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december 16, 2003
Mathematics could stabilize peace treaties
Mathematics could stabilize peace treaties (Nature):
A political scientist at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico has devised a mathematical method that could help civil-war negotiators to find the most stable peace treaties1.
...
Elisabeth Wood calculates that a settlement will be stronger and more likely to last if it finds the ideal way to apportion the stakes. For example, if two warring factions each want control of some part of a disputed region, negotiators need to divide the territory in a way that comes closest to satisfying them both.
Artikeln avslutas:
"I suspect the model is too abstract to be of much practical use," admits Wood, who now intends to test how it might apply to real civil conflicts.
Papret som refereras är Modeling Robust Settlements to Civil War: Indivisible Stakes and Distributional Compromises
Abstract:
Why do some civil war settlements prove robust, while others fail? I show how a settlement’s robustness, defined in terms of the risk factor of the mutual-compromise equilibrium, depends on the nature of the stakes of the conflict and the distributional terms of the settlement. I identify the distributional terms of the optimal settlement, namely, that most robust to exogenous shocks to the actors’ confidence that the other will continue to compromise. I introduce a measure of the degree of the perceived indivisibility of the stakes, an increase in which not only decreases the range of feasible distributional settlements, but decreases their robustness as well. I explore how intra-party heterogeneity and uncertainty regarding ex-post outcomes lessen the range and robustness of settlements. In the conclusion, I compile the predictions of the model and briefly consider the policy implications.
Posted by hakank at december 16, 2003 08:16 FM Posted to Matematik