Global Political Order
The model (Figure 1 below) assumes that the government distributes limited national resources between two sectors. On one hand, the resources can be used for productive economic uses, but on the other hand they can be channeled to the stock of control resources. Control resources are used to produce control, which is, in this context, a generic variable that represents a combination of forces used to manage total national resources, fight insurgency, and contain censure. The resources are continuously redistributed between economic and control sectors based on the perceived need. Total national resources only grow through the activities in the economics sector. Using economic resources for production of social goods is also the only way to improve the welfare of the population at home and abroad. Therefore, diverting significant national resources from productive economic activity limits growth in terms of resources and welfare. Potential censure, or disagreement with the current status quo, grows when domestic and foreign populations are not provided with adequate social goods and are too actively managed through government controls. Potential censure can be freely expressed through legitimate channels; thus, potential censure becomes censure. However, high levels of government control limit personal and national autonomy and suppress censure. Unexpressed censure translates into disenfranchisement that leads to violent acts. With some delay violent acts are recognized as insurgency. Greater levels of censure and recognized insurgency result in greater levels of desired control resources; this triggers a redistribution of total resources in favor of control resources.
Figure 1: Casual Logic of the Model
Principal Investigators
Oleg V. Pavlov, Associate Professor of Economics and System Dynamics, WPI
Michael Radzicki, Associate Professor of Economics, WPI
Khalid Saeed, Professor of System Dynamics and Economics, WPI
Publications
Pavlov, O. V., M. Radzicki and K. Saeed. "Stability in a Superpower-Dominated Global Economic System." Forthcoming in Journal of Economic Issues in 2005. Download the report (166KB PDF file). This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Evolutionary Economics in Philadelphia January 7-9, 2005.
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