RATIONAL RHETORIC IN POLITICS - THE DEBATE OVER RATIFYING THE UNITED-STATES

During the debate over ratifying the U.S. Constitution, both the Feder alists and the Anti-Federalists offered inconsistent arguments. They v iolated principles of transitivity (e.g., statements such as ''A furth ers B'' and ''B furthers C'' coexist with the statement ''A hinders C' '). Using cognitive mapping to extract the network of causal assertion s offered during the debate, and transaction resource theory to identi fy game-theoretic structures in these maps, including coordination, ba rgaining, and social dilemma games, we find that violations of transit ivity have only two sources. They arise in bargaining games, where con cessions not only entail costs but also reduce the prospect for a cost ly conflict, and social dilemmas, where cooperation not only entails i ndividual costs but also increases the amount of public good produced Thus conflicting valuations of concessions and cooperation generate an ambivalence that is reflected in transitivity violations. Hence these violations serve as markers within the maps that indicate the presenc e of either bargaining games or social dilemmas. These games also refl ect situations in which debaters have incentives to engage in strategi c manipulation of information.