So they also refused to take the chance of win!
Final outcome, both teams refuses, and no one wins! State of Emergency declared. But that’s another game!