Friday, March 03, 2006

The Market for Peace

by Berly


In a way, peace resememble market economy. To have a lasting peace, it need incentive to have opposing factions come together for a peace deal and stay in peace (so is love, but that’s for another post). There is a supply and demand for peace.

If benefit for peace is bigger for each group than the benefit of conflict, then peace prevail. The problem is on most conflict the benefit for peace is uncertain while the cost of stopping the conflict is certain (and what if the enemy attack after we un-armed and un-prepared?)

My article in Paras Indonesia (click here) discuss the impact of Nobel Peace Prize nomination for President Yudhoyono and former Finnish President Martti. I put the nomination as additional incentive that change the payoff for peace from government side. The institutional and political side of the Aceh Peace process was analzyed with game theoritical framework in my older article (click here).

So, should we change the slogan from “give peace a chance” to “give peace a nomination” ?

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