The Paradox of Anarchy

Department of Political Science

The paradox of anarchy

Why anarchy is a rational choice

Martin Lundqvist

Independent Research Project in Political Science, 30 credits Master’s Programme in Political Science Year, Term: 2016, Fall Term Supervisor: Magnus Lundgren Word count (excluding appendices): 19280 Abstract

A central paradox in neorealism is that the absence of world government is assumed to imply a dangerous security dilemma, and yet few realists have argued in favor of world government while great powers have historically resisted delegation of military force to supranational institutions. If international anarchy causes costly security competition and war, powerful states should have a strong incentive to unify and neorealist explanations for why states resist peaceful unification are either underdeveloped or implicit. This paper develops a rational choice realist model which suggests that anarchy is not a structural constraint which forces states to compete intensely for power, but a rational choice that state leaders make to avoid the costs of world government. The model assumes that state leaders face a delegation constraint which implies a tradeoff between eliminating the military burden necessary to deter attacks in anarchy, and abstain from world government to avoid forced redistribution of material resources pushed by poorer states or risk that the world government might turn tyrannical and coerce the subjects it has been mandated to protect. The paper uses deductive method to deduce actor preferences and illustrate the plausibility of the central predictions of the model. The model predicts that income equality, democratization, nationalism and military defensive advantage makes anarchy stable, a condition under which states have little reason to unify. On the other hand, high income inequality, lack of democratic accountability, territorial revisionism, and military offensive advantage make anarchy costly, but unification more difficult to achieve given the underlying conflicting preferences. Hence, states rather take the risk of fighting in hopes of eliminating future military competition than to agree on a world government where redistribution and cultural conflicts are likely to make wealthy great powers with modest population sizes worse off than they would be in anarchy. The paper concludes that anarchy is not a tragedy that makes world government impossible, but world government is a potential tragedy that makes anarchy rational.

Contents

Chapter 1 ...... 1 1.1 Introduction and research puzzle ...... 1 1.2 Research questions and strategy ...... 2 Chapter 2 ...... 4 2.1 Previous research: introduction ...... 4 2.2 The virtues of anarchy ...... 4 2.3 Territorial competition and the cost of anarchy ...... 7 2.4 Hobbesian contract between men but not between sovereigns ...... 8 2.5 International cooperation and institutional design ...... 8 2.6 The historical evolution of international anarchy ...... 10 Chapter 3 ...... 12 3.1 Method and operationalization: introduction ...... 12 3.2 The congruence method ...... 12 3.3 Deducing actor preferences ...... 13 3.4 Delimitations, reliability and validity ...... 15 Chapter 4 ...... 17 4.1 Theoretical framework: Introduction ...... 17 4.2 Fundamental assumptions ...... 18 4.3 Theoretical model ...... 20 4.4 Power balancing and the cost of anarchy ...... 23 4.4 The role of uncertainty ...... 25 Chapter 5 ...... 27 5.1 Analysis: introduction ...... 27 5.2 Taming the leviathan ...... 28 5.3 Military technology and the offense/defense balance ...... 29 5.4 Territorial greed and the cost of anarchy relative to world government ...... 32 5.4.1 Income inequality and the redistribution commitment problem ...... 32 5.4.2 Regime-types: Autocrats vs democrats ...... 34 5.4.3 Nationalism and world government ...... 37 5.4.4 Geographies of scale ...... 39 Chapter 6 ...... 44 6.1 Illustrative empirics: introduction ...... 44 6.2 Unification vs balancing in contemporary Europe ...... 44 6.3 When anarchy is a rational choice: The case of the American civil war ...... 45 Chapter 7 ...... 49 7. 1 Alternative explanations for anarchy: The commercial peace hypothesis ...... 49 7.2 Global governance vs global government ...... 50 7.3 Born to kill? ...... 51 Chapter 8 ...... 52 8. Conclusion: The paradox of world government ...... 52 References ...... 54

Chapter 1

1.1 Introduction and research puzzle A central claim of neorealism is that the absence of world government has tragic implications for international politics, causing uncertainty, conflict, and war.1 At the same time, realists tend to be opposed to the idea of world government, and rational explanations for why powerful states are reluctant to delegate military force when the absence of world government is assumed to cause tragedy and war is largely absent in realist literature.2 Realist arguments for why international politics takes place in anarchy when great powers should have rational reasons to escape it (the paradox of anarchy) are underdeveloped and implicit, which indicates a gap in the explanatory power of neorealism. This gap motivates a theory-developing study that can provide a theoretically coherent solution to the paradox of anarchy.

The paper contributes to international relations theory by developing a realist model departing from the assumption that anarchy is a rational choice rather than a deterministic structure. The paper considers a modified version of Fearon’s realist two-state model which assumes that territorial greed (determined by regime-type, congruence between national borders and national identity and income inequality between states), military offense/defense balance (the probability of winning for the attacker given the levels of arms held by the defender) and geographic scale determine the cost of anarchy relative to world government.3 The paper tests the validity of the model by illustrating how the independent variables affect the cost of anarchy relative to world government in hypothetical two-state scenarios where states can choose to attack unify or balance. The study proceeds by relaxing the two-state assumption to consider the impact of geographic scale on territorial greed and the offense/defense balance, as well as elucidating the logic of the model via empirical case illustrations. The paper suggests that when anarchy is costly due to offensive advantage and high levels of territorial greed, states rather take the chance of fighting to end future military competition than delegating military force to a world government that might be captured by poor states, which would imply redistribution of income from wealthy great powers.

1 See Waltz (1979) and Mearsheimer (2014). 2 Ibid 3 Fearon (2015).

When military defense dominates and territorial greed is low, world government becomes more achievable but anarchy less costly. Hence wealthy great powers are incentivized to balance in anarchy with a small military burden rather than delegating their military capabilities to a world government where they risk losing bargaining power gained from arming in anarchy. Furthermore, geographies of scale can plausibly explain why governments have evolved at the regional level but not the global level since military defense dominance increases with geographic scale, hence causing international anarchy to be more stable than regional anarchy.

1.2 Research questions and strategy The purpose of the study is to develop a theoretical model that can explain why rational states abstain from delegating their sovereignty to a world government, when anarchy is assumed by neorealist approaches to cause conflict and war. The study can hence be defined as theory- developing and attempts to eliminate a central theoretical puzzle in neorealism, defined in the study as the “the paradox of anarchy”. To solve the research puzzle the paper asks one explanatory and one descriptive research question:

- If anarchy causes tragedy and war, then why are great powers reluctant to delegate their sovereignty to a world government?

- What primary factors determine the cost of anarchy relative to world government?

Blaikie emphasizes that it is important to distinguish between understanding (reason explanation) and explanation (causal explanation). Explanation refers to identifying the causal mechanisms that produce an empirical phenomenon while understanding refers to the motivation or account that social actors provide for their behavior.4 The realist model presented in this paper is explanatory, and developed through deductive logic. The research strategy applied in the paper can be defined as a hybrid between deductive and retroductive strategies which are tailor-made for answering “why” questions, hence the most valid strategies for answering the research question of why powerful states choose to abstain from unifying when anarchy causes conflict and war.5

4 Blaikie (2010) p, 87. 5 Ibid.

The deductive research strategy implies that the researcher presents a tentative idea, in this case, the idea that anarchy is a rational choice and not a structure which constrains state behavior deterministically.6 Conclusions are then deduced from a set of axioms based on under what conditions the proposed hypothesis are expected to hold. In the present case, the cost of anarchy relative to world government as a function of military offense/defense balance, territorial greed and geographic scale. The realist model suggested in the paper is underpinned by the positivistic ontological assumption that social and political reality exists independently of our knowledge of it. Causes and consequences in the social world area assumed to resemble those of the natural world, thus social patterns are also natural phenomena, but since the actor preferences assumed by the model are not directly observable, the model developed in the paper draws upon a critical realist approach to social sciences.7

The paper will not test the theoretical model on a single empirical case analyzed in depth, since the study is theory developing. Instead, it will utilize empirics mainly as illustrative examples, thus resembling elements of a retroductive research strategy, which seeks to capture underlying causal mechanisms in particular contexts. The first step in the retroductive research strategy is to provide an adequate description of the empirical regularity to be explained. In this case, the absence of world government. The second step is to identify contending mechanisms that can explain the regularity, which is done in the previous research and alternative explanation sections of the paper.8 The paper considers a two-state model where states can choose to arm and attack, cooperate and divide gains from the issue at stake or delegate their sovereignty to a world government. The model highlights the similarities between constructing political order at the domestic and global level, the crucial difference being that preference heterogeneity and military defensive advantage is greater at the global level due to geographies of scale. The inquiry proceeds by illustrating how variation in military offense/defense balance, income inequality, regime types, congruency between national identity and state borders as well as geographies of scale, determines the cost of anarchy relative to world government.

6 Blaike (2010) p, 85. 7 Grix (2010) p, 87. 8 Blaike (2010) p, 87.

Chapter 2

2.1 Previous research: introduction

The chapter summarizes the central realist arguments for why great powers abstain from delegating military force, ranging from Waltz argument that there is no natural harmony of interests in the world to Hobbes argument that interstate competition is welfare improving for the subjects of the rulers. I argue that while there are arguments scattered across realist literature, they are largely implicit, informal and incoherent. The main flaw of previous realist arguments relating to the rationale for anarchy is that anarchy is assumed as a structure that deterministically forces states to compete for power, which leads to wasteful military spending and war. The chapter also provides a brief overview of historical state formation to highlight the impact of geographic scale on the cost of anarchy/world government. The chapter further discusses neo-liberal institutionalist explanations for interstate cooperation, and concludes that the concept of sovereignty costs which is a neoliberal explanation for why states do not want to delegate armed forces is indicating the importance of nationalism as an obstacle to cooperation. However, neo-liberal institutionalists do not explain explicitly why sovereignty is so important to states and do not confront the fact that states could avoid wasteful military spending but letting a global government guarantee their safety.

2.2 The virtues of anarchy While most realists have opposed the idea of world government, realists Morgenthau and Hertz argued in the 1950s that nuclear weapons made nation states defenseless, and called for the necessity of a global government, although none of them thought it would be enforceable.9 While recognizing that world government is a logical solution to the dangers of anarchy, Morgenthau and Hertz fail to realize that precisely because nuclear weapons imply mutual assured destruction, great powers have a strong incentive to avoid fighting each other, hence anarchy becomes less rather than more dangerous. The model proposed in the paper assumes that nuclear weapons shifts the offense/defense balance in favor of defense, hence making anarchy more stable and less costly relative to world government.

9 Bell (2010) p, 105.

Mearsheimer along with Hertz argue that anarchy implies a security dilemma, since states cannot gain in security without making other states less secure. Hence states are incentivized to acquire more and more power at others states expense, causing fierce security competition.10 The puzzle is that if anarchy forces all states to compete intensely for power, rational states should anticipate fierce security competition and agree on a world government to eliminate the security dilemma. Furthermore, I argue that survival which is the principle goal of states according to offensive realism is not a precondition for all other possible ends since states could expand their consumption frontier by unifying and spend close to zero on arms just or keep down revolts from their subjects.11

In Theory of international politics Waltz argued that what distinguishes the national from the international realm is that national governments possess a legitimate monopoly on violence, while the international realm is a self-help system.12 Waltz compares the international “self- help” system to an oligopolistic market and argues that firms are constrained to strike a compromise between maximizing profit and minimizing the danger of being demised. The realist relative gains assumption which is one of the primary realist arguments for why international politics is competitive rather than cooperative appears to have its theoretical foundation in Waltz’s argument that firms should always abstain from maximizing profit in order to maintain their market share.13 However, Waltz model of market share maximizing firms was developed prior to the game theoretical idea that repeated interactions could allow firms to construct self-enforcing agreements that would sustain higher profits.14 Powell argued in response that realism does not need a relative gains assumption since states in anarchy could arm to convert relative advantage into absolute gains.15 Depending on military technology and costs for fighting, this possibility might prevent states from cooperating despite a “shadow of the future” (i.e., repeated interactions).16

10 Mearsheimer (2014) p, 36. 11 Mearsheimer (2014) p, 33. 12 Waltz (1979) p, 104. 13 Waltz (1979), p, 106. 14 Fearon (2015) p2. 15 Powell (1991) p, 1306. 16 Fearon (2015) p2.

The paper departs from Powell’s assumption that states seek absolute gains like firms on a market, but while Powell does not explain why states cannot unify to avoid the costs of anarchy, this paper shows how concerns over loosing relative bargaining power once military power has been delegated to a world government incentives states to choose anarchy.

Waltz implicit argument for why states may not be able to unify in order to escape anarchy is that anarchy forces even good states that argue for world government to settle for balance of power as an unhappy alternative.17 Waltz also argues that the same is true for domestic politics since men are products of the societies they live in, but why then has governments emerged at the local level and not at the global level? Waltz implicit answer is that because there is no natural harmony of interests among states and no global leviathan to prevent war, there is a latent risk that states will use force to achieve their apparent issue indivisible ends.18 If there are no natural harmony of interest in anarchy, the logical negation of the argument would be that there would be a natural harmony of interest under hierarchy and this is indeed what is assumed to be true at the domestic level in Waltz realist analysis.19 The national interest would be impossible to define without assuming that citizens have mutual interests that aggregates into a national interest which is defined in terms of power. If all states have the same rational objectives under anarchy, then it is puzzling why great powers wouldn’t have incentives to federate to avoid the violent clash of interests in anarchy.

Waltz elaborates on the undesirability of world government by arguing that: “It would be an invitation to civil war since a global central authority could not mobilize sufficient resources to regulate and manage its parts”.20 A more explicit formalization of Waltz argument would be that states may fear that global governmental institutions might not be robust against capture, which together with fear of redistribution of resources determines the cost of world government in the RCR (rational choice realist) model suggested in this paper. Global civil war would not occur if there were no conflicting preferences however, hence income inequality which causes redistribution disputes and nationalism which causes cultural and territorial disputes are central independent variables in the RCR model.

17 Waltz (1954) p, 122. 18 Ibid 19 Ibid 20 Waltz (1979), p, 112.

That nationalism reinforces anarchy tend to be an implicit assumption in realist analysis but rational explanations for why states are inherently nationalistic are largely absent. Waltz argues that states like people are insecure in proportion to the extent of their freedom.21 What states want freedom from is not explained however, and while Mearsheimer is more explicit about the role of nationalism in international relations by arguing that nationalism cases glorification of the state, he does not provide rational arguments for why states should prefer sovereignty in an anarchic system where costly arming is required to remain sovereign.22

2.3 Territorial competition and the cost of anarchy One of the most convincing neorealist arguments for why anarchy would prevent global unification is provided by Jervis who interpret international cooperation as a commitment problem where each state has an incentive to defect because: a) States currently supporting the status quo might get dissatisfied in the future. b) States tend to seek control over resources beyond their borders to assure that the necessary supplies will continue to flow during war- time.23 Jervis argues that if there would to be an international authority (world government) that could guarantee access to external resources, the motive for controlling territory would disappear.24 Thus, Jervis highlights that if a world government existed, the resource-problem would be eliminated but he doesn’t really explain why rational great powers wouldn’t prefer to delegate force to a global leviathan to end the commitment problems arising from anarchy. Jervis appear to assume by default that states find themselves in a security dilemma in which they can’t trust each other’s intentions. The realist argument that states need to secure external resources provides a valuable concept that will be incorporated in the RCR model, where territorial greed is assumed to have a decisive impact on arms levels and cost of anarchy relative to world government.

21 Waltz (1979), p, 112. 22 Mearsheimer (2001) p, 85. 23 Jervis (1978) p, 168. 24 Ibid.

2.4 Hobbesian contract between men but not between sovereigns In contrast to neorealism, classical realism assumes that it is not the structure of the international system but human nature that is the primary cause of international conflict.25 However, classical realist Hobbes implicitly provides a tentative answer to neorealist paradox of anarchy by arguing that while domestic anarchy implies misery, anarchy between sovereign authorities’ forces rulers to uphold the industries of their subjects in order to compete successfully with their rivals.26 Hobbes argue that men are inclined to domestic peace by the passions of fear of death and desire for commodious necessities.27 The puzzle is that while the sovereign’s subjects may have their wealth and security protected by the sovereign, the sovereigns themselves should have rational reasons to eliminate the “fear of death” in the international realm by surrendering their military force to a global sovereign, hence converting their military burden to wealth and enjoy the protection of a global leviathan.

2.5 International cooperation and institutional design Neoliberal institutionalism, representing the main theoretical competitor to realism within the rationalist spectra, has provided extensive theoretical arguments for why world unification might be prevented despite costs to anarchy. Koremenos, Lipson and Snidal asks what prevents international cooperation if it is always possible through repeated games (Folk theorem) implying that international anarchy should be overcome after repeated interactions between states.28 Koremenos et al argues that the Folk theorem has been relying simple 2x2 prisoner’s dilemma game where there is only one equilibria outcome while in reality there are often many.29 Morrow, Krasner and Fearon have also shown how distributional differences can undermine cooperation, and based on mainly the work of Fearon, income-inequality will figure as one of the primary variables determining the cost of anarchy relative to world government. Koremenos et al concludes that distribution problems are as significant of an obstacle to international cooperation as enforcement problems.30

25 Mearsheimer (2001) p, 10. 26 Hobbes (2004) p, 79. 27 Ibid 28 Koremenos, Lipson and Snidal (2001) p, 764. 29 Koremenos, Lipson and Snidal (2001), p, 765. 30 Ibid

Uncertainty and “noise” (observe other actors actions clearly) is another problem, because states are often reluctant to disclose vital information that could make them more vulnerable.31

Koremenos et al also argue that large number of players complicates cooperation since some states are richer and more powerful than others.32 This paper revises the argument, since the premise appears to be that more players implies more diversity and more diversity implies less cooperation, which motivates nationalism, income inequality and regime-types as central variables determining the cost of anarchy relative to world government in the RCR model. Furthermore, Koremenos et al. argue that concerns about sovereignty explains why states abstain from delegating strong coercive capacities in spite of possible gains that could be made from centralization, but it is unclear why states find sovereignty critically important when enforcement problems and transaction costs can be reduced by agreeing on maximum global centralization of bargaining (world government).33 The RCR model provides firmer justification for the sovereignty cost argument by emphasizing the importance of nationalism as an obstacle to cooperation in the military realm, where nationalism is treated as a rational tool for state leaders to enhance national unity and fighting efficiency, hence reducing the cost of domestic hierarchy and international anarchy.

Oye has argued that states can arrive at mutually beneficiary cooperative equilibria by prolonging the shadow of the future.34 Schelling and Axelrod suggest tactics of decomposition over time to lengthen the shadow of the future, thus reducing the risk of defection by splitting up for example a deal to delegate all military force to a supranational world government into several periods of bargaining where some military capability is delegated step by step in exchange for reduced military burdens and influence over the world government.35 However, Fearon has argued that the shadow of the future does not eliminate the war constraint, which he defines as the incentive for state A to attack and conquer state B if state B would to disarm, since state A then could arm a little and conquer B at very low costs relative to the benefit of resource extraction from state B.36

31 Koremenos, Lipson and Snidal (2001), p, 765. 32 Ibid 33 Koremenos, Lipson and Snidal (2001) p, 790. 34 Oye (1985) p, 17. 35 Ibid 36 Fearon (2015) p, 10.

Thus, the shadow of the future might not be prolonged such that states would disarms completely, which means that if states would delegate military force to a world government in repeated games, incentives to defect and attack a delegator temporally weakened by disarmament could prevent a completion of the delegation process and risk war and mutual defection. Oye makes the fundamental assumption that because there is no central authority to impose limits on the pursuit of sovereign interests, anarchy gives rise to diverse outcomes, without explicitly recognizing that the absence of world government is an equilibria outcome of heterogeneous national interests. Oye also appears to make a tautological argument for why states do not want to delegate their sovereignty by assuming that the absence of world government precludes that states would cede ultimate control over their conduct to a supranational sovereign.37 Hence, Oye fails to answer the question of how world government would solve the commitment problems arising from diverse national interests such that it would eliminate tragedies of anarchy.38

2.6 The historical evolution of international anarchy The central premise of the rational choice realist approach is that anarchy is an outcome of rational calculus. However, states evolved bottom-up, not top down, which motivates a historical summary of the evolution of the state system which constitutes contemporary international relations. Thus far, the paper has been posing the question of why world government has not been enforced by contract, but world history shows that state formation has been largely driven by coercive bargaining and war.39 The predatory approach to state formation advocated by Tilly suggests that states in medieval Europe built fearsome coercive means to deprive civilian populations of access to those means, and relied on capitalists to reorganize coercion.40 Tilly does not make explicit assumptions about exactly what the fundamental goal of rulers are, whether they are assumed to be security seekers or greedy territorial expanders, but instead assumes that men who control concentrated means of coercion wants to extend them over population and resources over which they wield power.41

37 Oye (1985) p, 1. 38 Ibid 39 Tilly (1992) p, 69. 40 Ibid 41 Tilly (1992) p, 14.

Furthermore, Tilly implicitly makes the offensive neorealist assumption that whenever they encounter other rulers with no comparable control of coercion, they have an incentive to conquer, and when faced with a comparable strong rival they make war.42 Rulers are constrained with significant limits to its range of control, which causes either military defeat or fragmentation of control, thus hinting that international anarchy is a product of a lack of global concentration of the means of coercion. Because of a lack of external control Tilly argues that rulers historically settled for a combination of conquest, protection against powerful rivals and cooperation with neighbors.43 Since the dawn of civilization, rulers have attempted to establish a secure territory within which they could enjoy returns from coercion and a fortified buffer zone to protect that territory. When the effort was successful the buffer zone became a secure area, which incentivized the ruler to acquire additional buffer zones surrounding the old. Since all rulers where assumed to follow the same logic, adjacent rulers inevitable engaged in military conflict.44 Small kingdoms evolved into nation states when armies were nationalized and specialized after the 1750s through a process of bargaining out access to households and enterprises, hence sweeping out autonomous intermediaries.45 Hence, coercion and asymmetric bargaining interacted to concentrate capital and coercion.

The paper argues that since it requires more offensive capability to control a large geographic area than a small one, geographic scale is an important factor explaining why hierarchy emerged at the local level but not the global level. On the other hand, Tilly highlights that even if states had significant bargaining leverage over its subjects, rulers often bargained peacefully with revolting subject to avoid the costs of coercion.46 Moreover, Tilly’s emphasis on the effectiveness of coercion largely neglects the wars inefficiency puzzle. War is costly and rational rulers should have an incentive to federate with their competitors, so to spend just enough on arms to keep down revolts from their subjects and protect wealth from capture. Predatory theories of state formation which are consistent with a fundamentally realist understanding of state behavior may explain how anarchy evolved into local hierarchy trough coercion and asymmetrical bargaining, but fails to explain why rational rulers shouldn’t have an incentive to federate at the global level to spend just enough on arms to prevent revolts and protect wealth from capture.

42 Tilly (1992) p, 15. 43 Ibid 44 Tilly (1992) p, 184. 45 Tilly (1992) p, 103. 46 Tilly (1992) p, 102.

Chapter 3

3.1 Method and operationalization: introduction The paper utilizes Frieden’s method of deducing actor preferences to generate predictions about how observable variations in state properties should change state preferences over international political order (anarchy or world government as comparative static) given an underlying profit motive derived from microeconomic assumptions about firm. The congruence method will be applied to test if the predictions of the RCR model are congruent with empirical outcomes in illustrative cases, but since the paper is theory developing, empirics will mainly be utilized to illustrate the logic of the RCR model.

3.2 The congruence method The congruence method implies that the researcher ascertains the value of the independent variable and predicts, based on the theory used, what outcome of the dependent variable that should follow.47 George and Bennet emphasize that the congruence method is useful in studies that work with deductive theories that “black-box” decision-making and strategic interaction, in this case, state leaders choosing between anarchy and world government in two-state game scenarios.48 Hypothetical two-state scenarios can be thought of as artificial small-n case studies that illustrates macro-political dynamics by analyzing strategic interactions between two states.

The first step in a theory developing study that black-box internal decision-making processes is to formulate a formal version of the deductive theory employed.49 The formal model developed in this paper which will be assessed in detail in chapter 4 can be defined as a rational choice realist model where two states can choose to unify to eliminate arms spending, balance to maintain deterrence or fight in hopes of eliminating future military competition. Costs and benefits of unification, balancing and war are determined by the military offense-defense balance and territorial greed.

47 George and Bennet (2005) p, 181. 48 George and Bennet (2005) p, 200. 49 Ibid

The second step is to identify historical cases that enables refinement of the theory’s explanatory power.50 In this case, the absence of an outcome is the dependent variable to be explained, but since the outcome (world government) has never occurred, there is no empirical variance in the dependent variable unless anarchy is treated as a variable varying between less or more anarchy rather than pure anarchy and world government. However, since the paper assumes anarchy (absence of world government) to be a rational choice, the dependent variable (international order) can vary between anarchy and world government since great powers could potentially choose to unify.

A third and last step in the application of the congruence method is to test how congruent the predictions of the RCR model are with empirical outcomes, which will be done by assessing the German-French plans for a European defense union which if realized would be a case of peaceful unification in the RCR model, while the American civil war will be analyzed as a case of where regional “world government” dissolved into temporal anarchy.51

3.3 Deducing actor preferences Friedens method of deducing actor preferences provides a plausible tradeoff between methods of observation that tend to confuse preferences with outcomes and methods of assumption that neglects how variation in state properties affect preferences.52 Deducing actor preferences implies assuming a fundamental exogenous preference derived from previous theory and then determine preferences over specific issues given identifiable characteristics of actors and their environment.53 Based on the realist firm-state analogy, The RCR model assumes that state leaders have a fundamental preference for maximizing consumption, but whether state leaders will prefer anarchy or world government is determined by variation in observable comparative statics (regime-types, relative income, congruency between the national and political unit) and structural factors (military technology and geographic setting). Frieden argue that the deductive method is analytically valuable because comparative statics are more readily observed than preferences, hence the RCR model can make predictions about how state preferences are likely to change given variation in observable state properties and the military offense-defense balance.54

50 George and Bennet (2005) p, 200. 51 George and Bennet (2005) p, 201. 52 Frieden (1999) p, 56. 53 Frieden (1999), p, 61. 54 Frieden (1999), p, 62.

Frieden highlights the importance of keeping preferences separate from the characteristics of strategic settings, or else the causal role of actor interests and their environment cannot be distinguished.55 In any given setting, an actor prefers certain outcomes over others and pursue strategies to achieve the most preferred outcome. In this paper, states are assumed to be the primary actors in international politics and their principal goal is consumption maximization of material and symbolic goods. State leaders can choose three different strategies to obtain this goal. Conquest (outcome: world government), power balancing (outcome: anarchy), or delegation of force to supranational institutions (outcome: world government). Frieden highlights that blending national preferences, strategies and the environment into a single explanatory factor makes it difficult to know how outcomes are affected by international power relations, national interests and features of the environment.56 Frieden argues that the two main analytical problems related to the blending of state interests, strategies and strategic setting are sins of commission which means that it is an analytical mistake to assume that variation in outcomes is solely due to variation in preferences, and sins of omission which implies that variation in outcome has nothing to do with variation in preferences.57 The sin of omission can be avoided by holding environmental factors constant while letting comparative statics vary, which is done in the RCR model by assuming two-state scenarios where geographic scale is held constant, while relative incomes, offense/defense balance, regime types and congruency between national identity and borders vary. Likewise, the sin of commission can be avoided by holding comparative statics (state properties) constant while varying environmental factors (geographic scale in the RCR model).

55 Frieden (1999) p, 39. 56 Frieden (1999) p, 51. 57 Ibid.

3.4 Delimitations, reliability and validity Realist and game-theoretical approaches can usually only make very general probabilistic predictions and George and Bennet argue that probabilistic prediction is not adequate for assuming a causal relationship unless other outcome explanations are assessed and eliminated.58 Thus, it is important to assess whether the independent variable is a necessary or sufficient condition for the outcome to occur. In the RCR model, each independent variable is a necessary but not sufficient condition for an outcome to occur. George and Bennet claim that structural realism and game-theories lack operationalization and even when operationalized may fail to identify satisfactory accounts of causal mechanisms but I argue that causal mechanisms are implicit in the internal logic of the deductive realist theoretical model and if the model generates successful predictions it needs no further explanation or demonstration.59

The RCR model has high external validity (generalizability) due to its causal theoretical mechanisms, but its conceptual validity is lower due to that it relies on a series of assumptions that can be disputed. George and Bennet mention that statistical studies run the risk of conceptual stretching, which is also true for grand theoretical models, hence the simple dichotomy between “anarchy” and world government” may be disputed.60 The model also faces an equifinality problem since the absence of world government could be attributed to human nature (emotional fear of the intentions of other states due to anarchy) or lack of a common enemy which would prevent unification, given that power balancing is the only rational motive for cooperation.61The paper will deal with the equifinality problem by discussing alternative realist and neoliberal explanations for anarchy in chapter 7. The issue of conceptual validity also implies reliability problems. Small changes in the assumed institutional framework of a potential world government could imply large fluctuations in the cost of anarchy. However, the study does not attempt to provide and exact measurement of the cost of anarchy relative to world government, but rather provides a logically feasible realist model that can explain why state leaders prefer anarchy over unification.

58 George and Bennet (2005) p, 202. 59 George and Bennet (2005) p, 203. 60 George and Bennet (2005) p, 19. 61 George and Bennet (2005) p, 10.

Even if the potential costs of world government cannot be empirically measured since world politics has always been anarchic, Fearon has shown that all levels of governance share the same basic commitment problem.62 In the same way as an ethnic majority in a civil war would not be able to credibly commit not to exploit the greater bargaining leverage it would gain over ethnic minorities if a new state would be consolidated, a large poor state would have a difficult time credibly committing not exploit the greater bargaining leverage it would gain if it unified with a richer smaller state. Hence, the small wealthy state has rational reasons to abstain from unification to avoid redistribution of income.

Since domestic and global politics share the same basic commitment problems, two-state scenarios are useful as illustrative cases of how competing nationalisms, differences in relative income, variation in regime-types and military offense-defense balance can affect the cost of world government relative to anarchy.

Measuring the cost of anarchy is less problematic since military spending provides a plausible empirical indicator of how much states have to spend on the military to maintain deterrence. However, there are balance of power dynamics that affect the validity and reliability of military spending as a rough estimate of the cost of anarchy relative to world government. Fearon argues that there is a tendency for the smaller state in a dyadic rivalry to make a larger military effort relative to its resource base, but there are two have to offsetting effects for the wealthier state in the dyad.63 The wealthier state can spend a smaller fraction of GDP on the military to sustain deterrence, but also has to spend more to keep the poorer state from invading it since war is partly caused by undefended wealth.64 These offsetting effects imply that m (offensive advantage) and µ-c (territorial greed-other war costs) has to be large in order for differences in relative resources to decisively impact military burdens.65 Given that relative material resources has implications for military spending never the less indicates that arms levels are not solely dependent on m and µ-c, but also relative resources.

62 Fearon (1995) p, 3. 63 Fearon (2015) p, 31. 64 Ibid. 65 Fearon (2015) p, 32.

Chapter 4

4.1 Theoretical framework: Introduction This chapter introduces a modified version of Fearon’s two-state baseline model where a third possible equilibrium outcome and a constraint tied to that outcome is added. In the original two- state model, anarchy is taken as a structural given where states can choose between balancing and attacking in successive periods, and because states inevitably must arm to deter each other (the war constraint), full cooperation in anarchy is not possible. The modified model, denoted as the RCR (rational choice realist) model assumes that anarchy is not a structural constraint which produces deterministic outcomes but a rational choice that state leaders make in preference to world government. The RCR-model extends the implications of Fearon’s two- state model by introducing a delegation constraint, which explains why states abstain from peaceful unification. The delegation constrain holds that states can eliminate the war constraint by unifying and avoid costly deterrence, but rich powerful states may lose bargaining power by disarming, since they might be forced to redistribute material goods to poor states if the world government is democratic. However, if the world government is autocratic with insufficient checks and balances, the war constraint holds, since the world government may become tyrannical and coerce its subjects.

The RCR-model extends the implications of the Fearonian model by showing how military defense dominance (determined by military technology) and low levels of territorial greed (determined by the congruency between national identities and borders, income inequality and regime-types) makes anarchy stable and world government less urgent, while offense dominance and high levels of territorial greed makes anarchy costly, but also world government fundamentally unstable. Hence states rather take the chance of going to war to eliminate future military competition than unifying with greedy competitors that might grab supranational military forces to impose their cultural preferences on other states or push for redistribution of resources. Moreover, the RCR model adds the independent variable “geographic scale” which accounts for why anarchy is more stable at the global than the regional level, hence explaining why there are national governments, but no world government. Furthermore, the model assumes democracy to be an institutional constraint, not an ideational factor that fundamentally changes the preferences of state leaders.

Likewise, nationalism is treated as an instrumental variable that leaders promote to enhance the fighting morale of soldiers, hence providing rational arguments for why nationalism and regime-types should figure in a formal realist model.

4.2 Fundamental assumptions Neorealist approaches typically depart from the assumption that the principal goal of states is survival and to survive states relentlessly seek security by maximizing their relative share of world power.66 I argue that the survival motive is logically problematic since it assumes that states exist for self-preservation purposes, based on a state-individual analogy.67 While individuals have to survive to pursue other ends, state survival is not a precondition for other ends that individuals may pursue since state unification could enhance per capita consumption.

The paper argues that a more feasible fundamental principle goal of state leaders is consumption maximization of symbolic and material goods. The consumption maximization assumption solves the puzzle arising from the common realist assumption that the primary motive of states is to survive, and yet state autonomy may block economic gains from unification. Under anarchy, the consumption frontier for any state is suboptimal since a fraction of the potential consumption must be spent on arms to deter potential aggression and gain bargaining power. The paper therefore assumes arms spending to be an inefficiency cost that states want to minimize. Mearsheimer argues that non-security goals sometimes complement the hunt for relative power and that greater economic prosperity has significant security-implications due to the long-run harmony between wealth and power.68 The preference order should hence be reversed, since latent power (wealth) is a precondition for real power (military power). Mearsheimer agrees that states cannot build powerful militaries without the money and technology to equip them but views wealth as means to the end of survival, not survival as means to the end of consumption.69 The empirical feasibility of the consumption maximization motive can be exemplified by the US post war grand strategy to secure open markets in Europe and Asia, since the CIA concluded in 1947 that a possible collapse of the western European market was the greatest security threat to the US.70

66 Mearsheimer (2014) p, 11. 67 Fearon (2015) p, 202. 68 Mearsheimer (2014) p, 46. 69 Mearsheimer (2014) p, 61. 70 Ikenbeery (2011) p, 174.

Furthermore, Roosevelt concluded that the US could not continue to thrive a superpower after the Second World War without access to markets outside the western hemisphere that could fuel post war growth.71

Another core assumption in structural realism is that states are concerned with relative gains which implies that cooperation becomes difficult if states are unable to divide gains such that relative bargaining power will not change in the future.72 If states seek relative gains the state- firm analogy does not hold however, since modern microeconomics assumes that firms are profit maximizers, not market share maximizers. The RCR model therefor assumes Powell’s proposition that states in anarchy seek relative military advantage to maximize absolute gains.73

Neorealist approaches typically assume states to be unitary actors.74 The RCR model assumes state leaders, not states, to be the primary actors in international politics, which allows the RCR model to captures how regime-type constrains the ability of state leaders to maximize their consumption. The regime-type constraint implies that autocrats are less obligated to share benefits of territorial conquest among subjects than democratically elected leaders since citizens in a democracy have more bargaining power. Democrats and autocrats have the same basic objective, to maximize consumption, but because they face different institutional constraints, the paper makes the simplified assumption that democracies spend resources not devoted to arms on public goods while autocracies are assumed to be rent maximizers. The RCR model also assumes that state leaders are boundedly relational due to imperfect information which incentivizes them to fear that other state leaders will not credibly commit to not take advantage of shifts in bargaining power between states, if they would to unify into a world government.

71 Ikenbeery (2011) p, 169. 72 Fearon (1998) p, 297. 73 Powell (1991) p, 1306. 74 See Waltz (1979).

4.3 Theoretical model

The basic Fearonian model with no variation in relative power assumes that two states choose arms levels simultaneously in successive periods, and calculate whether to attack or continue to bargaining over issue y (international order in this case).75 In the RCR model, states do not only choose between anarchy or world government through acquisition, but can also choose to peacefully unify. Either war breaks out and state A conquers the territory of state B (world government through acquisition) or both states agree on zero arms spending and delegates their military forces to a world government, hence peaceful unification results. In both cases, anarchy is overcome and the game ends. If the balance of power (arms levels) is stable, anarchy results.

The RCR model considers the impact of geographic scale when relaxing the two-state scenario and allows for a third possible outcome, world government by institution as well as introducing a delegation constraint (the constraint state leaders face when delegating military force to supranational institutions, losing potential bargaining power but gain potential consumption by reducing wasteful arms spending).76 While the RCR model assumes that state leaders are fundamentally rational, imperfect information incentivizes them to fear that their adversaries will be unable to credibly commit to not attempt to capture world governmental military forces or push for redistribution of economic resources from rich to poor regions.

The paper argues that when the two-state assumption is relaxed, geographic scale makes the equilibria outcome war by acquisition unlikely due to that defensive advantage increases with geographic scale. The model also predicts that if there is a third balancer in the game that would intervene on behalf of state A if state B would to attack, cooperation between state A and B becomes easier, defense spending lower and anarchy less costly. If a third state threatens the security and prosperity of both state A and B, they are likely to form a coalition to balance against state C. The paper will first present the basic intuition of the Fearonian two-state model and proceed with implications of relaxing the two-state scenario.

75 Fearon (2015) p, 6.

The basic intuition of the Fearonian model is that if military force levels are (a1, a2) and neither state choose to attack, then state 1s payoff is 1 − 푎1 +푦푝 ( 푎1,푎1) while state 2 gets 1 − 푎2 +

푦(1 − 푝(푎1, 푎2) implying that if war does not break out, state leaders gain what they don’t spend on arms plus value for issue resolution. State 1s share of the division of y is a number between zero and one. Increasing arms levels enhance bargaining power and gives state leaders a larger share of gains from issue y. P (푎1, 푎2) is the probability that state 1 wins the war if bargaining over y fails. States are denoted as “i” and “j” while “m” indexes offensive advantage

77 푖 in the offense-defense balance. State i wins with probability 푝 (푎푖, 푎푗 ; 푚) If state I attacks and j defends. For values of m less than 1, the defender gets an advantage against the attacker, assuming equal force sizes.78 State i`s expected payoff in period “t” from attacking j yields: 1 − y−푐+훿 (1+µ) 푎 + 푝푖(푎 , 푎 ) . Arms levels are denoted as “a” and “µ" measures how much state 푖 푖 푗 1−훿 leaders value each other’s territory (territorial greed) which depends on regime types (democrat’s vs autocrats), income inequality (rich vs poor) and congruency between national identity and border (congruent vs incongruent nationalists). The parameter c denoted additional war costs.79

Theoretically, full cooperation should be possible on any a (arms levels) < a NE (arms levels in Nash equilibrium) if war is so costly that states would not consider it, which would be the case if territorial greed is zero, and defense dominance is overwhelming. The model assumes two temptations that prevents the outcome full cooperation in anarchy. The first temptation is the war constraint which concept implies that if state A disarms in anarchy, state B can conquer state A at a war-cost lower than the benefit of conquest, resulting in world government through acquisition. The implication is that state A has to arm at least a little in order to not incentivize 푦 state B to attack.80 Simplified, the war constraint yields: 1 − â + ≥ 푝i (1, â)(푦 − 푐 + 1 + µ). 2 For the remainder of the paper, y (disputed issue) will be gains from world government.

77 Fearon (2015), p, 7. 78 Ibid. 79 Fearon (2015), p, 8. 80 Fearon (2015), p, 10.

In the RCR model, arming for deterrence is a choice, not a constraint, implying that the war constraint can be eliminated if the negotiating states delegate their monopoly on arms in one shot (implying m=0). As mentioned earlier, a one-shot agreement might be difficult to achieve however and prolonging the shadow of the future could make mutual delegation more attractive, but delegating in repeated games activates the war constraint, and states may have incentives to break out and attack when their competitors are military weakened in the delegation phase. Preference heterogeneity must therefore be such that world government can be agreed upon as a one-shot deal, because otherwise, the shadow of the future must be prolonged to arrive at mutual agreement and the war constraint risk to prevent the shadow of the future from resulting in such equilibria. The second constraint which can be labeled the bargaining constraint still holds however, that is, states can gain bargaining leverage over competitors by arming.81

The implication of the bargaining constraint for great powers that choose to agree on world government is that a delegation constraint results. If rich great powers with small populations choose to delegate their military capabilities, the balance of bargaining power shifts in favor of less wealthy populous great powers, that could, within the framework of a democratic world government, push for redistribution of resources, thus the rich great power gain consumption by delegating its military capabilities but could also lose consumption if the world government decides to redistribute resources from the rich the poorer great power. Hence great powers would push for veto rights, but then the world government could would risk being paralyzed and could not operate efficiently. Worse still, if the world government would to be autocratic, there would be an asymmetrical war constraint since the world government could abuse its military power to coerce its subjects that would be unable to arm in defense. Hence, states only have an incentive to delegate their military capabilities if the marginal benefit of delegation is larger than the marginal sovereignty cost which is true if the marginal benefit from delegating is larger than the marginal cost of arming under anarchy.

The basic intuition is that great powers have little reason to choose world government over stable anarchy when territorial greed is close to zero and defense dominates, because little arms are needed to deter possible attacks. This implies that state leaders would only have strong rational reasons to choose world government when there is strong offense dominance (m close to 1) and high levels of territorial greed (µ close to one).

81 Fearon (2015), p, 9.

But under these circumstances, the perceived gains from military conquest are so high that states rather choose to fight to eliminate military competition and gain all of its competitor’s resources than to cooperate and agree on world government. War can however only end international anarchy if a state or a collation has such a strong offensive advantage that the defensive effects of geographic scale can be offset, which is highly unlikely at the global level. In the two-state model, anarchy can end trough military conquest but at the global level the structural constraint of geographic scale ensures that a state can hardly gain enough offense dominance to accomplish world conquest. If these tentative conclusion are correct, then world government is most likely when it is least possible, and most likely when it is least desired. In order to test the validity of this proposition the paper will elaborate on the logical and empirical validity of its assumptions, as well as alternative explanations for anarchy. Since the values of µ and m determines the cost of anarchy relative to world government, the analysis will elaborate on the validity of the variables assumed by the model to cause variance in the independent variables µ (territorial greed which is cluster variable determined by variation in regime type, congruency between the national and the political unit and income inequality) and m (indexes military offense/defense balance).

4.4 Power balancing and the cost of anarchy

The primary justification for showing the basic intuition of the RCR model in two-state scenarios is that dynamic balance of power models are extremely complex and yet leaves out important geopolitical dynamics, hence supporting few general results.82 Models with more than two states where coalitions can form typically assume that any state or coalition can equally well attack any other state (conditional on relative resources).83 In reality geography has crucial importance for how coalitions are likely to form since it is easier to invade a bordering state than an insular state, which also motivates the RCR assumption that geographies of scale affects the offense/defense balance.84 Even if some historically important dynamics are neglected in two-state scenarios, the implications of a multipolar scenario with more than two states is straightforward, and follows the logic of the Fearonian model.

82 Fearon (2015) p, 32. 83 Ibid 84 Ibid

If there is a “balancing” state C that would form a coalition with state A if state B would to attack A, then the odds of victory decrease for state B which implies defensive dominance (smaller m) and lower costs to anarchy relative to world government in the RCR model.85 However, if state B is growing disproportionality powerful so that B cannot be successfully contained even if A would ally with C to balance against B, then A and C have rational reasons to ally with or at least accept the dominant position of B (an empirical example being contemporary USA) since opposing B would ensure military defeat. A dynamic balance of power version of the RCR model would hence predict that a unipolar balance of power provides even stronger defense dominance than symmetrical multipolar balance of power which explains the absence of a counterbalancing coalitions against the US and the expansion of global trade and cooperation after the cold war.86 A unipolar world order makes it easier for the leading state to enforce world government since weaker states faces high costs if they would to resist. On the other hand, the leading state faces little security competition in anarchy and has therefor little incentive to promote world government. The defensive advantage provided by hegemonic stability can explain why the United States chose a national grand strategy designed to prevent the emergence of peer competitors rather than promoting an American led world government in the 1990s when the US enjoyed a unipolar moment.87

A general implication of a dynamic version of the RCR model would hence be that shifts in the balance of power between three or more states makes anarchy more or less costly, all else equal. However, as the paper will illustrate, there are strong realist arguments for assuming that unit level factors such as regime-type, relative wealth, congruency between national identity and border as well as structural facts about the military offense/defense balance have major implications for if a leading state would be a status quo or revisionist power. Furthermore, if there would be no variation in the characteristics of states then world government would be appealing no matter the balance of power, since there would be no conflicting interests over distribution of material and symbolic goods. Hence, delegation of military force would bear little risk and unification would be a rationale choice given the cost of maintaining a stable balance of power in anarchy.

85 Fearon (2015) p, 34. 86 Ikenberry (2011), p, 126. 87 The national security archive: Defense Planning Guidance, 1992.

4.4 The role of uncertainty The defensive neorealist argument that deeper cooperation is possible in equilibrium when it is harder to successfully attack a state for any given army size (defense dominance) has been justified by the argument that states are uncertain about each other’s preferences over territory or issues (u and y in the two-state model). Guessing wrong is more dangerous when offense is relatively advantaged and defensive advantage implies that states can afford to be more relaxed about their uncertainty concerning the other side’s type, now or in the future. Derivatives of the core idea hold that offensive advantage makes “spirals of hostility” and preemptive war more likely between what are in fact “security seeking” states.88 Fearon has revealed a crucial weakness in these arguments, which is that it appears unclear why genuinely security seeking states that have no territorial or issue conflicts would be unable to credibly signal this to each other over time (prolong the shadow of the future in neoliberal terms).89 Another argument against standard security-dilemma assumptions is that is doubtful whether any state has ever been a pure security seeker in the sense assumed.90

If all states are at least somewhat “greedy” for territory, then it is less clear how strongly defense dominance would favor cooperation. For example, defense dominance could make it safer for a revisionist state to pursue aggressive policies abroad. In the Fearonian model, states have no uncertainty at all about each other’s preferences, and neither is a pure security seeker (if u > 0 or y > 0), implying that the standard “security dilemma” arguments do not apply. Instead, relative advantage for offense increases arming and lowers cooperation because more arms are needed to deter “break out,” and deterrence is needed because states are at least somewhat greedy for territory. Fearons model assumes that offensive advantage have a perverse multiplier effect because the more arms a state needs to deter attacks from potential adversaries, the less desirable the status quo becomes for that states, hence making war relatively more attractive. This implies that the other state has to spend more, which makes the status quo less appealing for that state too, hence increasing the cost of anarchy.91

88 Fearon (2015), p, 22. 89 Fearon (2015) p, 22. 90 Ibid 91 Ibid.

The RCR model accepts Fearon’s argument that when there are no conflicting preferences, states have little uncertainty about each other’s preferences, but in the real world, y=0 rarely holds, hence uncertainty arises, but not as a consequence of anarchy but of heterogeneous preference attributed to the characteristics of states. Furthermore, Fearon assumes uncertainty about preferences to be eliminated when y=0 and u=0, which I interpret as unrealistic arguments, since information no matter how exact or symmetric, will be interpreted somewhat differently by different decision makers for contextual reasons.92

To put it differently, even if there would be no conflicting preferences in a period, states still have rational reasons to hide their intentions and capabilities because a state’s preferences can change in future periods. Fear of changes in future preferences incentivize rational states to arm today to safeguard against shifting preferences in the future. The RCR model thus assumes that fear of that y>0 in future periods, incentivizes states to arm in the current period even if y=0. This constraint can be referred as “uncertainty” constraint, arising from fear of that preferences will not be static, since prolonging the shadow of the future can only make states more certain about each other’s preferences, but not such that deviations from expectations about preferences can be eliminated completely. The uncertainty constraint also explains why wealthy states fear that poorer more populous states would have a hard time credibly committing not to push for redistribution of resources if world government would to be enforced.

92 Fearon (2015) p, 22.

Chapter 5

5.1 Analysis: introduction

This chapter analyzes the validity of the RCR model as well as the implications of relaxing the two-state scenario when considering the impact of geographic scale. The chapter concludes that income inequality between states enhances territorial revisionism (territorial greed) since poorer states have incentives to conquer rich ones to extract resources and the richer state also have an incentive to increase military spending to protect its wealth. Furthermore, income inequality activates the delegation constraint, since the rich state will fear that the poor state will push for redistribution if the world government is democratic. Result: income inequality increases territorial greed, which makes anarchy less appealing but also peaceful unification less appealing, and hence war prone anarchy should result. Next, defensive military technology makes anarchy more stable and world government less appealing, since mutual assured destruction makes great power war unlikely. Democracy reduces territorial greed since democratically accountable leaders have to share gains from conquest more evenly and empirical estimates show that military spending reduces when states turn democratic. Incongruent nationalism (incongruence between national and political units) increases territorial greed and makes anarchy costlier, but nationalism also affects the offense/defense balance since it’s more difficult to conquer a highly nationalistic population, hence nationalism creates a form of defense bias.

Moving from a local context with two states to a global context, the RCR model predicts that defensive advantage increases with geographic scale, rendering world government through acquisition unlikely. Cultural differences also increase with geographic distance, hence incongruent nationalism is more prevalent at the global level than in local contexts where groups of people can easier unify under a centralized governing structure. High levels of territorial greed and offensive advantage makes anarchy expensive but world government less stable, since states rather utilize their offensive advantage to eliminate future military completion trough conquest. When territorial greed is low and defensive advantage dominates, world government is relatively more attractive, but so is anarchy, hence no scenario provides rulers with strong incentives to unify in spite of the military burden necessary to deter attacks in anarchy.

5.2 Taming the leviathan

World government is in this paper is defined as a minimalistic sovereign night watcher state authorized to use military force when necessary to guarantee global stability. The argument for why states world have an incentive to opt for a sovereign world government rather than a hybrid-solution where nation-states remain sovereign is based on political philosopher Torbjörn Tännsjö’s argument that if a conflict commences between the states in a world federation of shared sovereignty, the world government need sanctioning authority to avoid that hierarchy brakes down into interstate anarchy. The problem of shared sovereignty can be illustrated by the EU, where Germany and France has not been able to credibly commit to the stability pact since there is no supranational severing to force them into compliance.93 The only realist alternative to anarchy is therefore a sovereign world government where nation-states are deprived of their sovereignty, but delegating sovereignty is costly for the following reasons. First, a sovereign world government might become tyrannical as happened trough democratic means in the Weimar republic.94 Tännsjö argues that the military forces of the world government need not be that strong, since it would only have to yield enough military power so to maintain peace and order, while being deprived from the capabilities of world conquest.95

However, Tännsjö’s argument may be contradictory since he states that UN forces (world government) would not challenge the supremacy of US military forces, hence the US would have an incentive to surrender its military forces to the UN.96 I argue that the US could not possibly remain militarily supreme if its forces where surrendered, but could indeed have its borders secured by the UN if it did so. Furthermore, the delegation constraint implies that the US would lose bargaining leverage if it surrendered its military forces to the UN, and since Chinas is more populous and parallel the US in terms of economic size, the bargaining position of the US would certainly decline. Hence, the delegation constraint holds that the US would only surrender its military forces to the UN if the economic gains from spending nothing on arms would outweigh the economic loss from having its bargaining power reduced under world government.

93 Tännsjö (2013) p, 126. 94 Ibid 95 Tännsjö (2013), p, 127. 96 Tännsjö (2013), p, 128.

Furthermore, if the world government is going to be able to provide global peace and stability it must arguably be even more powerful than the US military is today and wield unprecedented capabilities to deter possible world uprisings mobilizing millions of people.

Tännsjö acknowledges that fundamentalists might mobilize political leverage in the world parliament and attempt to enforce illiberal laws on the world, which is a serious risk especially concerning the rich liberal and less populous democracies of the world.97 While Tännsjö argues that the risk of fundamentalist takeover is a cost that states have to bear if they are normatively committed to world government, the realist framework in this paper assumes that states have no major normative commitments since their principal goal is to maximize consumption and security. This implies that fear of possible failures of global institutions to check fundamentalist policies or violent takeover of global military forces is a serious cost that incentivizes great powers to avoid unification unless there is little or zero cultural and material preference heterogeneity between them. With world government defined and its major risks elaborated on, the paper will proceed by deductively evaluate the validity of the independent variables determining the cost of anarchy relative to world government as well as test the predictions of the RCR model against tentative empirics.

5.3 Military technology and the offense/defense balance The RCR model expects military offensive advantage (larger m ) to bring the cost of anarchy up and the cost of world government down since larger peacetime military forces are needed to deter attacks, hence increasing the military burden in anarchy. The model departs from Fearons definition of offense/defense balance since it provides a clear distinction between offensive advantage and probability of winning at equilibrium force levels. Conventional offense/defense balance theory maintains that defense was relatively favored at the outbreak of world war two due to machineguns and improved artillery which appears to be confirmed by the stalemate at the western front. However, railroads and mass conscription allowed for quick deployment of large forces that could deliver a quick initial blow, hence incentivizing states to increase peacetime force levels which made outbreak attacks less likely to succeed.98

97 Tännsjö (2013), p, 129. 98 Fearon (2015) p, 25.

Likewise, the nuclear revolution has been paralleled by an absence of war among the great powers since 1945 and declines in peacetime force levels, which indicates that nuclear weapons provides defensive advantage, hence making anarchy less costly and world government less appealing.99 Great powers possessing nuclear forces with second strike capabilities face the prospects of mutually assured destruction (MAD), hence incentivizing them to abstain from initiating war.100

Furthermore, the possibility to eliminate many enemy missiles by launching a few multiple war head missiles activates the “ex post ex ante” dilemma. The ex post ex ante dilemma means that if state B attacks state A, A can choose to retaliate by either targeting the silos or cities of B but since it might be unclear which of B:s silos that are empty it could lead to retaliation.101 Likewise, if A choose to attack B:s cities, B can retaliate by attacking the cities of A. Hence it might be rational for A not to respond to nuclear attacks by B to avoid retaliation, thus incentivizing aggressors to make counterforce first strikes.102 The impossibility of working out how to rationally response to nuclear attacks implies that deterrence can work even without a rational actor assumption, since the very possibility of irrationality makes deterrence effective. However, future development of sophisticated antiballistic missiles (ABMs) might cause an endless arms race in which one side deploys ABMs and the other counters by adding enough offensive missiles equipped with penetration aids to swamp the missile defense systems.103 Future technological development might therefore alter the offense/defense balance such that offense dominance prevails once again, but in the contemporary world nuclear weapons remains vital for anarchic stability.

A potential problem with the concept of offense/defense balance is that state leaders might not be able to clearly distinguish offensive from defensive posture. If it cannot be distinguished whether the types of arms a state deploys imply defensive or offensive posture, states are left with arms levels as the best rough measure of offensive/defensive posture, but since states could arm for both defensive and offensive purposes, it will be difficult to know if states are security seekers or territorial expanders.104

99 Fearon (2015) p, 28. 100 Buzan and Hansen (2009) p, 77. 101 Buzan and Hansen (2009) p, 78. 102 Ibid. 103 Buzan and Hansen (2009) p, 79. 104 Jervis (1978) p, 212.

When taking into account the possibility that defensive and offensive posture might not be distinguishable, the RCR model yields the following four equilibria, based on Jervis four world scenarios, holding variables affecting territorial greed constant:

Offensive advantage Defensive advantage 1: Anarchy unstable. 2: Anarchy stable. Offensive posture not distuinguishable Outcome: World Outcome: No world government. from defensive one government by acquisition 3: Anarchy unstable. 4: Anarchy stable: Offensive posture distuinguishable Outcome: World government Outcome: World government by from defensive one by acquisition likely institution possible.

In the first scenario, offense dominates and defensive and offensive posture cannot be distinguished, implying that state leaders will anticipate aggression even if adversaries arm for defensive purpose, holding other variables determining territorial greed constant. In the second scenario, defense dominates but let assume that the two states in this scenario do not possess nuclear second strike capability and can therefore not cannot distinguish clearly between offensive and defensive posture. State leaders abstain from unifying in this scenario due to fear of that the other state will cheat on the agreement, ramp up and attack. In the third scenario offense has the advantage but offensive posture can be distinguished from defensive posture, implying that arms racing is not inevitable but aggression is still likely. In the fourth scenario, defense has the advantage and both state possess secure nuclear second strike forces. In this scenario, states anticipate mutual assured destruction if war breaks out, hence anarchy is stable and world government possible, but since states can operate in anarchy with a low defense burden, gains from world government are small, all else equal. The equilibria outcome is stable anarchy with a possible but weak incentives for unification. In addition to military technology, geography is also an important determinant of offense/defense balance but since the basic two- state scenario does not allow for variation in geographic distance, the impact of geographies of scale on the cost of anarchy relative to world government will be elaborated on in section 5.4 where the two-state assumption is relaxed.

5.4 Territorial greed and the cost of anarchy relative to world government

5.4.1 Income inequality and the redistribution commitment problem Assuming a two-state model where both states are income-maximizers and one state is populous and poor while the other is rich and less populous, the main concern for the smaller rich states is that if a democratic world government would be established the larger poor state would vote for redistribution of income from the rich to the poor state. The poor populous state has in this scenario an incentive to merger with the richer state while the richer state has an incentive to remain in anarchy to avoid welfare-losses. The problem then becomes how the poor populous state is going to credibly commit to not push for redistribution of income so to incentivize the richer state to agree on world government. The commitment problem in a domestic context is essentially the same, game-theoretically illustrated in Fearon’s 1995 paper on ethnic war. In the two-period game, an ethnic minority choose whether to fight or acquiesce in the first period. If they choose acquiesce the majority will make demands x E (0, 1) in the second period, and in the third period the minority choose acquiesce or fight, given demands x.105

Using the domestic-global analogy the large poor state must credibly commit not to make redistribution demands in period 2 to prevent the rich small state from abstaining from agreement in period 1. Once the contract is enforced the rich small state might lack bargaining leverage to reverse redistribution demands in period 2 and might therefor attempt defecting in period 3, causing civil world war. The implication is that high levels of income inequality between great powers generate lower costs to anarchy relative to world government. The graphical illustration below shows maximum possible consumption frontier for both states if they would merge is compared to the maximum consumption frontier when remaining in anarchy. The smaller consumption frontier under anarchy is caused by wasteful arms spending that is necessary to deter potential attacks and gain bargaining leverage. As an empirical example, the two most powerful states in the world today are the US followed by China as the emerging challenger, and the redistributive commitment problem between these states is obvious since Chinas population is four times larger than the US while US GDP per capita income is substantially higher than Chinas.

105 Fearon (1995) p, 7-8.

Even if perfect information is assumed, states may in special circumstances fail to commit themselves to uphold a deal, because it is unclear how an institutional setup can be designed such that poor populous states wouldn’t be able to push for redistribution from smaller richer ones, and global institutions might fail and redistribution might be enforced by military means.106

Graph: 1

Possible income

r capita r income distribution under e world government

Status quo in anarchy poor Large countries p Small rich countries per capita income

y−푐+훿 (1+µ) Recall the equation 1 − 푎 + 푝푖(푎 , 푎 ) and let’s now assume that this is the poor 푖 푖 푗 1−훿 states payoff from attacking the rich state. Theoretically, the poor state should gain more from invading the rich state while the rich state should increase arms spending to defend its wealth from capture. The historical record supports the assumption and shows that the tide of war tends to flow from poor to rich lands and fortifications along borders between ploughed an unploughed land is a recurrent historical phenomenon, hence pointing towards a historical tension between rich and poor communities or states.107 Income inequality between states hence yield higher levels of territorial greed which makes anarchy less appealing, but since income inequality also makes world government less appealing, war becomes relatively attractive, all else equal.

106 Alesina and Spolaore (2005) p, 113. 107 Keegan (1993) p, 74.

5.4.2 Regime-types: Autocrats vs democrats The RCR model assumes that variation in regime types should cause variation in the independent variable territorial greed, which together with offense-defense balance determines the dependent variable international order (anarchy or world government). The RCR model predicts that the more democratic a state is, the less expansionist it should be, and since less territorial greed implies less arms spending, world government becomes less appealing and stable anarchy results, all else equal. While there are both normative and institutional arguments for why democracies should be less greedy for territory than autocracies, only institutional (structural) arguments are compatible with a rational choice realist model since it would be irrational for selfish consumption maximizing leaders to extend citizenship rights to conquered territory when material gains could be made from enslavement. To not extend democratic rights to conquered territory could imply normative costs for democratically elected leaders if the electorate prefer such policies but since the RCR model assumes that citizens like leaders, are consumption maximizers, there is no realist reason to assume that citizens in a democracy are intrinsically opposed to colonialism.

A more plausible realist explanation for why democracies should be less greedy for territory is that political accountability drives tax-policy, hence democratically elected leaders are institutionally constrained to divide gains from conquest.108 With inspiration from Alesina and Spolaores optimal size of nations model, the RCR model assumes that democracies are per capita income maximizers (what is not spent on arms is spent on public goods that benefit the electorate) while autocrats are assumed to be rent-maximizers (what is not spent on arms is spent on goods benefitting the autocrat and his associates).109

An unaccountable autocrat not facing constraints of border derivations or reasonable taxations levels would supply a minimum possible amount of public goods and tax at the maximum feasible level, hence extracting larger rents by ruling more territory, while providing few public goods.110 The RCR model thus assumes that the optimal equilibria outcome for an autocrat is World Empire, implying that autocratic governance increases territorial greed, arms spending and the cost of anarchy relative to world government.

108 Fearon (2015), p, 18.

109 Alesina and Spolaore (2005) p, 769. 110 Alesina and Spolaore (2005) p, 70.

While world empire is a possible equilibria outcome in two-state scenarios, geographies of scale prevents that outcome in a “maximum number of states” scenario, since geographies of scale makes local anarchy fragile but global anarchy stable which is an assumption that will be elaborated upon in section 5.4.

Recognizing that even autocrats must guarantee a minimum level of welfare to prevent revolts a larger empire also implies that more has to be spent on welfare and arms to maintain order, hence autocrats gain declining returns to territorial conquest.111 Even in two-state scenarios where the independent variable geographic scale is held constant, “welfare sensitive” citizens may revolt if the autocrat pursue rent-maximizing policies, implying that differences in territorial revisionism between autocracies and democracies may not be as decisive as the RCR model assumes. To investigate if the RCR assumption about regime-types is congruent with empirical evidence, observable differences in military spending as percentage of GDP (military burden) between autocracies and democracies is a feasible starting point, since a larger military burden makes anarchy less appealing. Based on the Polity IV dataset which is widely used for measuring levels of democracy, the SIPRI military expenditure database shows that that in 2014, only three out of 20 states with a military burden larger than 4% were democracies, hence lending support to the RCR assumption that democracy reduces territorial greed and the cost of anarchy.112

In addition, there is some empirical evidence for that democratically elected leaders suffers a greater risk of losing office if they launch unsuccessful wars. Goemans’ study on the manner and consequences of losing office concludes that initiating conflict has little effect on the hazard of regular removal from office in democracies, autocracies or mixed regime types. However, when faced with domestic challengers, autocrats and mixed regimes greatly reduce the hazard of irregular removal if they initiate international conflicts. For all regime-types types defeat in war increases the risk of irregular removal from office. The net effect yields that autocracies and mixed-regimes may benefit from conflict, while democracies do not.113 Goemans’ findings supports the assumption that democracies face institutional constraints that make them less greedy for territory.

111 Ibid. 112 SIPRI Fact Sheet (2015) p, 7. 113 Goemans (2008) p, 789.

However, Weeks finds that while juntas and “strong-men” regimes are more belligerent than democracies, autocratic civilian regimes with powerful elite audiences are no more belligerent than democracies.114 Furthermore, in a dyadic rivalry between an extremely greedy autocracy and a status quo democracy, the democratic state have an incentive to prefer war to eliminate the greedy autocrat so to avoid costly deterrence, exemplified by the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the US entry in world war two.115 Furthermore, Snyder and Mansfield concludes that states become more belligerent during the transition phase from autocracy to democracy due to domestic institutional weakening, implying that while democratic governance makes anarchy more stable, regime change makes anarchy temporally less stable.116

Hence, democracy makes anarchy more appealing relative to world government if state leaders in dyadic rivalry are constrained by democratic institutions but in dyadic rivalries between sufficiently greedy autocrats and status quo democracies, anarchy is no more stable than in dyadic rivalries between autocracies. While anarchy is more costly for greedy autocrats than status quo democracies, the delegation constraint is tighter for autocrats since an autocratic world government without the checks and balances provided by democratic institutions could turn tyrannical, hence autocrats prefer war to eliminate future need for deterrence rather than bargaining for unification with greedy autocratic rivals that could cheat on the agreement in an attempt to achieve world domination. The delegation constraint is less tight for democracies since their domestic political systems can work as role models for an accountable world government, but democracies also gain less from unification since they can operate in anarchy with a small military burden.

114 Weeks (2012) p, 326. 115 Fearon (2015) p, 32. 116 Snyder and Mansfield (2002) p, 398.

5.4.3 Nationalism and world government The last sub variable that determines territorial greed in the RCR model is nationalisms as a symbolic good with instrumental importance for fighting morale and domestic stability. The paper assumes Gellner and Breuillys definition of the nationalist principle which holds that the national and the political unit should be congruent.117 While nationalism can be interpreted as a ideational constraint that cuts against a fundamental realist approach to international politics, the RCR model assumes, and for good realist reasons, that nationalism has great instrumental value for state leaders. Classical realist Morgenthau has provided realist arguments for the rationality of nationalism by arguing that national morale is a central component of national power and thus have implications for a nation’s capability to wage and win wars.118 A government which is not actively supported by its people cannot efficiently fight wars, and nationalism also makes resistance against intervention from foreign powers more effective. Nationalism therefore has a rationalist purpose neglected by neorealist approaches succeeding Morgenthau’s classical realism.119

Furthermore, Mouffe has argued, based on the works of classical realist Carl Schmitt, that collective identities are created through differentiation (antagonism). Hence, collective identity is not only a rational instrument for enhancing combat efficiency but requires a constitutive outside to make its very existence possible.120 If in addition collective identity is an inherent human need (for survivalist purposes) and such identity cannot exist outside of a friend-enemy relation, then a world government would be risky enterprise since states may not be able to consume as much immaterial goods (collective identity and cultural particularity) as they could under anarchy. To summarize, rational state leaders have strong incentives to promote nationalism since it is provides defensive advantage, hence reducing the cost of anarchy.121 On the other hand, incongruent nationalism (incongruence between the national and political unit) promotes territorial expansion and makes anarchy less appealing relative to world government.

117 Gellner and Breuilly (2006) p, 1. 118 Morgenthau (2006) p, 147. 119 Ibid. 120 Mouffe (2016) p, 46. 121 Jervis (1978) p, 195.

Empirically, arms levels appear to be higher and regional integration less evident in areas characterized by incongruent nationalism, exemplified by the rivalry between North and South Korea or Israel and its neighbors.122 Military historian Keegan has also concluded that people of the same language and religion rarely fight each other on a grand scale.123 Moreover, defensive realist van Evera has shown that incongruence between national identities and borders in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union shifted the balance of power towards stateless nationalisms which probably fueled secessionist wars and raised the regional cost of anarchy.124 Van Evera also finds post war nationalism in Western Europe has been benign because the congruency between nations and statehood was largely completed by the end of world war two.125

The RCR model predicts that when the political and national unit is incongruent, territorial greed increases thus incentivizing more arms spending than would be the case if y=0 which is true when there are no conflicting preferences among states. Nationalism, no matter if congruent or incongruent also provides defensive advantage (lower m) since peoples strongly committed to nationalism are harder to subdue.126 Territorial greed (µ) increased with incongruent nationalism and decreases with congruent nationalism. Furthermore, competing nationalisms creates the same commitment problem as income inequality since world government could imply undesired redistribution of cultural goods either through a global coup d'état enacted by militant cultural minorities or trough democratic procedures. In addition, the prevalence of nationalism arguably makes it difficult for a world government to forge a cosmopolitan identity in the short run, hence potentially causing civil unrest among nationalists unsatisfied with the new world order. Hence, while nationalism effectively promotes stability within states it would also promote instability between them if they would choose to unify.

122 Fearon (2015) p, 17. 123 Keegan (1993) p, 74. 124 Van Evera (1994) p, 31. 125 Van Evera (1994) P, 11. 126 Jervis (1978) p, 195.

5.4.4 Geographies of scale

In the two-state model, country scale is held constant and does not affect offense/defense balance or territorial greed, but when allowing for geographic scale to vary from a local to global, the expanded model assumes that larger country scale implies stronger defense dominance and more territorial greed. The justification for these assumptions are imported from Alesina and Spolaores “optimal size of nations” model which assumes that there is a basic tradeoff between economics of scale and preference heterogeneity.127 A larger population implies lower per capita defense costs, implying that territorial expansion could reduce the per capita military burden while allowing for larger defense budget, thus enhancing military power while slashing military per capita military spending.128

However, a larger state also implies higher administrative costs, but more importantly, cultural heterogeneity tends to increase with country scale, which can lead to violent conflict over the policies of the central government.129 The congruency between national identity and geographic borders should thus decrease as states grow larger which implies that a world government would fuel incongruent nationalism and incentivize states to abstain from unification. While anarchy incentives incongruent nationalists to expand, world government incentives them to secede. Mearsheimer implicitly recognized the tradeoff between country scale and preference heterogeneity when he argued in 1993 that peace in former Yugoslavia could be achieved by braking up Yugoslavia into ethnically homogenous states, which cuts against the offensive realist assumption that anarchy inevitably incentives states to behave offensively.130

Country scale does not only affect territorial greed but also the military offense/defense balance which is an important realist explanation for why there is hierarchy within states but anarchy between them. The RCR model assumes that defensive advantage increases with geographic distance based on the Jervis argument that conquest usually becomes more difficult as the attacker pushes deeper into the defender’s territory.131

127 Alesina and Spolaore (2005), p, 38. 128 Alesina and Spolaore (2005), p, 3. 129 Alesina and Spolaore (2005), p, 5. 130 Mearsheimer (1993). 131 Jervis (1978) p, 195.

Hirshleifer has also argued that geographic size operates against offensive advantage, hence explaining how geographic overextension caused empires to fall apart.132 In addition, military historian Keegan has concluded that 70% of the world’s dry land is too cold, too waterless or too high for the conduct of military operations.133 While offensive advantage (all else equal) results in world government through acquisition in the two-state scenario, the share size of the world operates against such outcome at the global level, rendering world empire extremely unlikely, although not impossible given enough offensive advantage that could potentially be provided by new military technologies. Mearsheimers argument that the stopping power of water makes world hegemony unlikely is coherent with the offense/defense balance logic of the RCR model, implying that insular superpowers such as the US should have little incentive to escape anarchy since they enjoy a “natural” defensive advantage.134

While cultural heterogenetic increases as states grow larger no matter regime-type, the RCR model assumes that geographies of scale have different implications for democracies and autocracies for the following reason. Suppose the ideal type democracy suggested by Alesina and Spolaore where the median voter determines the quality and quantity of public goods and citizens can vote over political borders.135 If all great powers of the world were democracies and they chose to unify to take advantage of lower defense spending and more cross border investment, world government could dissolve into anarchy for the following reason. If citizens on the periphery of a nation of optimal size (the world is the optimal size in this scenario) pay the same price for public goods as those near the center but get public goods less well suited to their preferences, in can be in the majority’s interest to divide the nation in half, increasing the average cost of public goods, but in exchange getting more nearly the public goods they desire.136 In a global context, this implies that world unification maximizes consumption for all states all else equal, but given underlying competing nationalisms and income differences, the benefits of world unification will be distributed unevenly, leaving some states better off in anarchy and incentivizing them to vote for secession. To conclude, anarchy is not only more stable in a democratic world due to institutional constraints that reduces territorial greed but world government, once implemented, is also unlikely to be sustained when states can vote to leave without fighting for independence.

132 Hirshleifer, (1995) p, 45. 133 Keegan (1993) p, 68-69. 134 Mearsheimer (2014) p, 83. 135 Alesina and Spolaore (2005) p, 46. 136 Alesina and Spolaore (2005) p, 36.

As an historical example, Scotland and England voted for unification in 1709 but the unification was followed by jacobine revolts in Scotland in 1715.137 In 2014 Scotland held a national referendum of Scottish independence, which however resulted in a slight victory for the advocates of the Union.138

For autocrats, geographies of scale have a slightly different implication. World Empire is the first best equilibria outcome for autocrats but cultural heterogeneity makes the empire more difficult to hold together as it expands. However, autocrats can reduce heterogeneity costs by promoting nationalism, which provides further justification for the assumption that leaders have rational reasons to promote nationalism.139 While nationalism reduces preference heterogeneity within states, the opposite is true between them. To motivate further territorial expansion as well as maintaining internal order, autocrats have an incentive to promote incongruent nationalism, which increases territorial greed and makes war relatively more attractive than peaceful unification. However, since the share size of the world provides strong defense dominance, World Empire is not possible, and war prone anarchy results.

To summarize, cultural preferences tend to become more diverse as the size of nations expands which explains why rational state leaders prefer anarchy over world government given the incongruence between national identities and borders that would arise if the great powers of the world would unify peacefully. Since incongruent nationalism implies higher levels of territorial greed, world unification is likely to cause secessionist wars that are costlier than the military burden states must carry in anarchy to keep a stable balance of power. Furthermore, defensive advantage increases with geographic scale, which explains why the outcome “world government by acquisition” can occur in a local two-state context but unlikely to ever occur at a global level.

137 Parliament.uk: Living heritage: The 1715 rebellion. 138 Gov.uk: Scottish independence referendum. 139 Alesina and Spolaore (2005), p, 70.

The graph below illustrates how territorial greed (µ) and offense/defense balance (m) affects the cost of anarchy (Ca) and world government (Cwg), while also showing how Cwg and Ca shifts when considering geographies of scale. Moving from a local two-state scenario to a world scenario with more actors, Cwg2 shifts to Cwgn since geographies of scale imply more defense dominance, ending up in anarchy (A) as an equilibria outcome (E1). However, state heterogeneity with respect to incomes, nationalist doctrines, and regime-types also increase as the game moves from a two-state scenario to a world scenario, hence µ increases as well, increasing the cost of anarchy from Ca2 to Can, ending up at the break-even equilibria E2 where the cost of world government (Cwg) equals the cost of anarchy (Ca), which incentivizes states to remain in anarchy since the net benefit of enforcing world government is zero.

For world government to materialize (E3: WG), the cost of anarchy must increase while the cost of world government remains constant, thus shifting down the Ca-curve to equilibria E3, or the cost of world government must decrease while the cost of anarchy remains constant so that the Cwg-curve shifts down in level with equilibria E3. The RCR model does not allow for these scenarios since preference heterogeneity is assumed to increase with geographic distance, and so is defense dominance, rendering equilibria E3 impossible unless all great powers in the world are homogenous with respect to incomes, regime-types, and nationalism is largely absent. In a scenario where the cost of world government goes down due to decreasing territorial greed among great powers, the Cwg-curve would shift downwards and world government would result, but less territorial greed also implies more defense dominance, hence shifting the Ca- curve upwards, and anarchy results.

Graph: 2

m: 0

E1: A

E2: Cwg=Ca m: 0,5

E3: WG m: 1

µ: 0 µ: 0,5 µ: 1

Chapter 6

6.1 Illustrative empirics: introduction

This chapter conducts tentative tests (plausibility probes) of the model by showing how the concepts of territorial greed and offense/defense balance can be operationalized empirically. The chapter assesses the tentative plans by Germany and France to establish an EU defense union and analyses the British resistance to these plans as well. Furthermore, the chapter analyses the American civil war as a two-state scenario where the outcome of the game was regional “world government” trough conquest. The American civil war highlights the dangers of governmental setups incapable of preventing civil war when groups of states push for session (incongruent nationalism).

6.2 Unification vs balancing in contemporary Europe

The German and French plans to take steps towards a European defense union provides an opportunity to test the core assumptions of the RCR model.140 The model predicts that France and Germany should have little incentive to unify since both states are democracies, congruent nationalists, have similar income levels and possess or enjoy protection from nuclear weapons. However, the dynamic RCR model which allows for a third balancing state predicts that the presence of Russia as an incongruent nationalist great power greedy for territory causes the regional cost of anarchy to increase and incentivize France and Germany to promote a common defense union in order to counterbalance.141 However, if Russian military buildup and territorial rivalries with bordering states incentivize France and Germany to consider a common defense union, then why has Britain resisted such plans?142 The RCR model suggests that because Britain is an insular state, it enjoys defensive advantage due to geographies of scale and should therefore have less incentive to escape anarchy than Germany which is relatively close to Russia. The British defense minister has also argued that a defense union would imply costs in terms of more bureaucracy at the EU level, hence anarchy remains a rational choice for Britain given its geographic location.143

140 Rettman (2016). 141 Arnold (2016). 142 Rettman (2016). 143 Rettman (2016).

Balance of power logic can hardly operate as a catalyst for global unification however, because as Schmittt has argued, humanity as a whole has no enemy, at least not on this planet.144 World government would only be considered as a counter balancing measure if an alien invasion threatened all of humanity, which would incentive the great powers to centralize their military forces to deal with the extra-terrestrial threat.145 In absence of an alien invasion, states only have each other to balance against, and it makes realist sense to form strong military alliances against a neighboring state which is greedy for territory due to incongruent nationalism and lack of democratic mechanisms that constrain rent seeking.

However, the development of the EU raises the question of whether a world government could be institutionally designed, such that the commitment problems associated with world government could be overcome since a global European Union with checks and balances may theoretically be a compelling mix of institutional features suited for a global government. However, since cultural, economic and regime diversity at the global level remain significantly larger than within the EU, world government comes with higher heterogeneity costs that incentives great powers to prefer anarchy.

6.3 When anarchy is a rational choice: The case of the American civil war The formation of the United States shows that a regional miniature of world government is possible but the American civil war also indicates that the step from agreement to compliance is risky and potentially violent, hence exemplifying how a world government might dissolve into anarchy. The debate between the federalists and antifederalists during the founding moment of the United States also exemplifies the conflicts likely to commence between the great powers of the world, if world government would to be negotiated.

Aristotle argued that the size of a polity should be small enough such that everybody knew everybody else, since he believed that experience had shown that it is possible if not impossible to govern a populous polity efficiently.146 In a similar manner, Montesquieu argued that in a large republic the common good is sacrificed to a thousand different considerations, while in a smaller republic the public good is more strongly felt.

144 Schmitt (1932) p, 54. 145 Ibid. 146 Alesia and Spolaore (2005) p, 5.

During the US constitutional convention of 1787 the antifederalists argued that such a large territory inhabited by such a heterogeneous population was an absurdity and contrary to the whole experience of mankind.147 The federalist response was provided by Madison who argued that the larger the territory the smaller the risk that one group of interests would dominate over the others, hence larger size could work as a deterrent against majority tyranny.148 Madison’s argument implies that it should be extremely difficult for minority groups to impose their preferences on others in a world state since the world is far more heterogeneous than the US.

The American Civil War casts doubts over Madison’s argument and is a critical case of how incongruent nationalism, fear of income redistribution and belief in military defensive advantage promotes anarchy. The Missouri compromise of 1820 which outlawed slavery north of the 36°30' parallel fused tensions between the north and south on the issue of slavery which threatened to dissolve the Union.149 However, The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 violated the Missouri compromise by allowing settlers to hold legal claim to the territories of Nebraska and Kansas, hence allowing for slavery in these territories. The Nebraska-Kansas act fueled tensions between the north and south that ultimately led to civil war.150 The north-side divide that destabilized the US during the first half of the 19th century lends support to the RCR prediction that congruency between national identity and borders decrease with geographic distance, which in turn increases territorial greed and the cost of world government.

To recapitulate, The RCR model predicts that territorial greed increases with income- differences, incongruent nationalism and nondemocratic governance, hence making world government unstable but also anarchy costlier since territorial rivalry intensifies. In 1860, the Union resisted the declaration of independence by the Confederacy, which indicates that the Union was greedy for territory, and the secession from the Union also shows that the Confederacy was an incongruent nationalist state.151 The confederacy feared that the election of Lincoln as president in 1860 would imply economic redistribution since the confederacy benefited economically from the slavery that Lincoln wanted to abolish. The cost of remaining in the Union thus exceed the cost of seceding for the Confederacy.152

147 Alesia and Spolaore (2005) p, 5. 148 Ibid 149 UShistory.org: 31a. The Kansas-Nebraska Act. 150 Ibid. 151 Black (2005) p, 56. 152 Ibid.

The importance of the regime-type variable in the case of the American civil war is less clear, but recall the assumption that as a democratic state grows larger, per capita public goods spending goes down, but public goods also become less congruent with the preferences of citizens living at the periphery, hence incentivizing them to vote for session.153 There may have been gains to be made from economics of scale by remaining in the union, but the right to own slaves was a preference the Confederacy could not compromise with, hence the US in 1860 is a historical example of a large democratic states where a group of regions declared independence, but since the Union was greedy for territory it would not let the Confederacy secede without war.

While both states where greedy for territory and the conference knew in 1860 that the Union had and offensive posture, it is less clear if available military technology in 1860 favored offensive or defensive advantage. The RCR model predicts that military offensive advantage in two-state scenarios makes anarchy unstable and world government trough war likely. Likewise, defensive advantage should make world government unstable and secessions likely. Available evidence yields mixed results. The extensive railway networks of the Union allowed it to mobilize and direct its resources and troops efficiently, hence implying offensive advantage.154

On the other hand, the vast territory of the US provided an advantage for the defending Confederacy. Leiber has argued that railroads might have prolonged to war by allowing the Confederacy to concentrate separated forces against key segments of the advancing Union army.155 Furthermore, assaults on prepared troops caused heavy losses due to the new rapid firing weaponry and an inability for opposing artillery to effectively suppress entrenched troops. 156 On balance, geographies of scale and viable military technology appears to have favored the defending side hence lending support to the RCR assumption that defensive advantage increases with geographic distance and that would government becomes less stable and anarchy more appealing when technology and geography provides defensive advantage. However, geographic scale was not vast enough and defensive advantage provided by trenches and percussion rifles large not large enough to make anarchy persist.

153 Alesina and Spolaore (2005) p, 36. 154 Black (2005) p, 57. 155 Lieber (2000) p, 84. 156 Black (2005) p, 61.

To summarize, the confederate secession in 1860 lends support to the RCR model by illustrating that when regions within a state are strongly divided economically and lack a sense of common national identity, groups with common interests have rational reasons to secede since they fear that they will lack enough bargaining power under world government to optimally maximize consumption of material (gains from slavery) and symbolic (state sovereignty) goods. Initial defensive advantage also gave the Confederacy rational reasons to believe that sovereignty could be defended, but the geographic distance between the adversaries was to short and the distribution of material capabilities of uneven to make anarchy sustainable.157 The union was eventually restored, but it took the bloodiest war in US history to achieve it, which highlights the potential dangers of unification that incentivizes rational great powers to prefer anarchy.

157 Black (2005) p, 57.

Chapter 7

7. 1 Alternative explanations for anarchy: The commercial peace hypothesis An alternative explanation for that anarchy is perceived by great powers to be less costly than world government is the liberal commercial peace hypothesis which predicts that mutual economic interdependence will eliminate incentives for interstate war, hence ensure stable anarchy. The commercial peace hypothesis suffers from a number of empirical problems however. First of all, the historical record shows striking failures of the commercial peace hypothesis as there was significant economic interdependence between the great powers of Europe prior to both world wars that appear to have little restraining effect.158 Second, the commercial peace hypothesis implicitly assumes that material consumption is the only goal of states, but the rivalry between Japan and China over the Senkaku islands suggests that incongruent nationalism is also an important source of conflict between states. Third, great powers usually do not have more than a tiny fraction of their GDP tied up with single states, and war tend to be initiated against one or two states at a time, hence inflicting little overall economic damage.159 Furthermore, a regional or global economic crisis can undermine the gains from economic interdependence and fuel instability and conflict, exemplified by the return geopolitics in Asia after the Asian crisis of 1997-1998.160 Lastly, war can be economically profitable even in an economically interdependent world. Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 mainly due to that Kuwait exceeded its oil production quotas set by OPEC.161 The parameter c (other costs of war) in the Fearonian model takes the impact of economic interdependence on the cost of war into account, but it is not treated as a central determinant of the cost of anarchy relative to world government in the RCR model. Instead, the RCR model emphasizes how income inequality between states fuels territorial greed in anarchy while at the same time making world government less appealing since unification threaten to fuel distributional conflicts as well.

158 Mearsheimer (2014) p, 53. 159 Mearsheimer (2001) p, 87. 160 Ibid 161 Ibid.

7.2 Global governance vs global government An alternative explanation for anarchy that should be taken seriously is that global governance makes anarchy stable by providing collective security, reducing transaction costs and enhances trust between states that have incentives to cheat in “pure” anarchy. However, liberal institutionalists neglect the relative gains problem that can arise when military technology favors the offense.162 Snidal has argued that in a multipolar scenario where power is evenly distributed between states, relative gains do not matter even when offense dominates because states can deter aggression by forming coalitions.163 Historically the balance of power tends to be asymmetrical, however, and the number of great powers in the system few, hence relative gains is probably more often than not an obstacle to cooperation that global institutions have a hard time solving since they lack the enforcement capabilities of a world government. Security theory emphasizes how collective security armaments can foster international norms of nonaggression and punish aggressors by collective, but collective security is demanding.164A few greedy states in the system might be enough to offset collective security since it is difficult for collective action to be coordinated efficiently to deal with more than one enemy at a time. It took the US six months to mobilize the collation that liberated Kuwait from Iraq.165

There is evidence for that the UN has lowered the cost of anarchy to some extent since the number of preventive diplomatic missions mounted by the UN between 1990-2002 increased six-fold, and over the same period peacekeeping activities increased fourfold, while the number of sanctions against regimes eleven-fold between 1990-2003.166 These statistics are problematic however since they do not show that these measures would have been sufficient, had the conflicts been slightly worse. Furthermore, The Human Security Report investigates a short period in history during which the balance of power has been unipolar.167 The rise of China and the return to a multipolar balance of power might cause the UN to operate less efficiently.168 Moreover, the UNs predecessor, the League of Nations did not prevent world war two, hence unable to deter war in the face of military offensive dominance and incongruent nationalism.169

162 Mearsheimer (1995) p, 18. 163 Mearsheimer (1995), p, 19. 164 Mearsheimer (1995) p, 26. 165 Mearsheimer (1995), p, 28. 166 Tännsjö (2013) p, 26. 167 Ibid. 168 Tännsjö (2013) p, 27. 169 Mearsheimer (1995) p, 29.

7.3 Born to kill? Human nature realism assumes that the principal driving force in international politics is the will to power inherent in man that pushes states to strive for supremacy.170 If humans have a fundamental biological will to power, then the absence of world government is explained by the fact that states much like individuals are selfish power maximizers who do not want to share power with others, nor do they care much about security or consumption, since world domination is their primary goal. Human nature realism has a difficult time accounting for variation in international stability over time however, since human nature is a constant, but war is not. Morgenthau’s argument that there are revisionist and status quo powers therefor appear contradictory since all sates are assumed to have an inherent will to power.171 Moreover, modern neuroscience has concluded that human aggression is a function of the lower brain which is amendable to control by the higher brain, and aggression appears from a biological perspective to be a response to imminent threats rather than an inherent will to power.172

170 Mearsheimer (1995) p, 29. 171 Mearsheimer (2001) p, 107. 172 Keegan (1993) p, 81.

Chapter 8

8. Conclusion: The paradox of world government To solve the paradox of anarchy the paper departed from the following research questions: If anarchy causes tragedy and war, then why are great powers reluctant to delegate their sovereignty to a world government? What primary factors determine the cost of anarchy relative to world government? To answer the research questions the paper has developed a rational choice realist model which contributes to IR theory by revising the realist assumption that the primary goal of states is survival, that anarchy inevitably causes intense security competition, and that world government would solve the security dilemma.

First, the rational choice realist approach revises the neorealist assumption that the primary goal of states is survival since states could eliminate military spending by unifying. The paper suggests that realism should instead depart from the fundamental assumption that states are consumers of material and symbolic goods, and that consumption is maximized in stable anarchy where the military burden is small and the risk of redistribution that could result from unification avoided. Furthermore, the rational choice realist approach suggests that domestic politics sheer the basic dynamics of international relations, hence not only explaining why world government could be more risky than international anarchy, but also why war within states are now more common than war between them. Hence, realism would benefit from dropping the assumption that anarchy is a precondition for conflict and hierarchy a precondition for peace, and embrace the assumption that anarchy can be and probably is welfare improving in a world which lacks a natural harmony of interests. However, the implications of the rational choice realist approach may be even more tragic than that of structural realism, since the cause of conflict is assumed to stem from differences between the units in the system and not the nature of the system itself, implying that there is no more hope for eternal peace and stability in a world without borders than in a world of nation-states.

Second, the RCR model suggests that anarchy is not a structural constraint that forces states to balance, but that balancing is a rational choice that produces anarchy as an equilibria outcome. The paper introduces a delegation constraint to explain why states choose anarchy in preference to world government when income inequality is high and competing nationalisms not congruent with national borders.

States can gain bargaining leverage in anarchy by arming while gaining consumption by unifying and eliminate the national military burden. If anarchy is stable, little arms costs are needed for deterrence and bargaining however, hence rich states risk losing substantial bargaining power in exchange for eliminating an already small military burden. The RCR model also provides more robust realist arguments for the implications of nationalism on the cost of anarchy, by assuming that nationalism is a rational feature of nation-states to enhance fighting morale and make it more difficult for other states to successfully invade. The prevalence of the universal doctrine of nationalism justifies the common realist argument that there is no natural harmony of interests in the world, hence the anticipated latent risk that a militant minority with deviant cultural preferences would attempt to capture global armed forces and impose their preferences on the other regions.

Third, the RCR model contributes to IR theory by showing that the cost of anarchy is determined by unit-level factors, but also that anarchy does imply a set of inescapable costs since states must arm to deter attacks and gain bargaining power. However, states are willing to absorb those costs since the delegation constraint and the risk of global institutional failure could venture the security and wealth of great powers such that arming is anarchy is more preferable than bargaining for preferable outcomes in a world parliament.

It should be recognized that The RCR model relies on a series of simplified assumptions that each need firmer treatment, including how varieties in autocratic regime types affect their propensity to initiate conflict and whether nuclear weapons have a strong deterring effect independent of geographic setting. Furthermore, it is not clear why the risks associated with world government could not be eliminated by intelligent institutional design. However, not even the US with its checks and balances could avoid civil war and the European union whit its clever design features have not incentives states to delegate military power although tentative plans for further defense integration has been on the table recently. Until it can be shown that world government can be designed such that it would be a rational alternative to stable anarchy, the RCR model provides the most solid realist explanation for why anarchy is a rational choice.

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