Game theory, Iran's nuclear ambitions, and political scientists in the news

(It's quite difficult to decide which of the three is most attention-grabbing, isn't it?)

It's very rare occasion indeed when a political scientist is profiled in the news these days. The vast majority of academics making front-page news are generally economists, with political scientists of the caliber of a Samuel Huntington or Joseph Nye (to name but two of the more well-known names in the business) assuming somewhat of an ambivalent position on the global, intellectual stage.

There is, moreover, ongoing debate within the field of political science over the disjuncture or applicability (depending on your point of view) of the theory of political science to its practice, with many asserting the irrelevance of the discipline to everyday political reality. It is precisely for this reason that I was quite thrilled to see the NYTimes' piece profiling the work of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita this weekend (the piece was actually published last week, but I only noticed it on Sunday!). Bueno de Mesquita is a game theorist who employs rational choice theory to predict political and foreign policy events, and is quite generally well-known for authoring the selectorate theory. While I do have several methodological bones to pick with him (I am not a subscriber to the 'rational choice trumps all' school of thought), I nevertheless find his work most interesting and indeed worthy of note.

Bueno de Mesquita's recent project is that of forecasting when and whether Iran will build a nuclear bomb:

With the help of his undergraduate class at N.Y.U., he researched the primary power brokers inside and outside the country — anyone with a stake in Iran’s nuclear future. Once he had the information he needed, he fed it into his computer model and had an answer in a few minutes.

[...] The spreadsheet included almost 90 players. Some were people, like the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei; others were groups, like the U.N. Security Council and Iran’s “religious radicals.” Next to each player, a number represented one variable in Bueno de Mesquita’s model: the extent to which a player wanted Iran to have the ability to make nuclear weapons. The scale went from 0 to 200, with 0 being “no nuclear capacity at all” and 200 representing a test of a nuclear missile.

At the beginning of the simulation, the positions were what you would expect. The United States and Israel and most of Europe wanted Iran to have virtually no nuclear capacity, so their preferred outcomes were close to zero. In contrast, the Iranian hard-liners were aggressive. “This is not only ‘Build a bomb,’ ” Bueno de Mesquita said, characterizing their position. “It’s probably: ‘We should test a bomb.’ ”

But as the computer model ran forward in time, through 2009 and into 2010, positions shifted. American and Israeli national-security players grudgingly accepted that they could tolerate Iran having some civilian nuclear-energy capacity. Ahmadinejad, Khamenei and the religious radicals wavered; then, as the model reached our present day, their power — another variable in Bueno de Mesquita’s model — sagged significantly.

Amid the thousands of rows on the spreadsheet, there’s one called Forecast. It consists of a single number that represents the most likely consensus of all the players. It begins at 160 — bomb-making territory — but by next year settles at 118, where it doesn’t move much. “That’s the outcome,” Bueno de Mesquita said confidently, tapping the screen.

What does 118 mean? It means that Iran won’t make a nuclear bomb. By early 2010, according to the forecast, Iran will be at the brink of developing one, but then it will stop and go no further. If this computer model is right, all the dire portents we’ve seen in recent months — the brutal crackdown on protesters, the dubious confessions, Khamenei’s accusations of American subterfuge — are masking a tectonic shift. The moderates are winning, even if we cannot see that yet.

Whether you agree or disagree with his methodological approach - and indeed its outcome - it's difficult not to agree that his is a fascinating analysis. One seemingly capable of bringing political science back into the spotlight - or at the very least the NYTimes.

On IR theory and the African challenge

Via Ryan C. Briggs I happened across a great site - Theory Talks - which serves as an interactive forum for discussion of debates in IR (international relations) with especial emphasis on the underlying theoretical issues. If you're like me, teasing out the appropriate theoretical framework for one's work is often the most challenging part of any research project, which is why I greatly appreciate what Theory Talks is trying to do. While the site certainly won't help to sort a framework for individual projects, it does present interesting perspectives and raise fascinating debates on issues surrounding the ever-evolving discipline that is IR.

Among the more curious "talks" I found (and there are quite a few!) is that by Kevin C. Dunn, visiting professor at Mbarara University in Uganda, who has written extensively on African politics with especial focus on the Congo. Dunn argues that images of countries (like the Congo, for instance) are often social constructions, which renders field work for the "white man" a very biased field, indeed:

The identity of the Congo, like other social identities, has been formed by being located within the narratives that we use to know, understand, and make sense of the social world. Narratives of national identities are formed by a gradual layering on and connecting of events and meanings, usually through three steps: the selection of events themselves, the linking of these events to each other in causal and associational ways (plotting), and interpreting what the events and plots signify. The example of the Congo is illuminating because it shows how these identity-constructing narratives are rarely the exclusive product of a state’s policy makers. External forces are constantly at play, seeking to select, plot and interpret the events and meanings by which identities are narrated.

The central thesis of Dunn's talk is that IR scholars are political actors as much as the phenomena they study. Being as such, it is inevitable that their research and findings are biased based on their constructed perceptions of their respective subject matters. Such bias, Dunn argues, is particularly pronounced in research focused on Africa, much of which is approached from a North American/Western European perspective where an idealized North American/Western European state is taken as the norm. Dunn's is an interesting discussion, and certainly one worth reading for any IR scholars with a focus on Africa.

For all African-centric theoretical debates see here.