I noticed this late (it was in the Times “Freakonomics” column Tuesday) but Freakonomist Steven Levitt (a fellow admirer of my childhood chum Roger Myerson who won the Nobel in economics this week) was drawn (as I was in my Monday post) to Myerson’s application of game theory to the mess in Iraq.
My favorite Myersonian insight on Iraq was about why the U.S. shouldn’t have invaded. Levitt’s is about how to establish democracy there. I know from my previous conversations that Myerson thought the decision by U.S. procurator Paul Bremer to cancel local elections in 2003 and impose U.S-picked mayors and local administrators was a huge blunder.
He believes that local elections were the way to get things headed in the right direction, rather the emphasis on electing a national government and ratifying a national constitution. According to the Freakonimics guy, the next key is:
“to allow the government to generously pay people who do good work for the government, and to fire or punish government employees who perform poorly. The most effective way to accomplish this goal is to backload the rewards of government service, in the form of actions like patronage. For such a rewards system to work, though, one needs the assurance that the government will make good on future promises. The best way to create the necessary trust is to have strong leaders who have built a reputation on keeping their word.”
What think?
My immediate reaction to this post was that the Republicans imposed in Iraq the exact mirror image of what they thought government was all about: top down control and command, which of course is exactly the opposite of Republican rhetoric. I think of Iraq as hurricane Katrina writ large: bungling and incompetence from the top down by appointed cronies. The Republican party has been a totally top down control and command operation.
Compare that to the Marshall Plan in Western Europe after WWII which, as I have understood and read, (see Tony Judt’s great book Postwar), was financial assistance to build up and encourage emerging governments and powers, a much more democratic approach. I may be oversimplifying, since there probably were certain aspects of the Marshall Plan which the beneficiaries did not see as being democratic but given the way things worked out, the Marshall Plan did probably save Western Europe from totalitarian Communism. That was no small feat.
I wonder if these applications of game theory about creating rewards in the future(”backloads the rewards of government service”) will work when as Maslow taught us the mind is occupied with needs of safety and belongings overruel any long term self actualizations thoughts being explored by the west.
My owm humble view is that it is time to HEAR the voice of the people of Iraq and develop some options that provide them food, safety, shelter and peace of mind that will enable them to get to such higher level thoughts. I see that this can be difficult for the present administrations when their mind is occupied by listenting to their own voices.
JS