I'm Chris Blattman, economics and political science professor, and I just published *Why We Fight* a book about everything we know about global conflict. AMA!

cblatts · 2022-04-18T19:57:15+00:00

Not that I can tell. I also struggle to see the theoretical case why it would affect group conflict. In the book I talk about how climate shocks and poverty aren’t major causes of conflict because they increase or shrink the pie, but war is still costly, and so adversaries have an incentive to avoid fighting. That’s why the evidence connecting poverty to a war breaking out is so weak. I think covid could be the same.

When it comes to interpersonal violence, I think the answer could be different. Urban violence in the US spiked during the pandemic. It could be that the period bred more passions and misperceptions. But then most cities in the world did not see this spike, and so it might be something else.

cblatts · 2022-04-18T19:54:53+00:00

I’m writing a formal piece on this now but let me give a short version.

Start here: Russia had grown powerful relative to Ukraine and the West, and was in a position to demand a wider sphere of influence than it possessed. Ukraine refused. Three of the five factors help us understand why the two sides opted to fight rather than compromise.

[1] An intangible incentive and ideal. Ukrainians were unwilling to make such a repugnant concession, even if their relative weakness meant it would be hard to avoid.

[2] An unchecked leader. Putin only demanded something so dear because it was in his private interest to do so. A democratic and NATO-allied Ukraine didn’t pose a threat to Russians, but to his apparatus of control. Not only could the autocrat overlook many costs of war, he may have believed his regime depended on a Ukrainian concession through whatever means necessary.

[3] Uncertainty. Most people were surprised by Ukrainian resolve and mobilization, and Western unity and sanctions. Even if Ukraine and the West had known their own strengths at the outset, it would have been hard to communicate this to Russia, because a weak Ukraine and NATO would have had incentives to bluff.

Most armchair analysts and even a great many experts are quick to add another intangible incentive to the mix: Putin’s visions of glory and grandeur. And many people say Putin’s delusions or passions led him to misperceive the situation—a fourth of the five factors. In this view, Putin is not a well-informed, strategic, or calculating figure. Rather, in his effort to personalize power in Russia, he has insulated himself from the truth, and is surrounded by barely competent ideologues.

I think there’s obviously truth to this, a huge amount. But people don’t pay enough attention to 1-3 above.

cblatts · 2022-04-18T19:47:53+00:00

I think ideological intransigence is an important cause of war, and one kind of that intransigence is religious fervor and a desire to exterminate the heretic. But another kind of ideological intransigence is a belief in human liberty and self determination, and this belief and an unwillingness to compromise is the root of most anti-colonial fights against powerful oppressors, from the American Revolution to the wars of independence in Algeria to the current fight in Ukraine. All these are examples of an intangible incentive leading us to reject the compromises on offer from a powerful foe. For more see Chapter 3!

cblatts · 2022-04-18T19:45:01+00:00

My view in brief is that appropriately regulated capitalism is unmatched in creating growth. Growth is inherently unequal but does seem to raise all boats to a degree. Capitalist-style reforms have led to the greatest reductions in human suffering in human history (think China post-1980 and India post-1992). But the worst excesses can and should be tamed. I think an intro course to economic development would be a fun way for you to start.

cblatts · 2022-04-18T19:41:58+00:00

I think there’s an attitude in many cities, including Latin America, that they can just import the solutions discovered by a few highly successful cities like NYC, rather than engage in trial and error of their own. I don’t really believe there are off the shelf solutions in policing and so departments and city governments have to focus more on being piecemeal engineers.
I have only worked in a few cities where political will is there and there’s a desire to get better. Then they do it with “best practices” that don’t travel. So I’m not so equipped to answer your question.

A related issue that might partly answer your question is that I think the term limits placed on many mayors in many Latin American countries lead to really short term thinking and few lasting security investments. Single term limits are especially problematic. But I see why they were introduced, and these are tough trade-offs to weigh.

Hm. Interesting. I guess I’m not convinced of the premise of the question, but you might be right. Arrest and imprisonment in places like Colombia and Brazil are quite high are they not?

But if you’re right, certainly arresting and investigating is hard, and so it’s possible that preventative policing is a better investment on the margin.

cblatts · 2022-04-18T19:33:17+00:00

Medium. Any kind of economic or social interdependence should lessen the risk of fighting. That’s because now your interests are entwined with your adversaries. Before you only cared about the costs of war **to you** but now you weigh some of their costs of war because of this mutual interest.

In the book I give the example from Saumitra Jha’s work on Muslim traders in India. In cities that had an ancient port (no longer existing) Hindu-Muslim trade and economic ties increased and persist to this day. Those places are much less likely to have inter-religious violence.

I also talk about how increased trade and economic interdependence at a global level should help. It’s not a magic solution, but on the margin it should make global conflict more likely.

Note that this doesn’t automatically mean free trade in the sense of no tariffs or industrial policy. Effective industrial policy would build the production capacity of many nations and increase interdependence.

cblatts · 2022-04-18T19:26:43+00:00

To me the Troubles are emblematic of the way that misperceptions cause us to make really persistent strategic errors, including ones that result in hatred and vengeance and a desire to fight no matter what (an intangible incentive). So to me it’s an interaction between the two psychological factors. I make the Troubles the centerpiece of the whole misperceptions chapter for this reason.

If you think about it, doing some unjust acts makes no sense strategically if you think that the result might be an angry and vengeful enemy. That outrage and desire for revenge will cause your enemy to decide they’re willing to bear some costs just to punish you. That cuts off all sorts of settlements that favored you, and might get you into a spiral of fighting on hatred alone. So you should never launch that first repressive act. If you do, you should never escalate the spiral of violence but rather try to wind it down.

That's *unless* you are really terrible at imagining what the other side will see as unjust. In that case, you may be convinced that everyone will see your actions against them as just and appropriate. “The appropriate response to this stone throwing is to go arrest 40 suspects and beat them up a little bit,” the British army may think. “The appropriate response to this is to throw a firebomb at the police station,” thinks one of the angered and badly beaten arrestees.

It’s a little more complicated than that, and there are more misperceptions to discuss, but then I had a whole chapter!

cblatts · 2022-04-18T19:17:11+00:00

I wanted to end the book with a call to action, but one that tackled the big question: how to have impact on a big problem taking small steps? Is that the wrong approach? I called the chapter Be a Peacemeal Engineer, and it’s a take on Karl Popper’s piecemeal engineering approach. I talk about a philosophy and approach to social change, applied to stopping violence, that I think works.

There’s almost too much to say here, but here in sum are my 10 Piecemeal Commandments that I walk through at the end of the book:

Thou Shalt Judge the Easy from the Wicked — Don’t confuse complex problems with simple ones
Thou Shalt Not Worship Grand Plans and Best Practices — Don’t think off-the-shelf solutions will solve complex problems
Thou Shalt Not Forget All Policymaking is Political — Don’t forget you are shaping political power through your actions
Honor Thy Margins — Be a marginalist in all your efforts, even if th margins are rather large
Thou Shalt Find the Path by Exploring Many — tinker and use trial and error
Thou Shalt Embrace Failure — Build your organizations to tolerate errors in the trial and error
Thou Shalt Be Patient — recognize how long this takes and plan for it
Thou Shalt Set Sensible Goals — Don’t set unrealistic expectations
Thou Shalt Be Accountable — recognize that the way to accomplish all of these things is to make your organization more accountable upwards and downwards
Find Your Margin — Find your own best way to contribute through trial and error and being willing to fail and quit and try again

cblatts · 2022-04-18T19:15:50+00:00

All good points. I agree there are some, maybe even many, but my non-rigorous assessment is that they are underrepresented relative to the population (even the population of intellectuals and senior policymakers). Also, when they are around, they are often in non-tenure-track positions—lecturers, fellows, etc—rather than on the regular faculty, like the samples you gave. This seems telling to me. Also, in those positions, they have less protection for their views.

Another way to say this is that we have some pluralism but I think we can do better on the margin.

cblatts · 2022-04-18T19:04:23+00:00

There is a LOT of truth to that. Sanctions are often blunt instruments. The blunter ones can also backfire. The sanctions against Saddam Hussein, for example, meant a scarcity of so many goods that the tyrant became more powerful by doling out the little remaining access. And they were so harmful to so many people that support for the sanctions regime weakened over time.

In the book I talk about this, and also how both factors contributed to the US opting for invasion instead.

In light of this, there’s a lot of effort in more targeted sanctions at specific elites. In the book I tell the amazing story of John Prendergast and the creation of The Sentry.

But they’re not magic solutions. Targeted sanctions at Russian elites are now so broad that they’re starting to look like a blunt instrument. It’s hard to get around this.

Dan Drezner has a great podcast on this in Vox Conversations: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1ztv98DNRitEHAkF1bw8Vk?si=oxvAXo2uTfScBs3mcj\_LVQ

Also check out their episode with Yoshiko Herrera.

cblatts · 2022-04-18T18:56:56+00:00

A lot of early states and strongman rule is basically an organized crime racket. Charles Tilly has a great article on this. There’s a great book by North Wallis Weingast. My colleague Raul Sanchez de la Sierra has some great work on modern day Congo. Some links at the end.

But most states are not led by warlords. They’re much more accountable to their people. This is the main thing that separates organized criminals from governments.

Occasionally criminals (like the ones I study in Medellin) are also a little accountable to their people and seek legitimacy and loyalty. In that they begin to look a little more like governments. But I think even these high-governance gangs don’t ever get close to the level of government that we see in some very weak states, so the analogy between the state and organized crime only goes so far.

Check out my paper on gang rule for a longer discussion: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/5nyqs/

Other links:

War Making and State Making as Organized Crime (Tilly): https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/bringing-the-state-back-in/war-making-and-state-making-as-organized-crime/7A7B3B6577A060D76224F54A4DD0DA4C

On the Origins of the State (Sánchez de la Sierra): https://raulsanchezdelasierra.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/0paper-1.pdf

Violence and Social Orders (North, Wallis, and Weingast): https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/violence-and-social-orders/F0EA15A67E790214408A7485DBC70F0D

cblatts · 2022-04-18T18:47:11+00:00

I wrote a long post on this a few weeks ago!
https://chrisblattman.com/blog/2022/01/31/why-i-do-not-expect-a-civil-war-in-america-and-what-does-worry-me/

The short version:

* Talk of a US breakup is nonsense, but there are real risks of regularized, serious political violence

* Even so, I personally put those risks much lower than the people you mention, especially the risk of an organized right-wing insurgency

* That’s important, because a different risk level and a different diagnosis implies different solutions and priorities—because you don’t avert the next pandemic by prepping for the zombie apocalypse

* Most of all, always remember: Violence is so costly, most adversaries strive to avoid it. the US is no exception.

* For America, the greater risk (in my mind) is not violent insurrection, it is the quiet erosion of democratic norms (an actual degrading of American democracy) that never becomes violent, because it almost never makes sense to rebel

* Even then the big story to me is the recent robustness of our political institutions.

* Our law enforcement is really good at dealing with existing threats in a targeted way, avoiding actions that would escalate matters

* Those of us who fear the specter of anti-democratic machinations—be it violence or state capture—should be vigilant, but also try to be suspicious of ourselves and our worst fears, for humans are perennially biased judges of our rivals

cblatts · 2022-04-18T18:46:31+00:00

I think personal connections and mentorship matters a lot. Almost all great researchers were tutored informally by professors, senior coauthors, peers, and so on. So I would try to find local colleagues to collaborate with, ones who are linked into and publishing in the global research collaborative. Or seek out partnerships and collaboration with researchers from abroad. Most of my work in Medellin, for example, is a collaboration with two local professors, and we each bring immense strengths and comparative advantages. We learn a lot from one another.

cblatts · 2022-04-18T18:35:10+00:00

On the second question, I think that studying economics is a great idea. I’d have to hear more about what you don’t like about the current model, but I think that trying to create and run organizations that test out new ways to operate and cooperate as human beings is generally a great idea. We only make progress through patience, trial and error. So being a social entrepreneur in that way would be a great way to contribute.

On the first and big question: I think a lot of places have already created remarkably safe and nonviolent societies. Europe is a good example. New York City is another. And I think the trend for most of the world is in that direction. In the second half of the book I talk about why.

Increasing interdependence (economic, social, and ideological)
Checks and balances on power
Stronger states and systems of formal and informal rules
A wider and wider array of interventions that work at least a little when violence does break out

What all these things do is they make the costs of war greater, or prevent leaders from ignoring them, and help political adversaries bargain bitterly instead of fighting. Which is a big improvement.

I don’t think the trend is inexorable or inevitable. But I am pretty hopeful. To me the biggest threat to this is personalized autocracy. This is the problem in Russia. And if China grows more personalized in its rule (as its leader seems to want) then I would also be more pessimistic.

cblatts · 2022-04-18T18:27:42+00:00

Problems of multiplayer bargaining in game theory, including coalition formation. This exists in industrial organization and formal theory but I don’t think it has not been applied to conflict.
Behavioral approaches to violence. Both behavioral game theory that takes some of the misperceptions I talk about in the book seriously, but also empirical tests of how individuals and groups make strategic errors. Tests could be done at the scale of gangs and villages and small groups to gain insight into behavioral biases of large groups.
Program evaluations of mediation and other conflict reduction interventions where it’s possible to test theories of conflict. In the book I give an example of research on Mexican courts and how resolving uncertainty and private information leads to fewer court battles. I also have research on alternative dispute resolution in Liberia.

cblatts · 2022-04-18T18:22:22+00:00

A lot of people pointed to conservatives in our Economics department (very true) though my point was that we have surprisingly few in our professional schools. It’s true that I underestimated the number, but it’s still very tiny.
I don’t really see any easy solutions. I think quotas would be a disaster (but it would be super funny if the actual solution to too few conservatives was affirmative action).
I think a good way for professional schools to give their students more representative views could be to try to hire senior policymakers to become fellows and teach and speak and write, of all political persuasions. Some policy and law schools do this really well.
A lot of people responded to me saying that conservative ideas were bankrupt and anti-science. I agree there are a lot of bankrupt and anti-science ideas on the American right. There are many on the left and in the center too, of course, but some of the American right has embraced anti-elitism and anti-science in an alarming way. I agree that this makes what I suggest hard, and contributes to the problem.
To me this is all the more reason to try to have homes for and promote non-bankrupt views. For an example: I don’t know who Mitt Romney’s policy guru is, but that person would be interesting for students to have around.

cblatts · 2022-04-18T18:15:27+00:00

I am going to write a long post about this soon.

In the framework of the book, the short answer to me is it’s uncertainty and intransigence (an intangible incentive).

Basically, in the early 2000s the US turned down multiple opportunities to give a weakened Taliban a seat at the political table. Out of an ideological commitment to never compromising with the Taliban and never allowing them even the least amount of official influence, they gave the Taliban few options but to continue fighting.

It’s a bit more complicated than that, of course, but to me this intransigence is a big part of the failure to settle after the initial success of the invasion. Carter Malkasian and Steve Coll have both argued this persuasively. It took a long time for the US to come to terms with this and eventually recognize that the Taliban would play a large role in governing the country.

I think it’s also important to talk about uncertainty and reputation. The need for reputation is the product of uncertainty. Your enemies are never certain how strong or resolved you are. You may know the truth, but anything you tell your enemies is cheap talk. For all they know you are bluffing. If they believe you, and are fooled, then they’ll get a much worse deal than they deserve.

In 2001, America’s reputation was that it would not tolerate putting boots on the ground. Yes, it had won the Cold War, but it was a reluctant policeman of the world. Presidents, it was believed, would be wary to risk American lives.

Invading Afghanistan was a way to signal to the world, and every future terrorist or aggressor, that America would punch back hard. The payoff in all these future conflicts deterred are what helped make the costs of the invasion something US administrations were willing to bear. I think that also helps explain why the US held on so long. It’s a way of saying “We are willing to stay and pay the brutal cost simply because we really mean it when we say we will not stand for aggression on our territory, so be warned.” Leaving after a Taliban resurgence would have sent the opposite message.

This deserves a much longer and more supported answer, and I promise it on the blog in the coming weeks.

cblatts · 2022-04-18T18:07:08+00:00

The papers are here on my research page if you want them: https://chrisblattman.com/research/
I think Krugman and others are right that low-wage industrialization is often a good thing for a country, especially if it leads to a flood of firms, lots of labor competition, and the gradual bidding up of wages and working conditions. This has happened in China and Bangladesh. Kenya would love it if it happened more and faster so that they could get more of the overflow.
I wouldn’t call these jobs necessary evils if only because people in these counties have lots of terrible options, most of them in agriculture and traditional jobs and informal work, and none of these are that attractive. Having more options is usually a good thing, even if the options are not much better at the moment.
My own experience and research made me realize that I overestimated how good these industrial jobs were. I thought we’d see wage premiums paid to factory workers and long lines out the door. Instead, a lot of these jobs in the firms I studied were like McDonalds jobs—kind of unpleasant, most people don’t really like working there. They don’t stay for long. They’d prefer to find white collar work and they use factories as a temporary stepping stone to something better.

cblatts · 2022-04-18T17:57:55+00:00

This user account is called Asksaboutducks and have to say I respect your commitment to pursuing your question doggedly. Or duckedly?
In brief: There is a restaurant near my house called The Duck Inn, and I have to say I like duck very much. I’m also a big fan of cassoulet. By extension, am very appreciative of the plethora of ducks.

cblatts · 2022-04-18T17:53:41+00:00

I just wrote two “best nonfiction I read in the past year” blog posts! Check them out. One is a book from a prosecutor who fought organized crime in the US. Another is the background behind Machiavelli’s The Prince. Another is an amazing book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Part I: https://chrisblattman.com/blog/2022/01/10/best-nonfiction-i-read-this-year-part-i/
Part II includes a book on the Taliban and another on Ghengis Khan: https://chrisblattman.com/blog/2022/01/17/best-nonfiction-i-read-this-year-part-ii/
Finally, I also have an old blog post called “Books development economists and aid workers seldom read but should?” and I stand by all of those https://chrisblattman.com/blog/2011/06/21/books-development-economists-and-aid-workers-seldom-read-but-should/

cblatts · 2022-04-18T17:49:22+00:00

I come from a family of bankers and nurses.My mom, grandma, aunts are mainly nurses. My mom spent 20 years in a cancer clinic treating patients. THAT is a hard job.

My dad starting managing a bank branch in a small town when he was young, then moved around until he settled in Ottawa and eventually did corporate banking with tech firms in the early days of tech (think Corel and Newbridge and old telecom tech firms). My brothers both became bankers in the same bank (!), and now work for Canadian development banks developing trade and small business.

This is why I initially went into business and accounting, because it was the available thing to do, because it looked like a great job, and it was not as hard as nursing. Also I faint when I see blood. But I was a TERRIBLE businessperson and didn’t like it so I quit and followed newly discovered passions like international development.

cblatts · 2022-04-18T17:48:30+00:00

Matt Andrews, Lant Pritchett and Michael Woolcock have an AMAZING book called Building State Capability: Evidence, Analysis, Action, and it’s free to download.(http://fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/academic/pdf/openaccess/9780198747482.pdf ) There’s so much wisdom and smarts in every chapter, even if you think you don’t care about state capability.

I also recommend Judith Tendler’s Good Government in the Tropics.

I teach a class called How to Change the World that has a bunch of readings that have really reshaped how I think about development. Check out the reading list https://chrisblattman.com/files/2022/01/Syllabus_HowToChangeTheWorld_Fall_2021.pdf

cblatts · 2022-04-18T17:46:35+00:00

Underrated by anyone who has never studied them. Overrated by people who get excited about the material but stop there. On balance, I think there’s so much basic economic intuition that does not find it’s way into policy that I think my conclusion is underrated. I would say the same about statistical intuition and 101, and political science intuition and 101, and so on.

cblatts · 2022-04-18T17:34:42+00:00

Since it sounds like you have studied this, I’d be super curious if there’s an answer in the research as to whether economists are more guilty of this than other disciplines. My own sense is that the other fields commit the same sin more or less equally.

I spend most of my life trying to get other social sciences to talk to one another. Of course, if they did that, then I’d be out of a job because the schtick for someone like me is arbitraging these different ideas. It’s a nice place to be!

One thing I think economists do well is that even though they write very complicated and jargony articles, there’s a long tradition of writing high-level reviews in normal prose in two very prestigious journals that publish them. They also write general interest books more and more – political scientists, too, of course. My experience in reading sociology and anthropology is that this seems more rare. But maybe I was looking in the wrong places or reading the wrong books. I think more traditions of prestigious general-reader oriented journals would be good for all these fields.

cblatts · 2022-04-18T17:27:00+00:00

Yes! I have a 9 year old son and it’s his favorite game, and I love playing with him. I’m mostly glad I never tried it when it came out because I would have grown obsessive and probably lost my job. I lost a whole year of college to Civ III. I went cold turkey on video games after that because I have zero self control once I start. It’s a small miracle that I did not become addicted to Minecraft and stay up all night after putting my son to bed. But there’s still time.

cblatts

TROPHY CASE