I Don't Know What to Expect From Politicians

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I don't really think we should place a lot of value on speeches that politicians give as their actual intentions. I just don't think that's going to lead us to accurate predictions. It might have been consistent with what happened in this case. But there are clearly cases it applies to. So hitler more or less said what he wanted to do, right? That would be a case where if you pay attention to his ideas and speeches, you would do very well. Though, just in the abstract, you might think, it's crazy. What guy would ever do this?

What causes war? Many scholars have spent their careers attempting to study the psychology of leaders to understand what incentivizes them to undertake the human and financial costs of conflict, but economist and political scientist Chris Blattman takes a different approach to understanding interstate violence. He returns for his second appearance on Conversations with Tyler to discuss his research into the political and institutional causes of conflict, the topic of his new book Why We Fight: The Roots of War and The Path to Peace.

Chris and Tyler also cover why he doesn’t think demographics are a good predictor of a country’s willingness to go to war, the informal norms that restrain nations, the dangers of responding to cyberattacks, the breakdown of elite bargains in Ethiopia, the relationship between high state capacity and war, the greatest threats to peace in Ireland, why political speech isn’t usually a reliable indicator of future action, Vladimir Putin’s centralized motives for invading Ukraine, why he’s long on Colombia democratically – but not economically, why more money won’t necessarily help the Mexican government curb cartel violence, the single-mindedness necessary for bouldering, how Harold Innis’s insights about commodities led Chris to start studying war, how the University of Chicago has maintained a culture of free inquiry, and more.

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Recorded March 1st, 2022 Other ways to connect

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