Making Peace, Preventing War: Engineering, Economics, and Evaluation

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Making Peace, Preventing War Engineering,
Economics, and Evaluation

• (or Why is Peace so Difficult to Obtain?)

Jurgen Brauer, Augusta State University, Augusta,
GA November 2006 jbrauer_at_aug.edu
www.aug.edu/sbajmb
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Making Peace, Preventing War

• I. Systems Control Theory
• Tells us what we are looking for (objectives)
• II. Theory of Imperfect Markets
• Tells us why we are unlikely to get the private
  provision of public (i.e., global) peace
• III. Theory of Collective Choice
• Tells us why we are unlikely to get the public
  provision of public (i.e., global) peace
• IV. Theory of Unilateral Intervention
• Tells us what motivates individual states to
  intervene in other states affairs

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Making Peace, Preventing War

• I. Systems Control Theory
• Desired goal/s
• Monitoring
• Corrective action
• Example
• Home heating/cooling system

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Making Peace, Preventing War

• Six Reasons for Systems Failure
• Goals
• No agreement on goals (conflict)
• Monitoring
• Goal deviations may not be detected (lack of
  feedback)
• No incentive to correct imbalance (distorted
  feedback)
• Failure to foresee delayed consequences (delayed
  feedback)
• Prejudices (rejected feedback)
• Correction
• Even if people are fully aware of a problem and
  wish to correct it, they may not know how to do
  so or lack the necessary resources to do so

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Making Peace, Preventing War

• Systems Theory
• can tell us what kinds of institutions we need
  to produce peace
• Institutions to agree on goals
• Institutions to provide feedback by monitoring
  convergence to or deviation from these goals, and
• Corrective institutions (with proper incentives
  and enforcement)

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Making Peace, Preventing War

• Six components of a comprehensive peace system

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Making Peace, Preventing War

• Six components of a comprehensive peace system
  (cont.)

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Making Peace, Preventing War

• Aside
• Conflict prevention (non-deployment)
• Peacemaking (preventive deployment)
• Peacekeeping (deployment in conflict zones)
• Peace enforcement (deployment in war zones)
• Peacebuilding (post-conflict deployment)

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Making Peace, Preventing War

• II. Theory of Imperfect Markets
• Why is there no effective private market for
  global peacemaking?
• Property rights
• Enforceable contracts
• Competitive break-downs
• Information failure
• Externalities
• Incomplete markets
• Public goods
• Government failure

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Making Peace, Preventing War

• III. Theory of Collective Choice/Action
• Why is there no effective public market for
  global peacemaking?
• Institutions are the outcome of collective
  choice (collective action)
• They are predicated on the favorable alignment of
  multiple individual interests that make up the
  collective
• While collective choice theory cannot tell us how
  to align individual interests, it can tell us
  something about mistakes to avoid

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Making Peace, Preventing War

• Design principles for institutions
• The Principle
• of changing payoffs
• of creating vested interests and leadership
• of graduated reciprocity and clarity
• of engaging in repeated small steps
• of value-formation
• of authentic authority

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Making Peace, Preventing War

• Design principles for institutions (cont.)
• The Principle
• of subsidiarity
• of conflict resolution
• of information and monitoring
• of accountability
• of self-policing enforcement
• of nesting

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Making Peace, Preventing War

• IV. Theory of Unilateral Intervention
• Why is so much intervention essentially
  unilateralist?
• Information
• Noise
• Distance
• Relations
• Din
• Domestic problems
• Self-interest
• Opportunity

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Making Peace, Preventing War
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Making Peace, Preventing War
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Making Peace, Preventing War
Listing in order of AS, CA, IN, NZ, SA
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Making Peace, Preventing War

• Conclusion
• Systems Control Theory
• tells us what kind of institutions are needed
  to prevent war and foster peace (goals,
  monitoring, enforcement)
• Theory of Imperfect Markets
• tells us why peacemaking/keeping are unlikely
  to be provided by private action
• Theory of Collective Choice
• provides guidelines for building peacemaking
  institutions (especially for mistakes to avoid)
• Theory of Unilateral Intervention
• tells us about that state-specific costs and
  benefits play the overwhelming determining role

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Making Peace, Preventing War

• Note
• Part of this presentation is based on joint work
  done over the past few years with Prof. Dietrich
  Fischer (European Peace University, Austria) and
  Prof. Andre Roux (Stellenbosch University, South
  Africa)