Chris Blattman: evaluation

Transcript context

…What do we know about the causes of the Peloponnesian Wars? This is something that I’m brand new to. What you see is, a lot of political scientists like to write articles about grand theories of war, whatever theory that may be. And they like to cite Greek historians talking about things like the grand . . . First of all, the Spartans and the Athenians — Hollywood couldn’t imagine two more ideal types to talk about, two more different worldviews. Then for them to embark on this war to end all wars for the period. People use it to think about something that we think of as bargaining and the commitment problem, which is that massive power shifts can lead to war, partly because it becomes difficult for the temporarily powerful person to be paid off not to exercise their advantage and, through a first strike, eliminate. This becomes potentially a model of that, but then no one has ever gone beyond this and actually really tried to see how it works. I’ve been reading it, and I’m more and more persuaded that it’s actually a good example of this, but it’s a little bit more complicated. I asked Charles C. Mann this same question: Why are so many parts of the New World, this hemisphere, so relatively violent compared to so many places in Asia — also in Africa, as you know — where you can walk around without any thought of violence whatsoever? Really, in a pretty significant part of our hemisphere, that’s not the case. Canada, of course, is an exception. Nonetheless, I’m sure you’ve noticed this difference. What ultimately is your theory at the macro level?…

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