Cramer (2002) ‘Homo Economicus Goes to War.’ Citation: Cramer, C. (2002) ‘Homo Economicus Goes to War: Methodological Individualism, Rational Choice and the Political Economy of War,’ World Development, 30:11, pp. 1845-1864.
Time Period Covered:
Theory, Research Question, Hypothesis:
Relationship to Other Research/Ideas Contested/Noted Gaps:
Concepts and Definitions:
Method:
Primary/Original Data:
Argument/Conclusion:
Cramer (2002): Rational choice theories of conflict follow neoclassical economics but, in doing so, repeat many of its well-known flaws.
Cramer (2002:1857): “faced with the complexity of conflicts, and indeed of the social in general, it [neoclassical economics] insists on the myth of rational choice individualism, even in the midst of evidence of a range of structural constraints on individualism and of compulsions other than utility maximization that constrain choice and produce a diversity of war rather than a single type. Agency is involved in the origins of conflict, choices are made, and economic incentives do matter, as do individuals. But they are influenced by and operate very much within specific conditions and social and historical features of change.”
Limitations/Flaws:
Abstract:
Neoclassical economic theories of violent conflict have proliferated in recent years and, with their application to contemporary wars, have influenced donors and policy makers. This paper reviews the intellectual foundations and empirical substance of such theories and offers a critique drawing on a political economy perspective. There are strong grounds for arguing that orthodox economic theories of war are reductionist, speculative, and misleading. Theories that are driven by methodological individualism are compelled somehow to model “the social” as it affects contemporary warfare example, by appeal to indices of ethno-linguistic fragmentation but do so in ways that fail to capture reality and its variations.
Notes:
Cramer (2002:1847): Models reduce conflicts to two players or groups of players (e.g. rebel versus government), and do not disaggregated between players; “There is no discussion of where the ‘players’ come from other than as the product of relevant economistic calculations.” Group identities are not rooted in modern politics and ideology, but in things such as religion and ethnicity.
Cramer (2002:1847): “Despite the apparent appeal and formal elegance of orthodox economic explanations of violent conflict, there are strong grounds for arguing that these explanations are extremely reductionist, highly speculative, and profoundly misleading.” Describes the use of the presence of primary commodities as “absurdly simplistic.”
Cramer (2002:1850): “Even if axiomatic abstractions are merged with variables imported by selection from stylised facts, neoclassical economic theories of conflict remain, as theories, abstract. They are completely speculative until some empirical content is added. Given that the social, the cultural, the historical, etc. are left out of the initial framework, when they are brought back in later (which is inevitable) their incorporation is arbitrarily selective. What is the basis for assuming that people everywhere experience a choice of conflict or co-operation defined solely in terms of profitability, where historical evidence suggests that conflict often is institutionalized (i.e. the rules of the game are conflictual) and that the conditions of cooperation and exchange are typically forged, often slowly, out of conflict (Tilly, 1992; Howard, 2001)? What is the basis for deciding that people cannot be mobilized by ideology or promises of change (including change in material conditions of employment or production) because of time-preference or leadership credibility problems, when history and contemporary democratic politics are virtually defined by political enthusiasm for all manner of pledges despite their frequently being unfulfilled? What is the basis for deciding that collective action is necessarily framed in terms of historically fixed ‘ethnic capital’ or scores of ethno-linguistic fragmentation, where evidence suggests that ethnicity is commonly historically dynamic and far from even in its organizing hold on people, and where there is no evidence that ethnic affiliation is always prioritized over other sources of collective identity, including class? Moreover, why must it be accepted that social phenomena are best apprehended through individual rational choice (and a very narrow notion of rationality) rather than relational rationality and social and historical constraints on choice? On what grounds should we ignore the gray areas between choice and compulsion in human activities including conflict? For fear and obeisance to de facto authority––as well as acquiescence with strong mobilizing ideologies not through acceptance but through desperate efforts to resist local structures of oppression––are motivations that might be more significant than either greed or grievance, individual choice or unambiguous coercion, in some circumstances.”
Cramer (2002:1850): Highlights three core problems: the use of dubious proxies, an empirical and analytical failure to integrate the “social,” and their neglect of structual and relational change.
Cramer (2002:1855): “Greed, for example, is not conceived in these models as a relational concept. Greed relates individuals to objects directly: other people become simply obstacles that may be overcome by violence if the opportunity cost of this action is sufficiently low. In other words, the objects (the lootable primary commodities) are of primary causal significance, other people of secondary significance at best aside from some fixed and prior ‘ethnic capital.’ Hence, greed in these models contrasts with concepts such as envy or rivalry, which are inherently relational and provide grounds for rooting an analysis of the role of resources and commodities within specific relational structures and histories.”
Cramer (2002:1856): “orthodox economic models of conflict begin with a set of arbitrary assumptions; efforts to test them empirically have so far foundered on misleading use of proxies; and these models have not succeeded in incorporating the irreducibly social on which they depend.”