Torture Is Not a Game

• DOI: 10.1177/1065912911434418
• Published date: 01 March 2012
• Author: Dustin Ells Howes
• Date: 01 March 2012
• Subject Matter: Exchange

Political Research Quarterly

65(1) 20 –27

© 2012 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912911434418

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John Schiemann’s “Interrogational Torture: Or How

Good Guys Get Bad Information with Ugly Methods”

posits that we can use game theory to determine whether

or not torture is an effective way to get information.

Schiemann says that game theory is a necessary—

perhaps our only—means to obtain “firm conclusions”

that meet a “social scientific standard” when it comes to

the effectiveness of torture (Schiemann 2012, 3). His

model will “substitute for the empirical data we do not—

and likely will not ever—have” (Schiemann 2012, 4). In

what follows, I show that we know enough about torture

to know that conceptualizing it primarily as a strategic

interaction between two players is dubious at best and

dangerous at worst. Propagating the falsehood that tor-

ture is primarily a game obscures the fundamental char-

acter of torture and invites policy makers and social

scientists to use formal models to improve or perfect tor-

ture. However, the article is an exemplar of how rational

choice theory as a descriptive understanding of the world

undermines the original aims of the normative liberal

economic theory from which it sprang. In particular, the

article highlights the paradoxes of an excessive commit-

ment to the idea that reasoned choices are the most

important feature of any and all human interactions.

Torture Is an Attack on the

Capacity to Choose

In justifying his use of formal methods to understand

torture, Schiemann quotes eminent torture scholar Darius

Rejali as saying that the evidence regarding torture is

“fragmentary.” However, what Rejali actually says is that

the evidence is “too rich and too fragmentary” for par-

ticular kinds of conclusions (Rejali 2007, 7). It is not the

case that we do not know much about torture or its effec-

tiveness. Accounts of torture come from “so many coun-

tries, so many different writers, and in so many styles,

guises, and emotional hues (from coldly technical to

blatantly cruel, cruelly disingenuous, and literally tor-

tured)” (Rejali 2007, 7) that they are not amenable to

large-N data sets. However, Rejali and others who have

examined the compendious evidence argue that it does

tell us something. In a chapter in Torture and Democracy

titled “Does Torture Work?” Rejali concludes that the

sources of error in organized torture “are systematic and

ineradicable . . . [torture] yields poor information, sweeps

up many innocents, degrades organizational capabilities,

and destroys interrogators” (Rejali 2007, 478). Torture

sometimes works but is unlikely to be effective in the

very circumstances when it is most needed, for example,

during times of battle or emergency (Rejali 2007, 474-

78). Similarly, Rumney writes that while “it is certainly

the case that there are inherent uncertainties in consider-

ing the effectiveness of coercive interrogation, it cannot be

said that we have ‘no idea’ as to its reliability” (Rumney

2006, 485). He concludes that “coercion does sometimes

work in individual cases, but a significant body of evidence

raises serious doubts about its overall reliability and pre-

dictability” (Rumney 2006, 485, 512).1 We do not need a

formal model to know that torture is a generally ineffective

way of gathering intelligence.

We also know that the reasons for torture’s ineffective-

ness stem from the fact that it is different from other

forms of coercion. Consider some of the tec hniques used

against detain ees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (techniques

that have been called “torture light” to indicate that they

are relatively low on the scale of human horrors). Citing

sources familiar with the report of the International

Committee of the Red Cross, Jane Mayer recounts that

prisoners were locked in confined spaces that did not

allow them to stand or stretch out for hours on end, kept

on their tiptoes with their arms extended up over their

heads for eight-hour stretches every day for two or three

months, kept awake for as long as ninety-six hours, bom-

barded with bright lights and eardrum-shattering sounds

for twenty-four hours a day for weeks on end, kept com-

pletely naked in cold water and frigid temperatures for a

month, slammed against walls blindfolded with the use of

434418PRQXXX10.1177/10659129114

34418HowesPolitical Research Quarterly

1Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Dustin Ells Howes, Department of Political Science, Louisiana State

University, 240 Stubbs Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803-5433, USA

Email: dhowes1@lsu.edu

Torture Is Not a Game:

On the Limitations and Dangers

of Rational Choice Methods

Dustin Ells Howes1