Fearon's Introduction to Rational War Flashcards
Classical arguments of Rationality and Fearon’s Problem with it
Irrationality
One form of “irrationality” would be the presence of what might generally be considered deviant or perverse preferences. A simple one would be the preference for war over peace (glory over obscurity, martyrdom over existence). Fearon rejects this line of analysis as irrational and not worth pursuing with rational tools (which is not to say that he necessarily rejects it as not having any value or explanatory power at all). The problems that arise with this basic (but probably necessary) assumption is that some types of preferences and behaviour seem to be ruled out that may, in fact, be worth pursuing and may also be analyzed using rational models
The second type of generic “irratonality” that Fearon dismisses is risk-loving behaviour. I do not think we ought to rule out risk-loving behaviour as irrational. Both of these behaviours may exhibit many of the fundamental requirements of rationality in the sense of consistent preference orderings and analytical tractability and consistency.
Self-interest
We are not excluding self-interested leaders though: The behaviour of self-interested leaders can be analyzed as being perfectly consistent with general interpretations of rationality. Effectively Fearon is saying that when leaders or groups choose conflict as a means of redistributing resources to themselves, even though the net costs of fighting may exceed the net benefits for society or the world as a whole, they are not being “rational”.
It is very apparent that in many conflicts self- interested leaders do initiate and sustain conflict for their own economic or political ends. Consider Sierra Leone, or many other civil conflicts in the presence of state failure and potential resource rents. In some ways Fearon is ignoring many, if not the majority, of civil conflicts. Further, the behaviour of self-interested leaders not only exhibits rationality in the sense of the intelligent pursuit of well-behaved and well defined preferences, it also includes another important dimension of rationality, the pursuit of self-interest where more is preferred to less.
The question will remain as to why a leader can use violence and war to extract gains for himself or herself at the expense of the state as a whole, and yet there is not a mutually preferable bargain between the leadership and the general population to divide wealth in a manner that is Pareto superior to the equilibrium that avoids the waste of violent conflict. The self-interested leaders go to war internally to gain more resources for themselves, even though they could have distributed the resources more efficiently without the cost of war that would have been more Pareto efficient.
Rational leadership pursuing collective interests
In this third case not only are leaders intelligently pursuing the best policies as defined by a coherent preference structure, that preference ordering is collective or utilitarian rather than personal. In some sense, then, the leadership may be violating the “self-interest” dimension of rationality, though the state collectively is pursuing it. In this case the leader, group, or state as a collective is pursuing a policy for which the net costs to the collective are less than the net benefits.
Fearon then asks if there are any circumstances in which war can meet these highly restrictive requirements of providing net benefits to not just one society or side in a country, but to both or all sides in a violent conflict. In other words, winning a war when someone else loses is NOT consistent with ex ante rationality. It is easy to think of a case in which one side can easily defeat an opponent and take its resources or wealth, thus making itself better off. But this is insufficient for global rationality, the requirement Fearon and others are pursuing, because the losing side would have an incentive to offer those resources and wealth without the conflict, avoiding the waste of war and making everyone better off. There is ex post a Pareto superior equilibrium to the one emerging from war, and Fearon, and others, are trying to find out why that better outcome cannot be reached.
That war is costly and risky, so rational states should have incentives to locate negotiated settlements that all would prefer to the gamble of war. The common flaw of the standard rationalist arguments is that they fail either to address or to explain adequately what prevents leaders from reaching ex ante (prewar) bargains that would avoid the costs and risks of fighting
Classical arguments for war
Anarchy: A common (and neo-realist based) argument is that war occurs because anarchy implies there is nothing to prevent it. Fearon argues that while anarchy may be an enabling condition, it is not a cause for war. Anarchy may imply that there are no pre-commitment mechanisms to avoid war in some circumstances, but it avoids the question of why war would be chosen in the first place, and whether pre- commitment mechanisms are required. Under anarchy, nothing stops states from using force if they wish. But if using force is a costly option regardless of the outcome, then why is it ever employed? How exactly does the lack of a central authority prevent states from negotiating agreements both sides would prefer to fighting? As it is typically stated, the argument that anarchy provides a rationalist explanation for war does not address this question and so does not solve the problem posed by war’s ex post inefficiency.
Take an arms race situation. If a country begins to arm, it may provoke an attack by another country. But knowing this, why would the initial state arm unless it had some reason for provoking war? As Robert Jervis has argued, anarchy and the security dilemma may well foster arms races and territorial competition.9 But with the exception of occasional references to the preemptive war problem, the standard security dilemma arguments do not explicitly address the question of why the inability to make commitments should necessarily make for war between rational states.
Preventive war: A state is declining in power. It therefore fears attack from a rising power. Knowing it would lose a war in the future, it attacks when it is strong to suppress rising powers. Fearon argues that the rising power, knowing its rise will provoke an attack by the current (declining) hegemon, would seek to make concessions to avoid the provocation. This conciliation would be sensible, since it knows it will not enjoy power in the future anyway if it is attacked now by the hegemon.
Positive expected utility (war may occur when two states each estimate that the expected benefits of fighting outweigh the expected cost): Bueno de Mesquita’s argument is more sophisticated than earlier formulations along these lines because of its explicit incorporation of risk. None the less Fearon dismisses its validity, by showing clearly that since war is ex post inefficient, there will always be ex ante a Pareto superior equilibrium that both sides would prefer. Fearon demonstrates this with a unidimensional division of goods along a line, seen in the introduction of this lecture.
The puzzle of war
He defines it more effectively on the basis of ex ante and ex post. War is always inefficient ex post due to destruction. But under what circumstances can it be efficient ex ante, and therefore a rationally chosen policy option by both sides? Avoiding war avoids waste, and therefore ex post there would always be a division of benefits that would leave both parties better off and happy to not have war.
What, Fearon asks, would prevent an agreement being reached ex ante? This, in a very real sense, is a central motivating question for this course, though we will be able to consider a wider variety of conflict structures and approaches than Fearon allows himself.
Explain and draw a one-dimensional representation of contract space on page 4 + what are the 3 standard assumptions of this model
Two sides, A and B, are in conflict over the division of some resources, the quantity of which is represented by the length of the line. In the above diagram, A consumes the distance from A to a, and B consumes the distance from B to b. The distance from A to B is the total resources or wealth being divided between the two sides. A would thus like point ‘a’ to be near B, while B would prefer point ‘b’ to be near A. Both know that the expected relative division of the resources is “p” if war occurs, and also that there would be an expected cost to A of the distance a-p, and an expected cost to B of the distance p-b. Thus if war was to occur, A would expect to consume the distance A to a and B would expect to consume the distance b to B, and the distance a to b would represent the waste of war. If both sides know this before the conflict, then the distance a-b represents a “contract space”, in which any point would be Pareto superior to war. In other words, an ex ante agreement to remain at peace and divide the resources at some point like x, where x is between points a and b, would be Pareto superior and should be acceptable to both sides if they are rational, and if the following three assumptions hold:
There is a true expected division “p” that is known to both sides. Fearon notes that this will require both sides being able and willing to communicate their information to each other and come to an agreement about what the true “p” is. Is this likely?
ii. No risk-loving behaviour is allowed. Loosely, it says that the states prefer a fifty-fifty split or share of whatever is at issue (in whatever metric it comes, if any) to a fifty-fifty chance at all or nothing, where this refers to the value of winning or losing a war.
iii. The “good” over which the combatants are disputing is perfectly divisible. Assumed that a continuous range of peaceful settlements (from 0 to 1) exists. In other words, the issues in dispute are perfectly divisible, so that there are always feasible bargains between the states’ reservation level
Given the existence of an ex ante bargaining range, why might states fail either to locate or to agree on an outcome in this range, so avoiding the costs and risks of war
Pareto efficiency and the edgeworth box
In the picture below, both players would prefer to move somewhere in between the space of the two indifference curves, why? Because A is trying to get further and further closer to B, while B is trying to do the same to get closer to point A.
The space in between would thus make them both happier as they are closer to where they want to get to
Whenever there is space between the curves, there is space to be better off, so pareto efficiency only occurs when indifference curves are tangent
There is going to be a whole series of indifference tangent curves that will be represented by the contract curve
Obviously if your high on the contract curve, A would be happier and B would be less happier, but it would still be pareto efficient, so it doesn’t mean that both players are equally happy
For any endowment out the contract curve, you can negotiate a price where you can get back on the contract curve and avoid war
The only points of pareto efficiency are on the contract curve – any point not on the curve is pareto inefficient BUT is still preferred than war
Illustrate the cost of war using the edgeworth box example (page 6)
In this case two sides, A and B, divide two goods, x and y. The amount of x is reflected in the length of the horizontal dimension of the Edgeworth Box, while the amount of y is reflected in the vertical dimension of the box. In economics it is traditional to assume that A and B are prepared to substitute x and y for one another, but subject to diminishing marginal utility. Thus we get the traditional utility, indifference, or preference curves that trace out combinations of x and y between which the actors are indifferent.
Specifically, A would be indifferent between combinations of x and y that were on line Ua, but would prefer those on Ua’. These indifference curves are downward sloping (more x is needed to compensate for less y, etc), do not intersect each other (for the same person), and the further from the player’s origin the higher the level of utility. We would get the following:
The indifference curves are flipped upside down for both players because the further they are to B the better for B and vice-versa for A
Note that in the diagram that there is a line from A to B, and this line will be made up of all of the points of tangency between the indifference curves of person A and person B. This line is called the “contract curve”, and it is the set of all Pareto optimal distributions of x and y. Note that points on Ua’ are preferred by person A to points on Ua, and similarly person B prefers points on Ub’ to points on Ub.
Assume that war destroys resources in the amount of x2-x1, and y2-y1 (the red rectangle). Then these levels of (possibly expected) utility represent the bounds for any ex ante negotiated settlement between A and B. Any point on the contract curve between points 1 and 2 would thus represent a Pareto superior (and Pareto efficient) allocation of resources between the two players than the equilibrium that would emerge from war.
The box represents what’s lost and what could make the players better off to negotiate in there
If the box is bigger – or increases the space both sides prefer to war grows – the bigger the cost of war the more likely I can find a place that’s better than that and avoid it – the smaller it is the harder, it is
Sample exam question:
- what is lost in war
- what points would be preferred to war but not pareto efficient
- where would the negotiated settlement be if A was a super negoitator
- what is pareto efficnet and would also be preferred to war
- what happens if the cost of war is bigger
- what’s worse for A than war but still efficient
- why won’t the two sides get to a pareto efficient outcome after war
What is lost in war: the rectangle, if the two indifference curves were tangent then the space between y1 and y2 and x1 and x2 which represents the rectangle the cost of war.
What points would be preferred to war but not pareto efficient: any point in between the two indifference curves would be preferred to war but it must not be on the contract curve to not be pareto efficient.
Where would the negotiated settlement be if A was a super negotiator: you would end up closer to player B, and if B was a better negotiator then you would end up lower to A. Let’s say A was a super negotiator you could end up all the way at the point on B’s indifference curve after war but not beyond that, because at that point B would just say okay I’ll go to war rather than negotiate since I could gain from war
What is pareto efficient and would also be preferred to war: any point in between the two indifference curves that runs tangent and is on the contract curve
What happens if the cost of war is bigger: then the amount of goods lost would be more and there would be a larger contract space meaning a higher probability that they would negotiate and avoid war – the bigger the cost of war the likelihood of rational war should go down
What’s worse for A than war but still efficient: any point below A’s indifference curve after war on the contract curve – so the points from player A up to its contract curve after war
Let’s say after war we end up at the point below – why wouldn’t both players be able to get to a point within their indifference curves that is preferred or even on the contract curve that is efficient? The reason is because maybe player A might not want to negotiate so they might just accept this inefficient and unproductive point because they have no trust and don’t want to communicate – violates rationality because rationality would say they would find a new point, but in the short-term, it might just be unfeasible
Contract space using the PPF (page 9)
Anderton and Carter use the production possibility frontier analysis to illustrate the same point. As long as the expected income in the event of conflict and destruction of both (all) players is less than the total available income before war, there should be a positive contract space over which they can identify distributions that are mutually preferred to conflict. In the diagram below, war destroys production and consumption opportunities, so the PPF shifts inward (PPFpeace dominates PPFwar). Even if the two sides consume at a Pareto efficient point W, there is a whole range of Pareto superior allocations that could have been provided with the PPFpeace. The feasible range of the possible settlements would include all points that both sides agree are better than W, and those points actually on the PPFpeace in that range would themselves be Pareto superior to the other feasible options inside the PPF.
A indifference curve is vertical because player A only cares about its own income, and vice-versa for player B on indifference curve B
Player A would thus only accept distributions to the right of its vertical and player B would only accept above its indifference intersection
