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Anarchy and Social Choice: Reflections on the International Polity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Oran R. Young
Oran R. Young
Affiliation:
University of Maryland at College Park
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Abstract

The concept “social choice” provides a means of injecting new life into systemic analyses of the international polity. Bargaining, organized warfare, and coercive diplomacy are the most important mechanisms of social choice in the international polity. Third-party settlement is of lesser importance, though not irrelevant. Each of these mechanisms is evaluated in terms of criteria such as decisiveness, efficiency, justice, and the production of externalities. Systems of rights and rules serve to constrain processes of social choice, but they are also apt to become focal points of such processes themselves.

Type
Research Note
Information
World Politics , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , January 1978 , pp. 241 - 263
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1978

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References

1 Cf. my discussion of efforts to utilize systemic conceptions in the analysis of international politics in Young, , “A Systemic Approach to International Politics,” Center of International Studies, Princeton University, Research Monograph No. 33 (Princeton 1968).Google Scholar

2 The modern classic in this field is Arrow, Kenneth, Social Choice and Individual Values (2d ed.; New York: John Wiley 1963).Google Scholar For a more general survey of this body of work, see Riker, William and Ordeshook, Peter, Positive Political Theory (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall 1973).Google Scholar

3 For a general introduction to anarchist thinking, see Carter, April, The Political Theory of Anarchism (New York: Harper and Row 1971).Google Scholar

4 For further discussion of this issue, consult Guerin, Daniel, Anarchism: From Theory to Practice (New York: Monthly Review Press 1970).Google Scholar

5 The argument constructed by Hobbes in The Leviathan, for example, relies heavily on this hypothesis.

6 Cf. Young, , “The Actors in World Politics,” in Rosenau, James, Davis, Vincent, and East, Maurice, eds., The Analysis of International Politics (New York: Free Press 1972), 125–44.Google Scholar

7 The importance of this point is stressed heavily in Allison, Graham, The Essence of Decision (Boston: Little Brown 1971).Google Scholar

8 For a survey of the classic models of individual choice, see Edwards, Ward and Tversky, Amos, eds., Decision-Making (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin 1967).Google Scholar

9 Thus, I do not think Morton Kaplan's “unit veto” model constitutes an interesting analogue of the international polity. See Kaplan, , System and Process in International Politics (New York: John Wiley 1957).Google Scholar

10 For a recent review of the relevant literature, see Katzenstein, Peter J., “International Interdependence: Some Long-Term Trends and Recent Changes,” International Organization, XXIX (Autumn 1975), 1021–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 These problems are exemplified clearly in the work of Richard Rosecrance, but they are common to this whole genre of analysis. See Rosecrance, , Action and Reaction in World Politics (Boston: Little Brown 1963).Google Scholar

12 At this level, then, it does not seem accurate to think of the international polity as a revolutionary political system. For an alternative interpretation, see Hoffmann, Stanley, Gulliver's Troubles, or the Setting of American Foreign Policy (New York: McGraw-Hill 1968).Google Scholar

13 For an extensive discussion of this concept, see Young, , ed., Bargaining: Formal Theories of Negotiation (Urbana: University of Illinois Press 1975),Google Scholar esp. “Introduction.”

14 In the present essay, I confine myself to a series of general observations about processes of social choice in the international polity. Subsequent work might focus on social choice in specific international issue areas such as international trade, monetary arrangements, natural resources, maritime commerce, ocean space, and so forth.

15 Consider the following simple illustration. In the first case, two actors (A and B) have the following preference orderings over three differentiable alternatives: A = 1>2>3; B = 2>1>3. In the second case, their preference orderings over the same three alternatives are: A = 1>2>3; B = 3>2>1. Clearly, it makes sense to say that the intensity of the conflict between A and B is greater in the second case than in the first case. In the second case, their preferences are strictly opposed, whereas in the first case, they can both agree on the proposition that 2 is preferable to 3.

16 This point is made in a highly persuasive fashion in Allison (fn. 7).

17 See also Coleman, James, “Political Money,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 64 (December 1970), 1074–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Baldwin, David, “Money and Power,” Journal of Politics, XXXIII (August 1971), 576–614.Google Scholar

18 Voting may not lead to substantive solutions; those who lose a vote need not espouse the substantive position of the winners even though they accept the outcome of the vote as binding. For a survey of theoretical work on voting as a mechanism of social choice, see Riker and Ordeshook (fn. 2).

19 This is essentially Arrow's condition of dictatorship. For a fuller discussion, consult Arrow (fn. 2).

20 This is not to say that voting is unimportant below the level of the system as a whole. It is obviously important within many states, and plays a role of some significance in certain supranational institutions.

21 However, administrative procedures play some role in reaching social choices in certain subsystems of the international polity. For instance, such phenomena seem quite prominent in the context of the European Communities.

22 For a general discussion of transactions costs, see Mishan, E. J., “The Postwar Literature on Externalities: An Interpretative Essay,” Journal of Economic Literature, IX (March 1971), 21–24.Google Scholar

23 There is no reason to assume that the transactions costs associated with any given mechanism of social choice will be distributed equally among the relevant actors. Consider, for example, arrangements in which the loser in a judicial procedure is obliged to pay all the court costs.

24 For a wide-ranging discussion of the concept of justice, consult Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 1971).Google Scholar

25 An externality is an inadvertent byproduct of an action undertaken for other purposes, whose consequences are not taken into account by any market mechanism. For a variety of perspectives on externalities, consult Robert Staaf and Francis Tannian, Externalities: Theoretical Dimensions of Political Economy (New York: Dunellen n.d.).

29 For an extended analysis of the principal theoretical models of bargaining, see Young (fn. 13).

27 See also Schelling, Thomas C., The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1960).Google Scholar

28 Young, , The Politics of Force (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1968), chap. 10.Google Scholar

29 Since the transactions costs of smoothly functioning market mechanisms are low, many economists have tended to react hostilely to bargaining as a mechanism of social choice. But that is essentially a normative stance rather than an empirical conclusion.

30 On the general tendency of transactions costs to increase as a function of the number of actors involved, see Mishan (fn. 22), 22.

31 I have recently discussed this phenomenon in a detailed case study; see Young, , Resource Management at the International Level: The Case of the North Pacific (London and New York: Pinter and Nichols 1977).Google Scholar

32 See, for example, the essays in C. Fred Bergsten and Lawrence Krause, eds., World Politics and International Economics, International Organization, XXIX (special issue 1975).

33 Luce, R. Duncan and Raiffa, Howard, Games and Decisions (New York: John Wiley 1957)Google Scholar, chap. 6; Young (fn. 13).

34 For an intriguing case study involving various species of great whales, see Small, George L., The Blue Whale (New York: Columbia University Press 1971), esp. chap. VII.Google Scholar

35 This is essentially the perspective of Clausewitz, who conceptualized war as politics carried on by other means. See von Clausewitz, Karl, War, Politics, and Power, Collins, transl. (Chicago: Henry Regnery 1962).Google Scholar

36 The issue I am concerned with here bears little relationship to the question of “just wars.” My concern is with the distributive consequences of warfare rather than with the justness of various causes of warfare.

37 For an exposition of these arguments, see Coser, Lewis, The Functions of Social Conflict (New York: Free Press 1956).Google Scholar

38 On coercive diplomacy, consult, inter alia, Young (fn. 28); Schelling, Thomas C., Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press 1966)Google Scholar; George, Alexander L., Hall, David K., and Simons, William R., The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy (Boston: Little Brown 1971)Google Scholar, and Bell, Coral, Conventions of Crisis (London: Oxford University Press 1971).Google Scholar

39 See Young (fn. 28), chap. 12.

40 See Schelling (fn. 38); Daniel Ellsberg, “The Theory and Practice of Blackmail,” in Young (fn. 13), 343–63.

41 See also Anand, R. P., Studies in International Adjudication (Delhi: Vikas 1969).Google Scholar

42 See the discussion of criteria of fairness for arbitration schemes in Luce and Raiffa (fn. 33), chap. 6.

43 Young, , “Intermediaries: Additional Thoughts on Third Parties,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, XVI (March 1972), 51–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 Young, , The Intermediaries (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1967).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 For a wide-ranging analysis raising numerous general questions about rights and rules, see Hart, H. L. A., The Concept of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1961).Google Scholar

46 Furubotn, Eirik and Pejovich, Svetozar, “Property Rights and Economic Theory. A Survey of Recent Literature,” Journal of Economic Literature, X (December 1972), 1139.Google Scholar

47 Although laws constitute a particularly prominent category of behavioral prescriptions, there are various other types of prescriptions, such as moral rules and social norms.

48 Consult, inter alia, Morton Kaplan and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach, , The Political Foundations of International Law (New York: John Wiley 1961)Google Scholar; Falk, Richard A., The Status of Law in International Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1970)Google Scholar; and Gottlieb, Gidon, “The Nature of International Law: Toward a Second Concept of Law,” in Black, Cyril E. and Falk, Richard A., eds., The Future of the International Legal Order, IV, The Structure of the International Environment (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1972), 331–83.Google Scholar

49 For a variety of insights on these issues, see Buchanan, James and Tullock, Gordon, The Calculus of Consent (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 1962).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 Arguments concerning the Coase theorem, for example, typically focus on these issues. For a particularly helpful example, see Randall, Alan, “Coase Externality Theory in a Policy Context,” Natural Resources Journal, XIV (January 1974), 35–54.Google Scholar

51 Ibid.; also Warren J. Samuels, “The Coase Theorem and the Study of Law and Economics,” ibid., 1–33.

52 Current efforts, in the context of the Law of the Sea Conference, to formulate new rights and rules for the use of the oceans constitute a classic illustration of this phenomenon.

53 For a general analysis of mixed-motive interactions, see Schelling (fn. 27).

54 For a more general work raising questions about rights and rules from this perspective, consult Buchanan and Tullock (fn. 49).

55 In other words, I do not think Rawls's conception of the “veil of ignorance” is relevant to most real-world situations. On the role of this concept in Rawls's work, see Rawls (fn. 24), esp. chap. III.

56 The preponderant positions of Great Britain during the latter part of the 19th century and of the United States during the period following World War II constitute clear examples.

57 I use the notion of advancing claims in this connection in much the same way that McDougal uses it. See McDougal, Myres S. and Associates, Studies in World Public Order (New Haven: Yale University Press 1960).Google Scholar

58 Again, my argument concerning this point parallels the perspective of McDougal, ibid.