Exporting Negative Externalities and Political Instability

Okay, so here's the general idea: exporting negative externalities cause political instability. Democratic peace theory tells us that as a nations political players increase any ruling leader or party must have a greater coalition in order to exert power.

That's why we see the United States going to war over Oil but not over personal attrition: the gains from these actions are visible enough, large enough and spread out over enough people to make those actions by the ruling party or leader feasible. As political players decrease, the ability of a ruling party or leader to take action increase as they only have to appease a smaller group of people. Well, what makes one system have more political players than another? Here, we have to delve into a qualitative approach. A sense of equity allows political power to be shared, otherwise those with it would just oppress those without. It's a classic prisoner's dilemma:

(Image taken from hurr)

Left to our own devices, people will always grab for power because they either fear oppression or they love power. That is, they either want to avoid getting -20 as a payoff or they want 0 as a payoff (the upper right quadrant or the lower left one). But because they grab power, and having grabbed it must work to maintain it, they end up in the upper left quadrant (-10, -10). Now, how do they get into the lower right quadrant? In the model of the prisoners dilemma, they'd achieve this result by cooperating and not snitching. In terms of political science, this means a set of rules and regulations: rule of law.

Why is this the case? Why can't people just get along? 

Because there's a shit ton of us and each one of us have our own aspirations, goals, and motivations. So we clash. I'm not just talking about stealing or killing or being a dick. But to get what we want we often have to do many peripheral tasks and objectives and when we do this, our peripherals inevitably fuck up someone else's peripheral. So we need government. We need someone to tell us what we've and what our neighbors have done is okay or not. Only with systems and institutions can we have a civil discourse. If you don't believe me, go read The Grand Inquisitor.

What does all this have to do with Democratic peace theory?

Well, a lot. Leaders in unstable countries realize that they need very little to stay in power. They need the support of a few generals, land owners, drug dealers, or whatever form political players come in within their nation. I'm not talking about leaders processing Bueno De Mesquita's logic and programming complex analytical models. But they are aware (probably intensely aware) that they need the support of certain people and collections of people to continue wielding power as they do. And to keep this group small, they prevent others from forming. And what's the best way to prevent others from forming? By fucking telling them they can't.

That is, manipulating the legal system to their advantage. This can and is done in a variety of ways, in fact our Constitution recognizes this fact and plays the interests of factions against each other. Each party, when in the Executive, can and are encouraged to stack the Judiciary with favorable candidates. And when in the Legislative, each party obviously attempts to make the legal institution in its image. The longevity of judicial appointments make openings scarce and ideological influence extensive, living on long after the political deaths of those in charge. But you don't have to do that when you don't have a Constitution. You don't have to do that when you only need to care about a small group of people. So, Fuck it. You do what you want. This undermines the legal system, because you can't really trust in a set of laws when whoever in charge can just change them on a whim. It'd be interesting to look at Henry VIII, economic data from the sixteenth century probably doesn't exist though right?

That's one of the trappings of power: when you get it, you don't want to listen to shit from no one. There's actually scientific evidence behind that. Power breeds hypocrisy.

This goes back to what I was saying about the prisoners dilemma: a power grab leads to a sub-optimal equilibrium because when power is grabbed and not granted everything basically gets pretty shitty, pretty quickly.

Now I know this is a big statement so that's why I'm going to take this blog to try to explain it. Where to begin? I guess I have to start looking at nations.

Candidates (Taken from the Political Instability Index):

1. Zimbabwe
2. Haiti
3. Cambodia
4. Sierra Leone
5. Guinea Bissau

All of these countries rank in the top 50 on the Political Instability Index, put out by The Economist. I got Guinea Bissau from this article on the Huffington Post the that goes into detail about the Cocaine Trade moving into West Africa.

I'll be looking at these negative externality goods:

1. Cocaine Trafficking
2. Blood diamonds
3. Cannabis, Methamphetamine, and Heroin. (Golden Triangle)
4. Human Trafficking (Where the hell am I going to get data for this?)

That's all for now, next time I'll throw in some numbers and see if the math behind the democratic peace theory holds.