Culture, Policy, and Nested Games

Members of all three political parties suggested that Governor Hernández-Colón was primarily interested in sending Congress a message—and a cultural one at that. Such an intent, if true, is still inconsistent with classic assumptions of a political party’s rational behavior. But there is an alternative logical explanation, within the rational choice framework, to Downs’s assumption of vote-maximizing behavior. As George Tsebelis contended, a nested game consists of public-facing game masking another game outside the limelight. Under this proposal a decision, even an unpopular one that costs an election, is logical so long as it furthers an actor’s non-electoral goals. In this case the PPD sought to wave the banner of Puerto Rican identity, even in its soft-core cultural form, to thwart their statehood foes in the one body empowered to change the island’s status—the US Congress.