The Social Dilemma: The Economics of War and Revolution by Gordon TullockReview by: John C. HarsanyiPublic Choice, Vol. 32 (Winter, 1977), pp. 158-160Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30023005 .

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158 PUBLIC CHOICE

Anglo-Saxon Political Economists would be well advised to take notice of this contribution.

Bruno S. Frey Universities of Konstanz and Basel

The Social Dilemma: The Economics of War and Revolution. Gordon Tullock, A Public Choice Monograph. University Publications: Blacksburg, Virginia, 1974. VII + 143 pp. $7.95 cloth; $4.50 paper.

Gordon Tullock has been a pioneer in applying' the conceptual tools of economic theory to studies of political behavior. In this book, he uses these tools for analyzing revolutions, coups d'etat, civil wars and international wars. The book is written in a lively style, states some unorthodox and challenging opinions, and makes for very stimulating reading.

Tullock points out that any social conflict gives rise to a social dilemma

(hence the title). For each participant, it is individually rational to invest resources in attempts to redistribute existing or potential social wealth to his own advantage, so that any game-theoretical equilibrium point will involve such redistributive activities by all participants. But from the viewpoint of society as a whole, such activities represent a socially inefficient use of resources because they divert effort from attempts of increasing the total wealth available to society in attempts of

merely redistributing this wealth (possibly destroying part of it in the process). Thus, any social conflict is a prisoner's dilemma game, i.e., a game whose

equilibrium points are all socially inefficient. I agree with many of Tullock's conclusions, but want to note one major point

where I disagree. According to common observation, for better or worse, many revolutionaries appear to be motivated to some degree by altruistic ideological considerations-by what can be described as "noble idealism", or else as "blind fanaticism", depending on one's point of view. Tullock, however, flatly denies the

importance of such altruistic attitudes in motivating revolutionary activists. He contends that revoluntionaries are moved largely by self-interest (e.g., by a hope for a high government office under a future revoluntionary regime).

Tullock admits that the supporters of revoluntionary movements often

expect great social benefits from a successful revolution. But any sensible

revolutionary must realize that normally his own personal efforts cannot

significantly increase the chances of victory for his side. Accordingly, he must be aware of the fact that the likely social benefits arising from his own revoluntionary activities are bound to be very small-too small to motivate these activities. If he still engages in such activities, this can be explained only in terms of self-interest.

Tullock's argument is parallel to the well-known argument that a rational voter will virtually never vote (at least if voting costs him some time and

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BOOK REVIEWS 159

inconvenience) because his vote is very unlikely to make any difference to the

outcome in most elections. In my opinion, this argument is mistaken-both in he case of voting and in

the case of revoluntionary activities. First of all, the argument makes the very

questionable assumption that a public-spirited, rational individual will make his

moral decisions in terms of what philosophers call the act utilitarian criterion, rather

than in terms of what they call the rule utilitarian criterion. In actual fact, one can

easily show that the latter criterion leads to much more sensible moral decisions

than the former criterion does. (See my paper, "Rule Utilitarianism andDecision

Theory," to appear in the German journal Erkenntnis in 1977.) This means that the question of whether I should or should not vote, or

whether I should or should not engage in any other political activity, cannot be

rationally decided by asking how much difference it would make from a social

point of view if I personally did or did not engage in this political activity. (Of course, if this were the question then the answer in most cases wouldhave to be that it would make very little if any difference.) Rather, the proper question to ask is

what difference it would make from a social point of view if all individuals like me

(i.e., all individuals placed in a similar situation to my own) did or did not engage in

this political activity. (As the number of such individuals may easily run in the

thousands, or even the millions in some cases, if they all did or failed to do

something, this might very well make a good deal of difference to the outcome.) More fundamentally, both Tullock's model of a rational egoist and my own

model of a rational rule utilitarian altruist will in many cases surely overstate the

degree of rationality inherent in revolutionary activities (as well as many other

political or nonpolitical human activities). No doubt, revolutionary activities may have their deeper motivation in a love for adventure, a desire to be admired by one's friends, a need to work out one's aggressive feelings or one's personal frustrations, etc. Even if a person's behavior is actually motivated by such

less-than-fully-rational psychological forces, he may be sincerely convinced of being moved only by the noblest altruistic objectives. Indeed, whatever the deeper emotional roots of his revoluntionary activities, he may in fact be moved by truly altruistic objectives-in the sense that he may have a genuine concern for other

people's well-being and may show very little concern for his own personal advantage.

I fully agree with Tullock that some of the analytical tools borrowed from economic theory can make extremely important contributions to our

understanding of political behavior (as well as to our understanding of many other forms of social behavior, traditionally outside the confines of economics). Perhaps the most valuable of these analytical tools is the concept of rational behavior. But we must take special care that our interest in human rationality should not make us

forget the nonrational and the irrational aspects of human behavior; and that the

predominance of egoistic motivations in many parts of economic life should not

make us underestimate the importance of altruistic motivations in some noneconomic activities.

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160 PUBLIC CHOICE

Let me add a final remark. In his analysis, Tullock often makes certain

assumptions that could be justified only by a detailed game-theoretical investigation, which is not undertaken. For instance, we cannot assume, without detailed game-theoretical analysis, that one individual A can make a creditable threat against another individual B, when B knows that it would be quite costly for A to carry out his threat. (It would have to be shown that A would have a strong incentive to carry out his threat in spite of these costs.) Again, if a given country A increases its armament expenditure, then we cannot simply assume that, as a reaction to this, country B will increase or decrease her own armament expenditure according to some arbitrary "reaction function" supposed to be "given." Rather, if we want to assume that country B will follow rational policies, then only a detailed

game-theoretical analysis of the situation can tell what these rational policies will

be; or if we want to predict country B's policies in terms of a more

behaviorally-oriented model, then we need a careful behavioral analysis of country B's decision-making process before we can make worthwhile predictions.

In conclusion, in spite of these reservations I have about Tullock's analysis, I think this is a very interesting and stimulating book, which I can wholeheartedly recommend to the reader interested in conflict behavior.

John C. Harsanyi University of California, Berkeley

The Governmental Habit. Jonathan R. T. Hughes, New York: Basic Books, 1977.

Pp. xii + 260. $11.95.

In this book, Professor Jonathan Hughes has applied his skill as an economic historian to trace the development of the American system of nonmarket controls from its origins in English common law, through the colonial period, the course of our two-century national history, and up to date in the 1970s. The title is explicitly descriptive of his theme. Our history is one of increasing addiction to the apparent short-sighted fixes of governmental control. So long as these were localized and limited, we were able to withstand the cumulative effects. The absence of an effective public philosophy in support of the market economy did not greatly matter. However, with the quantum leaps engendered by two World Wars, a New Deal in between, and a Cold War and Great Society since, the interlocked web of nonmarket control has some seriously to sap our national productivity. Hughes finds it necessary to remind us that: "Our federal government is mainly an employer of bureaucrats and military people, and no extra efforts by them, no matter how heroic, can raise the supply of real goods and services in this country." (p. 242.)

I can scarcely do better in this short review than to cite some other parts of

Hughes' concluding chapter.

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