Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-17-2023

Publication Citation

76 Vanderbilt Law Review En Banc 1

Abstract

One of the enduring challenges in politics is that there is little in the way of binding commitments. It is not as if the president and the Speaker of the House can write an effective contract and it is hard to imagine any court ever enforcing it. A commitment by a political actor is therefore only as good as it is credible—that is, if it is in the interests of the actor to keep it, possibly due to mechanisms put in place to induce just those commitments. All this makes analytical tools like game theory well-suited to understanding politics, especially relationships between the parts of the government. This methodology is quite common in political science and economics, and has been used, in a rough way, by courts as well.

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