The Incarceration Game

Game ~ an academic exercise that explores how authoritarian leaders, when their popularity falters, consolidate power through increasingly oppressive tactics.

- Kaushik Basu

In a 2022 paper, I introduced an allegory I called the Incarceration Game – an academic exercise that explores how authoritarian leaders, when their popularity falters, consolidate power through increasingly oppressive tactics. My analysis drew inspiration from a 1948 paper on the so-called “surprise test paradox,” which showed how rational expectations can unravel under certain conditions. US President Donald Trump, grappling with waning public support, seems determined to follow this authoritarian playbook.

The most striking example is the administration’s attempt to bring mortgage fraud charges against prominent critics - most notably Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa Cook, Democratic US Senator Adam Schiff, and New York Attorney General Letitia James. At the center of these efforts is Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte, a major Trump donor who now oversees the US mortgage industry.

Naturally, much of the debate in the US has focused on whether these allegations have any merit. Yet the more pressing issue is the Trump administration’s systematic search for incriminating evidence against its political opponents. As Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren has observed, Pulte “is using access to individual records of Donald Trump’s perceived enemies” to settle personal and political scores.