Chris Blattman: belief

Transcript context

…So federal societies are less likely to go to war? The word I both loathe and love is polycentric, which is this word from Vincent and Elinor Ostrom, and it’s this idea where there are many centers of power. In the US, we’re programmed to think in terms of federalism, which is a great example, but I think there’re lots of other ways. We can be polycentric in the sense of having lots of super-national powers, so we can delegate a lot of authority and bind our hands through international treaties and agreements and alliances. We focus a little bit too much, I think, on downward and federalist polycentrism in the United States. I know it’s a small country, and it’s not near many other countries, but New Zealand is very non-polycentric. If we put them somewhere else, made them bigger, would you think they would be more likely to go to war than, say, Canada?…

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