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The cultural evolution of large-scale human cooperation
No full textLarge-scale cooperation remains one of the most compelling puzzles in the social sciences. Despite being a defining feature of human sociality and crucial to our species' success, it emerged only recently in our evolutionary history and remains absent throughout the rest of the animal kingdom. I employ cultural evolutionary theory to develop three mathematical models that illuminate distinct aspects of how humans achieve cooperation at unprecedented scales. First, I model how cooperation can expand in scale from increasing cooperative returns and endogenous population dynamics. So long as groups are able to take advantage of population growth to reach new cooperative goals, they can climb a proverbial “cooperation ladder” to continue to increase their scale of cooperation. Second, I model how scales of cooperation interact. In this model, individuals are placed in both a large cooperative group and an embedded small cooperative group, and I find that the smaller group is more stable and can undermine cooperation in the larger group, explaining tensions across cooperative scales. Third, I model cooperative and economic behaviour under different socio-ecological conditions. I find that productive and destructive competition are two sides of the same phenomena. Modelling property rights and social competition, I uncover how competition can lead to cooperative collapse. Altogether, my work reveals how large-scale cooperation is not a natural progression of the human condition but a fragile achievement requiring specific conditions. By studying cooperation as an ecosystem of interacting processes, we can better understand how large-scale cooperation evolved and also how it can fail. These findings have implications for understanding historical transitions, modern challenges like climate change, and the design of institutions that align incentives across social scales. This thesis contributes to a unified theory of human cooperation that explains both its remarkable successes and persistent failures
Predictions at war: an inferential approach to decision-making in international politics
No full textThis thesis introduces the inferential actor model to International Relations to address the persistent puzzle of why leaders make sub-optimal foreign policy choices. Drawing on the neuroscience theory of active inference, it reframes decision-making as a dynamic process in which uncertainty is not simply a problem of missing information but an actor-managed variable with direct implications for the decision process. The model’s validity is tested through an extended case study of Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam strategy (1964-65), comparing its expectations with those of two stylized alternatives: a realist model rooted in rationalist assumptions and a domestic politics model. Based on extensive archival research, the thesis finds that gradual escalation was less the product of firm conviction than a costly exercise in hypothesis testing. Johnson relied on predictions about the consequences of losing South Vietnam to sustain escalation despite low confidence in his policy options. His combination of high goal confidence and low policy confidence led him to tolerate prediction errors, attributing the South’s continued decline to tactical flaws rather than to the infeasibility of his objective. This produced a strategy characterized by exploration and experimentation in search of the elusive policy that would stabilize the South. Yet because his central goal was framed in negative terms - preventing an undesirable outcome - it became dependent on deteriorating conditions, effectively chasing an ever-shifting target. The case illustrates how actors use inferences not only to minimize uncertainty about future courses of action but also to conceptualize their goals and policies, underscoring the dual edge of inferential thinking: its necessity for strategy and its vulnerability to miscalibration of confidence
The dialectics of environmental law: capitalism, legislation, and social conflict in Georgian and Victorian Britain
No full textDespite the proliferation of environmental law scholarship in recent years, the subject often seems to lack what one historian has called a ‘backstory’ or a ‘felt historical anchor’. While scholars have begun mapping early examples of legal responses to environmental problems, relatively few have sought to systematically situate these in their historical context. Even fewer have inquired into the distributive impacts of early environmental laws and their relationship to social conflict. Who pushed for legal reform? What material and economic interests were at stake? Which political ideologies were reflected in the design of environmental legislation? What impact did these laws have on society and economy? The absence of sustained reflection on these questions is surprising, given that environmental law and social history share several interests, notably capitalism and the role of the state in shaping society and regulating economic activity. This thesis takes up these questions in the context of Georgian and Victorian Britain. This period provides an obvious case study for a historical-materialist analysis of environmen-tal law, given its central place in the histories of capitalism and the administrative state – and the social conflicts they are intertwined with. Based on an analysis of primary and secondary material, the thesis argues that the evolution of nineteenth century environmental law in Britain is best understood as the product of two dialectical moments. In the first moment, two ostensibly antithetical goals – environmental regulation and the maintenance of the capitalist economy – are brought into apparent harmony through the incorporation of market principles in legislation. In the second dialectical moment, this synthesis produces a blowback – resistance to environmental law by the masses, who come to associate it with their immiseration. By revealing the historical role of environmental legislation in reproducing capitalist social relations, the thesis calls for more critical engagement with the social impacts of environmental law
The intellectual spoils of war? Defense R&D, productivity, and international spillovers
No full textWe examine the impact of government funding for R&D—and defense-related R&D in particular—on privately conducted R&D and its ultimate effect on productivity growth. We estimate longitudinal models that relate privately funded R&D to lagged government-funded R&D using industry-country level data from OECD countries and firm level data from France. To deal with the potentially endogenous allocation of government R&D funds, we use changes in predicted defense R&D as an instrumental variable. In many OECD countries, expenditures for defense-related R&D represent by far the most important form of public subsidies for innovation. In both datasets, we uncover evidence of “crowding in” rather than “crowding out,” as increases in government-funded R&D for an industry or a firm result in significant increases in private sector R&D in that industry or firm. On average, a 10% increase in government-financed R&D generates a 5% to 6% additional increase in privately funded R&D. We also find evidence of international spillovers, as increases in government-funded R&D in a particular industry and country raise private R&D in the same industry in other countries. Finally, we find that increases in private R&D induced by increases in defense R&D result in productivity gains
Advancing understanding of scaling health information infrastructures: learning from EHR initiatives in England
No full textMany countries are developing health information infrastructures (HII) such as integrated electronic health records (EHRs) as a means of improving healthcare efficiency and effectiveness. However, efforts to build and scale up HII are fraught with challenges, as exemplified by the well-known case of the National Health Service (NHS) in England. In particular, HII scaling initiatives give rise to tensions, such as across geographical boundaries of EHRs, which are often not effectively addressed in practice. At the same time, there have been calls for research on scaling IS through a practice perspective, which adds to the existing categorical analysis of scale. Thus motivated, we aim to conceptualize the scaling of HII, focusing on the tensions between scales, the practices to accomplish scaling, and their consequences for scaling outcomes. To do so, we undertook a case study of recent NHS efforts to integrate EHRs in England, where we analyzed these scalar concepts and their interrelationships. Our study further develops the notion that scaling not only involves increasing the scale of IS but entails constructing and reconstructing scales. We also offer theoretical contributions by conceptualizing the range of scalar tensions and practices, their interplay, and their influences on HII scaling outcomes. Tensions that we identify as associated with different scale boundaries (organizational, spatial, and technological), extend those recognized in prior research. Furthermore, we uncover the scalar practices of joining and differentiating, adding to the governance and architectural approaches for HII scaling examined in past work. Through deepening the understanding of HII scaling, we generate insights for practitioners by highlighting scalar tensions and practices that could address the tensions under different conditions. Overall, we draw attention to scaling phenomena as being integral to the development of HII and introduce a new vocabulary for thinking about HII scaling
Urban state venturism or urbanization of state capital? Views from the global East
No full textWhile appreciating the novelty of conceptualizing urban state venturism, this commentary proposes that the state's role as capital can be clearly evidenced by the urbanization of state capital, which involves the active deployment of state-owned corporations in the global East amid the region's pursuit of condensed and developmental urbanization and industrialization
Can digital aid deliver during humanitarian crises?
No full textCan digital payments help reduce extreme hunger? Humanitarian needs are at their highest since 1945, aid budgets are falling behind, and hunger is concentrating in fragile states where repression and aid diversion present major obstacles. In such contexts, partnering directly with governments is often neither feasible nor desirable, making private digital payment platforms a potentially useful means of delivering assistance. We experimentally evaluated digital payments to extremely poor, female-headed households in Afghanistan, as part of a partnership between community, nonprofit, and private organizations. The payments led to substantial improvements in food security and mental well-being. Despite beneficiaries’ limited tech literacy, 99.75% used the payments, and stringent checks revealed no evidence of diversion. Before seeing our results, policymakers and experts are uncertain and skeptical about digital aid, consistent with the lack of prior evidence on digital payments for humanitarian response. Delivery costs are under 7 cents per dollar, which is 10 cents per dollar less than the World Food Programme’s global figure for cash-based transfers. These savings can help reduce hunger without additional resources, demonstrating how hybrid partnerships utilizing digital payment platforms can help address grand challenges in difficult contexts
