Urs Luterbacher

Dynamics of Arms Races: Mutual Stimulation vs. Self-Stimulation:

The analysis of arms races has become dominated by two increasingly divergent schools of thought. On the one hand, there is the Richardsonian tradition’. While the possibility of self-stimulation is not altogether ignored in the work of Richardson and his followers, the emphasis is clearly on the mutual-stimulation (action-reaction, positivefeedback) mechanism in arms races. On the other hand, there is what might be termed the incrementalist school2. Depending on individual Weltanschauungen, the main stress may be on bureaucratic inertia, technological momentum, economic and political vested interests, autistic perceptions, or some broad, sociological concept such as the military-industrial complex’. The common strand is that arms races are self-feeding processes, that is, really not races at all. In this paper we argue that this dichotomy is IargeIy artificial and that both mutual stimulation and self-stimulation can be integrated within a unified theory which includes pure self-stimulation and pure mutual stimulation as limiting cases. We also argue that these two extreme types of behavior can be ruled out on apriori grounds. The analysis of arms races, as viewed here, becomes a primarily empirical matter, in that the exact “mix” of mutual stimulation and self-stimulation must be

Modeling Politico-Economic Interactions Within and Between Nations

This article is concerned with the general problem of politico-economic linkages within and between nations. These relations are analyzed with a global computer simulation model. The structure of the model is presented in some detail and then results of simulation runs are used to describe politico-economic interactions and to predict their future trends. The model, SIMPEST (Simulation Political, Economic, and Strategic Interactions), is completely computerized and derived from formal descriptions of nation- states composed of three interacting sectors: an economic and resource sector, an internal political sector, and a governmental decision-making sector. Using historical data, the model has been estimated empirically for complete representations of the United States, the USSR, and China and includes the influence of military allies (NATO and Warsaw Pact countries). On the basis of these estimations, certain propositions about major power interactions and projections of their evolution until 1990 are presented and discussed.

The New Political Economy of Trading and Its Institutional Consequences

This article offers a theory that can explain a relatively open international trade system as corresponding to a non-cooperative (in the game-theoretical sense) outcome of bargaining interactions between states. Such a non-cooperative outcome, as will be shown, can be expressed as a subgame perfect Nash equilibrium between several states or trading blocs. This type of Nash equilibrium does not lead countries to complete “free” trade, but to an outcome that is closer to what is usually called “managed” trade. The theory also shows that under certain circumstances, this Nash equilibrium corresponds to a trade war similar to the one that broke out in the 1930s, and has the advantage of explaining the emergence of large trading blocs. Also introduced is the concept of a two-dimensional strategy when actors use two independent instruments as policy tools and establish the existence of a unique Nash equilibrium between three actors optimizing in two instruments.

Securing the environment and securing states

Is conflict driven by environmental scarcities or an abundance of natural resources? For quite some time, this question has generated a lively academic debate. The theoretical literature and empirical evidence it offers are inconclusive. On the one hand, authors such as Homer-Dixon (1994) have emphasized the importance of resource scarcities in explaining conflict. On the other hand, scholars such as Collier and Hoeffler (1998) have tried to link conflict with a relative abundance of natural resources. We believe that the failure to provide a coherent explanation upon which rigorous predictions can be based is due to the neglect of institutions in understanding resource use. What we will try to highlight here is the importance of institutional settings to explain this apparent paradox.

Water control and property rights: An analysis of the Middle Eastern situation

This paper describes how computer methods can be used to analyze environmental resource problems and evaluate data bases about environmental trends. Resource allocation and use depend on both physical and social processes. Conflicts may erupt over overlapping claims to identical resource pools. But because of the complex interactions determining availability and use, solutions to resource conflicts are difficult to elaborate. This study adopts a formulation that focuses on the crucial linkages between the economic, socio-cultural, political, and demographic parts of a social system on the one hand, and an important resource sector, water, and its interaction with climatic processes on the other. These linkages are expressed within a dynamic simulation model which has been adapted to the particular case of the Middle East. Samples of the data collection that was undertaken as well as model calibration calculations are given in appendices. The goal of our approach is to explore competition, conflict, and possible cooperation between regions and nations in terms of resource use and allocation, particularly water, and movements of people. The argument is made that cooperative strategies and conflict resolution schemes can be effective in achieving sustainable water management in this volatile region. The underlying theoretical framework is that of game theory, which posits that decision makers are engaged in a process in which their preferences, their possible choices and those of other parties, as well as the mutual effects of choices on each participant, all affect its trajectory and outcome. The advantage of the simulation approach is that it permits the investigation of basic conflict and cooperation situations in terms of their game theoretical structures. The report presents several cooperative solutions as that can be elaborated for particular preference functions for given regions.

Conflicts, Arms Races and War: A Synthetic Approach

This chapter elaborates basic elements for an integrated formal approach to conflicts, arms races, and war in an attempt to remedy the inadequacies we see in similar theoretical efforts. Starting from a rational actor perspective in international politics, the paper presents three interconnected models of arms races or resource allocation processes, diplomatic conflict and war initiation by nations that are based upon either general optimising principles through time or differential game theoretic considerations. All these principles are defined as adjustments between actual and target values of key variables of resources devoted to defence, diplomatic conflictual efforts, and evaluations of each side’s deterrent capabilities by the other. In addition, time constraints play a crucial role in the representation of the war initiation submodel. An analysis of these three interconnected formulations shows that our conception can account for several types of war initiation. On the one hand, we can emphasise a situation that we label the paradox of the weak where the nation with the least effective deterrent has an incentive to attack first. On the other hand, our model can also represent more classical types of confrontations where either deterrence works or where the strong attacks the weak.

Explaining and predicting future environmental scarcities and conflicts

It is a puzzle that while academic research has increased in specialization, the important and complex problems facing humans urgently require a synthesis of understanding. This unique collaboration attempts to address such a problem by bringing together a host of prominent scholars from across the sciences to offer new insights into predicting the future. They demonstrate that long-term trends and short-term incentives need to be understood in order to adopt effective policies, or even to comprehend where we currently stand and the sort of future that awaits us.

Water and Mountains, Upstream and Downstream: Analyzing Unequal Relations

This paper analyzes unequal access to water with a special focus on the Central Asian situation. It emphasizes the crucial issue of property rights and examines what happens when these are distributed in ways that lead to major inefficiencies and conflict. A game theoretical investigation of this type of conflict situation is presented and then ways in which the conflict might be solved if parties to keep having relative risk aversion. In the case of Central Asia this type of solution would lead to mutually beneficial outcomes if credibility problems are lifted by using international institutions to guarantee the observance of contracts that contain prescriptions to share benefits associated with a change in the property rights structure.

Migration Patterns, Land Use and Climate Change

Land-use and then land cover is one of the key links between human activities and climate change. Clearly land use is influenced by demographic evolutions that can also be constrained by climate change. Whereas there are some physical representations of land use and cover very few socioeconomic models of land use have been proposed. This is surprising since land use is obviously the result of human decision-making processes. As usual in cases involving such decisions, the incentive structure and preference orders underlying human choices has to be explored. An important variable to be considered here is the relative price of different uses of the land. As one knows, land can have different types of use depending on the relative value associated to it. Obviously, a plot of land can be either left to natural cover in which case it still might have a specific value as forested or recreation area or transformed into agricultural land of various kinds or finally used as dwelling or industrial site. According to this perspective land use will then be determined by the relative prices associated to these specific uses. The land price will be established, provided no administrative restriction is introduced (such as zoning for instance), by the competing uses one can make of it. If dwellings bring in more than agricultural use, housing areas and urbanization will expand. However, if agriculture or lumber production or tourism is of high value, land will be used for these purposes and not for housing and so on. In this paper I want to work toward the establishment of an analytical construction in the form of model of the relative values of land areas under the influence of changes. Changes to be considered should include: 1) Ecological parameters such as climate change 2) Socio-economic forces with special attention paid to the additional market forces unleashed by market liberalization and globalization. From a theoretical point of view I want to invoke the theories of exhaustible and slowly renewable resources to attempt to explain the relations between the categories of land areas that are being considered (for this see the pioneering work of Dasgupta and Heal 1978,

Commentary: Eco-System Modelling and the Social Sciences

Ever since man’s appearance on earth and especially since the emergence of agriculture, much of nature must be seen as a human creation. While physical forces have always constrained activities, so too have people modified landscape and climate through culturally defined technologies, social institutions, and individual strategies. To examine the human dimensions of global environmental change or the social dimensions of resource use is thus to ask both how political, economic and cultural factors mediate natural processes and how forces of nature shape certain institutional arrangements. In this commentary we contribute some complementary ideas to those laid out by Colin Prentice.