Politics is the absolute peak of this kind of culture. You never know when you might need a favor down the road so it's best to be friends with anyone even just marginally aligned with your platform. Going beyond the minimum compromise keeps everyone happy enough to remember it. Politics is like dealing with a dozen different prisoners dilemmas every day. You could act in self-interest but you still need a majority vote or the consensus of your underlings to actually get the work done.

In the US, we've kinda swung back on the prisoner's dilemma. GOP finally figured out that they don't need to worry about bipartisanship or even having the consensus of their entire party. Turns out, if you've got the all three branches of government under control, you can just do whatever you'd like.