Gary Milante

Peace and War With Endogenous State Capacity

We explore how peace or war can occur in the presence of commitment problems. These problems can be reduced by institutions of good governance or, alternatively, state capacity which (a) can be considered a collective good and (b) can be improved through investments. We show how the likelihood of a peace agreement depends on the level of state capacity and on investments in state capacity made by adversaries. In accordance with existing evidence but contrary to various theories of conflict, we find that income levels unambiguously increase the chance of peace. Among other issues, we discuss the critical role of external actors in encouraging or discouraging commitment and in developing good governance institutions.

Peacebuilding With Games and Simulations

Simulations and games can offer valuable insight into the management of conflict and the achievement of peace. This special symposium issue of Simulation & Gaming examines several such approaches, used in both educational settings and to prepare practitioners to deal with the concrete challenges of peacebuilding. In the introduction, the authors offer some brief thoughts on the how and why of simulations and games-based approaches, scenario choices (abstract, fictional, and real world), intended audiences, and design approaches. They also address the question of how games might (or might not) contribute to policy making in this field.

Eradicating Poverty in Fragile States: Prospects of Reaching The 'High-Hanging' Fruit by 2030

As the world approaches the target year of the Millennium Development Goals and passes into the new, post-2015 era, the development community has made a call for a new international development goal of eradication of extreme poverty by 2030. How feasible is that? For most of the developing world, the goal seems ambitious, yet achievable -- but what about the prospects for fragile states in which an increasingly large share of the global poor will live (estimated at nearly four in 10 by 2030)? This paper presents a base case scenario with the International Futures model that forecasts a 32 percent poverty rate for fragile states by 2030 given current conditions and trends. The paper considers alternative scenarios to identify a range of possible outcomes. In the most optimistic scenario, the paper steps beyond the search for realistic policy levers and simply assumes exceptional economic growth and decreased inequality for fragile states. This extremely optimistic scenario produces a forecast of a 20 percent extreme poverty rate for this group of countries. The paper then explores the effects of improved institutions and improved security in fragile states and of a set of poverty reduction policies that would be conditional on security and good governance to be effective. The resulting aggressive but reasonably attainable poverty rate in fragile states is 24 percent in 2030. With newly revised Purchasing Power Parity values (rebased to 2011 by the International Comparison Project in May of 2014), the 2030 forecasts of fragile state poverty rates are lower by 5 to 6 percent across all scenarios, still leaving them significantly above the 3 percent threshold for poverty eradication.

Referendum, Response, and Consequences for Sudan: The Game Between Juba and Khartoum

This paper presents a game theory model of the strategic interaction between Khartoum and Juba leading up to the referendum on Sudans partition in 2011. The findings show that excessive militarization and brinksmanship is a rational response for both actors, neither of which can credibly commit to lower levels of military spending under the current status quo. This militarization is often at the expense of health and education expenditures, suggesting that the opportunity cost of militarization is foregone economic development. These credibility issues might be resolved by democratization, increased transparency, reduction of information asymmetries, and efforts to promote economic and political cooperation. The paper explores these devices, demonstrating how they can contribute to Pareto preferred outcomes in equilibrium. The authors characterize the military expenditure associated with the commitment problem experienced by both sides, estimate its costs from data for Sudan, and identify the opportunity cost of foregone development implied by continued, excessive, and unsustainable militarization.