Economist Daniel Hamermesh has an entertaining game theoretical analysis of Han Solo’s decision to fight for the rebels against the Empire back in the first Star Wars movie. The analysis is a bit of a joke, but there is a serious point here. And not the one that Hamermesh emphasizes:
In the original Star Wars movie (Episode IV), Luke Skywalker pleads with Han Solo to help the Rebel Alliance battle the Empire, but Han refuses and a disgusted Luke storms off. Chewbacca, being a student of game theory, lays out the payoff bimatrix to Han in their “conversation” [Note by IS: there follows a payoff matrix in which it is clear that the Rebels will maximize their payoff by fighting regardless of what Han does, and that Han, in turn can increase both his payoff and that of the Rebels’ if he chooses to fight too]....
Han understands that the Rebels have a dominant strategy of fighting. Knowing that, although he has no dominant strategy, and being the self-centered person he has already shown himself to be, Han realizes he is better off choosing to aid the Rebels and fight. (Fight, Fight) is a Nash equilibrium and also a Pareto optimum....
Hamermesh downplays the real game theoretical reason why it’s rational for Han to fight: His contribution is likely to be decisive to the outcome. After all, he’s got “the fastest ship in the galaxy,” and it can make mincemeat of Imperial tie-fighters (as we already saw earlier in the movie). Hamermesh’s payoff matrix implicitly represents this by positing that if Han fights, he increases his own payoff from 5 to 8, and that of the Rebels from 7 to 10. In truth, however, Han’s contribution might well make the difference between victory and total defeat (as in fact happens). Moreover, the speed of the Millenium Falcon minimizes the risk that Han takes should things go badly. He has a good chance of running away unscathed. I’ll ignore the fact that he also times his arrival at the battle perfectly, such that it’s clear exactly what he has to do to ensure victory at little risk to himself; if it looked like the Rebels were going to lose, he could have just as easily have destroyed Luke’s fighter instead of Vader’s and then claimed he was there to help the Empire all along.
Now the serious part: Consider how different is the situation of most people suffering under oppressive governments from Han Solo’s. If any one of them tries to rebel, it is highly unlikely that their actions will have a decisive impact on the regime’s fate. On the other hand, they, unlike Han, don’t have the Millenium Falcon to escape in. If they defy the government, they will likely be caught and punished. Of course if all or most of them resist at once, they might well overthrow the state. But it is hard to coordinate a mass simultaneous uprising in a repressive regime, and the strong incentive for any individual is to free ride on the efforts of others. Ironically, the more repressive the regime, the more severe the collective action problem involved. That’s why a mass movement to overthrow the totalitarian North Korean government is far less likely than one that overthrows a run of the mill dictatorship that oppresses the people much less.
This point also explains why most repressive regimes that are overthrown fall either because they were taken down by a small clique of insiders (who can make individually decisive contributions because of their privileged positions of power) or by a mass uprising that occurs because the regime itself begins to liberalize and the people begin to think that dissent won’t be punished anywhere near as ruthlessly as before (this is what happened in Eastern Europe and the USSR in 1989–91, as Timur Kuran showed in a brilliant book). Sometimes, as in Iran this year, the people imagine the regime is less committed to repression than it actually is, and their resulting protests are brutally suppressed.
This analysis has many important implications. But I will focus on just one. The next time someone tells you that Soviet-era Russians, Iranians, North Koreans or any other population living under severe oppression actually support their rulers and their policies or are “just getting the government they deserve,” remember how different their situation is from Han Solo’s. And ask yourself what you would do in their place if any act of dissent you undertook was both highly unlikely to make a difference and likely to draw severe punishment such as death or imprisonment. Some courageous dissidents are brave enough to act despite such odds. But it’s understandable if most people aren’t.
That’s not too say that some people don’t genuinely support nasty governments and believe their propaganda. Indoctrination and censorship are often effective. However, the mere absence of an effective rebellion or large-scale dissident movement is not proof that a majority or anything close to one actually supports their rulers. Indeed, the existence of a massive apparatus of repression and censorship is a strong sign that the rulers themselves do not believe they have popular support, and want to make sure that no one can become a potential Han Solo.
UPDATE: This isn’t essential to the analysis. But Han Solo, unlike most potential dissidents in repressive societies, stood to gain purely individual benefits from fighting that he could not get if the regime were defeated without his help. For example, he greatly increased his chances of getting to marry Princess Leia and becoming a high-ranking officer in the Rebel Alliance. In Return of the Jedi, we learn that he has been given the rank of general, which is extremely rapid advancement indeed from his previous position as an impecunious smuggler. Marrying a princess and becoming a general are not likely outcomes for your average potential North Korean or Iranian dissident.
tvk says:
You are oversimplifying things here and making it seem like oppressive regimes should always amp up the oppression. This is not true. Why did the Soviet Union liberalize? Because those in power had very little choice. If you oppress the people enough so they are literally starving and have nothing to lose, then you will also get mass rebellion since the threat of punishment loses force (since without rebellion the peasants will die of starvation instead). The point is that there is a third alternative reason why oppressive regimes fall: instead of liberalizing and getting mass rebellion, they fail to liberalize and get mass rebellion.
This third alternative happens less in the modern era of humanitarian food aid and foreign powers fearful of “instability,” but it should not be ignored. The reason that their empires collapsed surely was not that then Mongols and Assyrians weren’t brutal enough in suppressing revolts.
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December 22, 2009, 3:56 amJames N. Gibson says:
I’ll add a few examples to this discussion.
In Germany, in the early 1950s there was a small scale revolt against the Soviet occupation. The repressions wasn’t just severe, but a superb example of Stalin style dictatorship in which not only were people shot and those not sentenced to 1,000 years in prison, but any Soviet soldier who didn’t obey the order to shoot was also shot by firing squad. Here you not only scare to death your opponents, but you keep your own troops inline with the same threat.
In Cambodia anyone could be sent to the re-education camps for any infraction of the law. People knew what that mean’t and yet what could they do about it. To maintain control, the executioners were poor people taken from villages who were made a part of the crimes of the government that took power obstensibly to empower these poor people. In the end this government only fell by the intervention of another Communist government who couldn’t stand the political bad press the Cambodian government was giving the international communist movement.
I’ll finish with the French revolution, in which the revolutionary government had to maintain state sponsored terrorism to prevent a counter revolution. In that climate anyoe could and was denounced and sent to their deaths. In the end the head of this made carnage (Robespierre) made the mistake of stating he would denounce members of the assembly in the next session. When no one knows who will be on the list, the result are strange bedfellows. He was denounced himself in the next session, not even being allowed to speak.
The flip side is Iran under the Shah. I have met people who worked as contractors in Iran before the revolution and view him as a real cold blooded dictator. But he didn’t violently prevent the return of Khomeni and in fact was liberalizing the nation. All this was halted by Khomeni and the government the American progressive left wanted in power in the late 70s has now admitted to having beaten to death people arrested in the recent protests. I have no numbers but I wouldn’t be surprised if the present Iranian regime has killed more Iranians this year then the Shah did in his last decade.
So yes, in real dictatorships, the only chance for the people under it is either a coup from within the government, or an invasion from without. But governments that show some liberalization have the chance for positive change, but only if the people don’t press too hard and create a revolution from which an even worse government could rise.
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December 22, 2009, 4:07 amtvk says:
James Gibson, as per my post above, it is not the “only” chance of either coup within the government or invasion without. For a counter-example to your examples, consider the 1917 Russian Revolution. Basically, if conditions are miserable enough, yes you will get mass revolt; and failure to liberalize produces such miserable conditions. Of course, no modern nation will allow North Korea to sink into sufficiently deep misery that is required to incite revolt there.
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December 22, 2009, 4:16 amIlya Somin says:
You are oversimplifying things here and making it seem like oppressive regimes should always amp up the oppression. This is not true. Why did the Soviet Union liberalize? Because those in power had very little choice.
Actually, they had plenty of choice if their only goal was to stay in power. They could have simply kept on repressing, as North Korea and Cuba’s communist rulers did, and if they did so, they would probably still be in power today. They lost power because they had other priorities, such as strengthening the economy and trying to maintain the USSR’s status as a superpower.
If you oppress the people enough so they are literally starving and have nothing to lose, then you will also get mass rebellion since the threat of punishment loses force (since without rebellion the peasants will die of starvation instead).
That may be true. But you have to go very far before a majority of the people literally have nothing to lose. Consider that the Chinese, Russians, and Cambodians didn’t rebel despite the fact that the government was actually slaughtering a large fraction of the population.
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December 22, 2009, 4:30 amIlya Somin says:
For a counter-example to your examples, consider the 1917 Russian Revolution. Basically, if conditions are miserable enough, yes you will get mass revolt
If you mean the Bolshevik coup of November 1917, it was not a “mass revolt” but an uprising by a small faction against a very weak (and not very repressive) government.
If you mean the February Revolution that overthrew the czar, again you had a regime greatly weakened by a massive German invasion and a losing war. Moreover, the late czarist regime did in fact allow considerable open dissent, including by liberal and socialist opposition parties. A more repressive policy might have kept the czar in power longer, though it might also have led to even more crushing defeats at the hands of the Germans.
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December 22, 2009, 4:33 amJames N. Gibson says:
I think your over simplifying the subject.
Who cares if the peasants starve, it just means more food and land to distribute to your faithful followers. One way to maintain a certain amount of public support is giving your faithful priviledges in the form of better food, land, money, etc.
And as for the Soviet Union, they basically stripped the eastern europe of food and other items to supply Moscovites with better food and items at low cost. The result was revolutions in first Germany, then Hungary, then Czechoslovakia which were brutally put down. It was Poland were Russia seemed to finally loose its nerve which set-off a chain reaction leading to the fall of the wall and then the break-up of the Soviet Union.
The Mongols are a terrible example to use for this argument. The Mongols, like the Huns before them, simply did not have the manpower to control such a vast empire. The result was they scorched the earth, killing every man woman and child along their line of march. This allowed them to concentrate their manpower are certain key points while still trying to expand into Egypt and Europe. Eventually, the empire suffered civil war over succession and then the Black Death devastated the empire.
As for the Assyrians they too took to much territory based on their manpower. They never could consolidate these territories and that left them with enemies on all their borders. Eventually they were defeated by these nations, lead by Babylon which the Assyrians leveled and then rebuilt earlier.
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December 22, 2009, 4:40 amTruePath says:
I think your game theoretic analysis is highly suspect in this case.
For starters humans have evolved a variety of hardwired commitment strategies to avoid this kind of collective action problem.
I mean let’s apply the same analysis to crossing no man’s land in WWI or being in the front rank of the confederate charge at Gettysburg. The individual at the front of the column has a virtual certainty of death so if we are applying a game theoretic analysis we would conclude that they should always refuse to advance. While this is the equilibrium in the extreme situations I described above refusing to advance is actually strictly dominant since they are strictly more likely to die as a result of advancing.
The failure in this analysis is assuming that people’s payoffs are easily described in terms of harms/benefits like death, monetary reward etc.. Probably exactly for this reason we’ve evolved powerful group identity mechanisms that cause people to value not betraying that group more than their own life.
Now consider this in the context of oppressive regimes. It very well could be the case that particularly vicious regimes further cement this kind of loyalty to the resistance. Thus it’s far from clear that the equilibrium solution for these individuals is to stay quite. It can genuinely be true that people would rather choose certain death than to defect from the resistance.
—
As for Han participating in the initial revolt was clearly in his best interest as he could always improve his position by defecting to the empire if things went south after gaining the rebel’s trust so at least participating in the initial attack on the death star surely made sense.
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December 22, 2009, 4:44 amTruePath says:
Also another point I think the above analysis fails to consider is the following:
Since many people value the welfare of others (spouses, children, etc..) above their own an oppressive regime can only maintain this kind of deterrence by adopting a policy of harming “innocent” parties likely to be dear to the insurgents.
However, this is dangerous for the regime because it risks creating a class of people with no incentive not to revolt. Indeed this policy can actually let single individuals push large groups of people into a new insurgent equilibrium.
For example: Suppose I know if I revolt the regime will kill my brothers and their families. Now my brothers may not want to risk revolution but I know if I revolt their incentives suddenly favor revolting as well (they are fucked anyway). This will in turn tend to dispose me more towards revolt as I will think it more likely to succeed.
In other words the very knife the regime holds to the people’s throats is also the knife the insurgency uses (without being blamed) to encourage loyalty.
At the very least this vastly complicates matters.
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December 22, 2009, 4:55 amArkady says:
A story I once read.
Khrushchev was giving a speech before the Russian parliament in which he denounced Stalin’s oppression.
Someone in the audience yelled out, “Well, why didn’t you do something then?”
Khrushchev stopped and said “Who just said that?”
Utter silence.
Khrushchev: “That’s why.”
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December 22, 2009, 5:33 amMarian Kechlibar says:
The Soviet leaders were not losing nerves over Poland. They would definitely crush the Polish Solidarnosc militarily were it not for the fact that Soviet army was engaged in Afghanistan at the same time, and the remaining forces, while still numerous, were not of high enough quality to subdue a nation of the size of Poland if it actually chose to fight.
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December 22, 2009, 5:43 amWidmerpool says:
I don’t want to add to the pile on to TVK but I just couldn’t let this little observation pass by unremarked:
Of course, no modern nation will allow North Korea to sink into sufficiently deep misery that is required to incite revolt there.
There is plenty of evidence of mass starvation occurring in North Korea right now (think of the massive state-sponsored starvations which lasted over a decade both in large swaths Russia and China under communist rule). Starvation is a very effective tool for preventing revolt. Of course, TVK, I’m leaving you the opening to counter-argue that such mass starvations–all by modern nations–do not lead to sufficient “deep misery” since revolts did not occur in any of them during the starvations. Good luck with that.
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December 22, 2009, 7:27 amMarian Kechlibar says:
One more comment from me...
Almost always, the crucial component of a successful regime change is unwillingness of the armed forces to protect the status quo and shoot into the protesters.
The Shah fell in 1979 because the Iranian army was unwilling to drown the streets in blood. Khamenei did not fall in June 2009, because the Basijis were perfectly willing to drown the streets in blood, and no other armed force of Iran was willing or able to fight against them.
From this point of view, it is quite interesting, though not verified yet, that during the Qom demonstrations that exploded yesterday after Montazeri’s funeral, the regular police of Qom actually protected the demonstrants from plainclothesmen and Basijis who were trying to hurt them again. If this is true, and if this pattern spreads, then Islamic Republic is truly dead.
That also explains why this will not happen in North Korea. The society is much more isolated there than almost anywhere else in the world, and the armed forces have no choice but to obey the politbyro.
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December 22, 2009, 7:47 amcorneille1640 says:
I think Mr. Somin is right to say that just because there is not a revolt does not, by itself, mean that the people accept a repressive regime. But it seems to me that even totalitarian regimes cannot live on repression/oppression alone. When a state becomes truly predatory–e.g., Maoist China (Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution), Stalinist Russia, North Korea today–it can’t long last without some return to moderation. Deng Xiaoping’s China was still repressive, but its liberalization eased some of the more repressive features of the PRC. Krushchev’s “reforms” did not end political repression, but it was probably a little easier to live under Krushchev than under Stalin. North Korea....well, it’s North Korea and I don’t have an answer to that one.
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December 22, 2009, 8:10 amtanarg says:
And what will happen in the U.S., if push comes to shove?
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December 22, 2009, 8:12 amMarian Kechlibar says:
If people accepted some regime, it would not have to be totalitarian/repressive in the first place.
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December 22, 2009, 8:14 amHan Solo and the Economics of Rebellion Against Repressive Regimes | Liberal Whoppers says:
[...] post: Han Solo and the Economics of Rebellion Against Repressive Regimes Share this [...]
Assistant Village Idiot says:
Holodomor
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December 22, 2009, 8:42 amTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Han Solo and the Economics of Rebellion Against Repressive Regimes -- Topsy.com says:
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Thursday Bram, Eugene Volokh. Eugene Volokh said: Han Solo and the Economics of Rebellion Against Repressive Regimes: Economist Daniel Hamermesh has an entertain.. http://bit.ly/7czVqD [...]
Hugh says:
Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.
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December 22, 2009, 9:18 amA Conservative Teacher says:
This assumes that Han Solo was in fact ‘the good guy’ and that the empire was an oppressive regime. In The Case for the Empire, by Jonathan V. Last, the argument is made that the Empire was the ‘good guy’ and that Han Solo was simply a lawbreaking thug who wanted to put in place a small group of elitists (Jedi and Royalty) to rule the galaxy. In that case, his behavior represents more of an insider coup more so than a popularly supported uprising.
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December 22, 2009, 9:21 amTruePath says:
Except the point is made in an inconsistant and unconvincing fashion. You can’t consistently object to the elitist anti-democratic nature of the jedi while excusing the empire as a ‘benign’ dictatorship. Either you evaluate both based on outcomes or you evaluate both based on some political philosophy that stipulates some fundamental right to representation.
Moreover, the idea that the jedi are somehow less meritocratic than the empire because only people with midi-chlorians can become jedi is absurd. It’s not some kind of discrimination, that is simply the biological manifestation of a certain ability. If we found out that IQ was strongly heritable it wouldn’t magically make our math/science programs (or the empire’s schools) any more or less meritocratic.
Ohh yah and there is the whole bit with the empire’s willingness to destroy whole planets to enforce their rule. But that’s only a minor consideration compared to the fact that in Lucas’s fictional universe the Jedi are stipulatively on the side of good. Unlike in our morally cloudy universe sufficiently advanced jedi have the supernatural ability to directly perceive good and evil.
I mean the omniscient narrator states that the rebels are on the side of good at the beginning of episode IV what more do you want?
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December 22, 2009, 10:05 amwws says:
this thread was going good until I read the word “midi-chlorians” and now I am seized with a deep and burning urge to beat George Lucas to death with a talking Jar Jar Binks doll.
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December 22, 2009, 11:18 amApperception says:
It’d be neat if the Jedi didn’t try to assassinate the Chancellor, or discriminate against religious minorities (the force is good except when it’s not; kill the Sith!), and all that. That’d help make it clear that the Rebel cause was just, instead of merely a way to reinstate the oppressive theocracy we saw at the beginning of the series...
Also, the TIE fighters were letting the Falcon get away, so I wouldn’t take their performance there as entirely accurate.
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December 22, 2009, 11:19 amys says:
Lasting long is really a matter of successful succession. Stalin and Mao did not groom and designate a legitimate and loyal successor. In each case a power struggle ensued and a less rigid alternative arose. In each case there were vilified losing groups (the anti-party group, the gang of four). Indeed, Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin was also a tool, albeit a risky one, in that struggle. Kim Il-Sung was able to put up a viable successor and you can see the results. Note also that perestroika started when a bunch of Gensecs died out.
In case of Khomeini, there was some dissent brewing on the part of Montazeri (just deceased), but it was too early in the revolution and he was shafted aside. Somewhat like Stalin was able to consolidate power after the death of Lenin.
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December 22, 2009, 11:50 ammooglar says:
The argument in the “Case for the Empire” article is even worse than TruePath indicates. The author uses the dysfunction of the Republic as an excuse for it being okay for Palpatine to overthrow it to bring “order” to the galaxy, but ignores the fact that Palpatine is the principle cause of the dysfunction. For instance, one of the main reasons the Senate is unable to help Naboo when it is invaded by the Trade Federation is because Palpatine has the Senate “bogged down in procedures,” and the reason the Chancellor thinks he can help but ultimately can’t is because he is the victim of “baseless” accusations of corruption that Palpatine himself started. (Episode I).
In essence, the author’s argument is that if you can create chaos in a democratic system by illegal and immoral means, then you have the right afterwards to restore order by becoming a despot. Or, in other words, the Nazis had the right to turn the Weimar Republic into a Fascist dictatorship because they had the nerve to burn down the Reichstag. I don’t think most of us think that willingness to create chaos and destroy a society gives one any kind of moral rights whatsoever, let alone the right to become ultimate ruler.
And, also, the author claims that it was okay for the Empire to kill Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru because they were harboring Rebel fugitives and were therefore “traitors.” Of course, all Owen and Beru did was buy a couple of droids to help out on their farm. They didn’t know the droids had any connection to the Rebellion and, in fact, weren’t traitors at all. Hell, Luke only found out about the droids’ connection to the Rebels about the same time as Owen and Beru were killed, and he had decided at that point not to go off and join the Rebels! It was only the fact that the Empire killed his family (in the name or “order,” I guess) that Luke decided to join the Rebellion at all!
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December 22, 2009, 11:52 amys says:
And in case of perestroika there were also hardline losers (Ligachev) and after a show of “weakness” Gorbachev himself. He truly did not understand what he was unleashing, believing he was just rationalizing the system over which he presided.
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December 22, 2009, 11:54 amkumquat says:
To further pile upon “The Case for Empire”...
Also, unlike the divine-right Jedi, the Empire is a meritocracy. [...]those who show promise are promoted, often rapidly. In “The Empire Strikes Back” Captain Piett is quickly promoted to admiral when his predecessor “falls down on the job.”
*facepalm*
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December 22, 2009, 12:18 pmVader says:
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
Who hasn’t wanted to choke the living sin out of a stupid subordinate?
Veni, Vader, Vinci
(“I came, I choked everyone I saw, I conquered”)
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December 22, 2009, 12:27 pmEli Rabett says:
Han Solo is a smuggler. He would be crushed by the Empire.
That simple enough for you?
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December 22, 2009, 1:11 pmMikee says:
The Empire deserved to be destroyed, just because:
1. They built a space vessel the size of a small planetary satellite and failed to shield their exhaust ports, which they knew were a critical area of weakness. The funniest line in all the Star Wars movies has to be Mons Motha solemnly declaring that “Many Bothans died to bring us this information.”
2. The Death Star let another space vessel (the Millennium Falcon) approach an ongoing battle right on their front porch, without notifying their own side of its approach. Don’t they have AWACS in the future?
Hans Solo was also hot for Princess Leia, which may have influenced his game theorizing.
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December 22, 2009, 1:41 pmRyan Waxx says:
You’re right!
The fact that people starving in Soviet client states did not arm themselves and march hundreds of miles to overthrow the central government that was starving them is proof that miserable conditions can’t produce revolts in smaller countries! Just like the failure of starvation to produce a revolt each and every time it happens proves that it can never do so!
I learn so much from VC commenters.
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December 22, 2009, 2:35 pmInternational FInance Lawyer says:
For a vastly more sophisticated theoretical model for the real world:
Acemoglu, Daron, and Robinson, James A., Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy
It’s just a beginning model, but it’s a hell of a beginning.
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December 22, 2009, 3:40 pmMatthew Carberry says:
(without checking sources)
Solo wasn’t just a jumped up smuggler making General, he was a graduate of the Imperial Academy, a trained officer.
He picked up rank quickly, sure, but at least he had the background for it. Compared at least to some farm kid from the back of nowhere whose sole selling point is the ability to lift rocks.
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December 22, 2009, 4:10 pmJesse says:
One problem with this analysis is that the Empire identified both Han and his ship while he was on the Death Star. Before Han met Luke and Obi-Wan, bounty hunters were hostile towards him, Jabba wass unfriendly but willing to negotiate (remember, Han tells Greedo that he’s on his way to see Jabba, presumably to work out a repayment schedule), and the Empire and the Rebellion were both ignorant of his existence, and therefore indifferent towards him.
Once the Millenium Falcon is forced to land on the Death Star, he became a member of the Rebellion as far as the Empire is concerned (essentially making him part of Truepath’s “class of people with no incentive not to revolt”). He can use his reward money to pay off Jabba, which removes the threat from the bounty hunters, but Jabba can’t protect him from the Empire; only the Rebels are strong enough for that. As long as the Empire believes him to be a member of the Rebellion, his only option is to actually become a member of the Rebellion in order to gain their protection. If Han has a decision to make it’s not if he should fight, but when. Remember, whichever side wins this battle, both the Empire and the Rebellion
Since the Rebels have chosen to fight now, Han has to fight with them in order to maintain his value. By holding back at first he is gambling that they won’t lose — which would leave him with no protection, but has a slight chance of convincing the Empire that he’s not really a threat — but also won’t win until he arrives to shift the balance — which significantly increases his value to the Rebels, while not making the Empire hate him any more than they already do.
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December 22, 2009, 4:11 pmIlya Somin says:
I mean let’s apply the same analysis to crossing no man’s land in WWI or being in the front rank of the confederate charge at Gettysburg. The individual at the front of the column has a virtual certainty of death so if we are applying a game theoretic analysis we would conclude that they should always refuse to advance. While this is the equilibrium in the extreme situations I described above refusing to advance is actually strictly dominant since they are strictly more likely to die as a result of advancing.
actually, only a minority of those who charged at Gettysburg actually died as a result, and they could not know that the charge would fail in advance. Same with those who fought in WWI. By contrast, both Civil War and WWI soldiers knew that refusal of orders in the middle of a battle would likely result in execution or long prison terms.
The failure in this analysis is assuming that people’s payoffs are easily described in terms of harms/benefits like death, monetary reward etc.. Probably exactly for this reason we’ve evolved powerful group identity mechanisms that cause people to value not betraying that group more than their own life.
Yet very few people actually seem to act on these principles — perhaps because, in prehistoric times, most of those whose instincts of that type really are stronger than self-preservation were less likely to successfully reproduce before they died.
Now consider this in the context of oppressive regimes. It very well could be the case that particularly vicious regimes further cement this kind of loyalty to the resistance. Thus it’s far from clear that the equilibrium solution for these individuals is to stay quite. It can genuinely be true that people would rather choose certain death than to defect from the resistance.
Some undoubtedly do feel that way. But there has never been an oppressive regime in all of history where that was true of more than a small minority.
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December 22, 2009, 4:28 pmIlya Somin says:
The fact that people starving in Soviet client states did not arm themselves and march hundreds of miles to overthrow the central government that was starving them is proof that miserable conditions can’t produce revolts in smaller countries! Just like the failure of starvation to produce a revolt each and every time it happens proves that it can never do so!
North Korea is a relatively small country, as is Cuba, Albania, Cambodia and many other oppressive despotisms where mass starvation didn’t lead to revolt because of collective action problems like the ones I describe in the post.
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December 22, 2009, 4:32 pmEli Rabett says:
Famine is not a recent thing, and famines in China were quite common well into the 20th century.
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December 22, 2009, 5:01 pmThe River Temoc, In Winter says:
Why did the Soviet Union liberalize? Because those in power had very little choice. If you oppress the people enough so they are literally starving and have nothing to lose, then you will also get mass rebellion...
Mass starvation was not, however, the case in the Soviet Union of the 1980s. There were shortages of consumer goods, and the famous queues, and so forth; but there was not mass starvation on the order of the Ukrainian famines of the 1930s, or in China during the Great Leap Forward, or in North Korea today.
It was more of a case of the average Soviet consumer beginning to understand that life in the West was much better than in the Soviet Union and wanting a piece of that prosperity.
At the same time, the average Soviet consumer was well enough off that the notion of “shared sacrifice in the name of communism” began to ring follow. In the 1950s and 1960s consumers might have accepted a poor living standard on the ground that the Communist Party won the war. By the 1980s, that was no longer true.
Concurrently, falling oil prices meant that the Soviet regime could not satisfy consumer demand (which was in any case incompatible with a centralized economy) while simultaneously keeping defense spending as high as it was.
The Soviet Union, in short, was a textbook case of the idea that richer societies tend to become more democratic.
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December 22, 2009, 5:10 pmArkady says:
Well, one of the other problems with mass starvation and revolution is that the putative revolutionaries are pretty fagged out from lack of food. Kinda tough to storm the walls when you don’t have enough energy to climb the ladder.
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December 22, 2009, 5:32 pmLeo Marvin says:
Ilya further cements his credentials as the uberest of uber nerds.
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December 22, 2009, 7:15 pmScott B says:
Please don’t dismiss the discussion between Anakin and Padme’ in Episode II while sitting in a field on Naboo. She effectively says the Galactic Senate votes on ideas, but not everyone likes the outcome. To which Anakin replies someone wise should force those not in agreement to obey the majority.
It sounds a little too familiar with 60 American Senate votes and the current President what with watch lists for dissent and all.
I’m just sayin’...
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December 22, 2009, 8:00 pmRich Rostrom says:
Marian Kechlibar says: The Soviet leaders... would... crush the... Solidarnosc militarily were it not for the fact that Soviet army was engaged in Afghanistan...
Sorry, but only a small part of the Soviet army was engaged in Afghanistan: less than 120,000 men at peak, out of over 2.8 million in service.
The collapse of Soviet Communism was ultimately a failure of nerve on the part of the rulers. They ceased to believe in their own authority, at least to the point where they would kill rebels in large numbers or incur widespread disapproval. Such breakdowns often precede revolutions: the Shah was old, sick, and denounced by the U.S. which he had viewed as his protector. Louis XVI ordered his Swiss Guards to cease firing on the Paris mob that was storming the Tuileries Palace. The Soviet-bloc gerontocrats were old, and they hadn’t had to kill anybody much for many years. Nicholas II was demoralized by years of defeat in war. James II lost his nerve in 1688.
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December 22, 2009, 8:38 pmJohn Moore says:
This sounds very much like wishful thinking, not backed by history. Stalinist Russia only started its long (and very incomplete) journey towards a liberal society with the death of Stalin. North Korea seems to be lasting quite well, after 50 years of keeping its people in utter misery.
Ilya Somin writes:
Having asked myself that, the answer wasn’t very pretty. I think modern totalitarianism may be a form of organization that cannot be defeated internally, and only goes away from either outside intervention or by the choice of its elites (e.g. USSR, China).
Iran, in this analysis, is certainly vulnerable to overthrow — precisely because it is not totalitarian. The government is authoritarian and evil, but not even close to Stalinist. Consider, for example, the difference in freedom of speech and access to information between Iranians and North Koreans (or Russians under Stalin).
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December 22, 2009, 9:06 pmCrank says:
This is the only problem I have with this analysis — the assumption that Chewbacca is acting strategically. In fact, the evidence drawn from the earlier films and books strongly suggests that Chewbacca is a committed ideological opponent of the Empire dating back to its destruction of his homeworld of Kashyyyk and enslavement of his people. Thus, Han’s game theory analysis will be strongly influenced by the fact that his co-pilot will hate his guts if he backs away and will probably rip his head off if he sides with the Empire.
I suggest that he let the Wookie win.
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December 22, 2009, 10:21 pmTRE says:
Excellent post as usual, Mr. Somin.
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December 22, 2009, 10:27 pmTruePath says:
Yes, but once you’re ordered over the top of the trenches or told to rush the union artillery you have something on the order of 90% certainty of death. Yet your chances of death or jail if you just turn around and run the other way are almost surely lower. Even if your side is dead set on executing people who desert during battle at least it will be harder to shoot you since your behind your own lines.
My point wasn’t that this kind of analysis said everyone would go AWOL during basic training. Rather that in fact people will take an obviously greater chance of dying rather than dessert their country or group.
Yet very few people actually seem to act on these principles — perhaps because, in prehistoric times, most of those whose instincts of that type really are stronger than self-preservation were less likely to successfully reproduce before they died.
I disagree, I think people do it all the time (how many people ran the other way instead of going into no man’s land). Mostly, however, they do it for their platoon, family, or some other small group to which they have loyalty thus the reason it’s less effective in combating tyranny. The scale is just too large.
Only if ‘defect’ means ‘not passionately participate’. If defect means ratting out their friends and neighbors or kicking their brother to the curb because he speaks out against the regime.
I guess my point is just that in order to offer sufficient deterrence the regime ends up pushing on those bonds of friendship and family people really will die rather than betray. Thus small scale disobedience snowballs into more extreme anti-regime positions as people find themselves sucked into the resistance by the actions of friends and family (first you hide your brother who is an insurgent, then you give him some money since your already dead if you’re caught, then you have to ask your close friend for help avoiding arrest).
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Also I would point out the paucity of succesfull insurgencies against tyrannical regimes doesn’t actually show they are implausible/ineffective. I mean if, as I argue above, the commitment to insurgency builds over time in the population then the dictators will always see it coming and make some show of reform in a last desperate attempt to hang onto power or their life. Of course if they don’t their generals will stage a coup and do so themselves.
So a successful insurgency would look exactly like the ways despots do lose power, internal coups, internal reforms, etc..
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December 23, 2009, 6:07 amBig Daddy Snowman (link roundup) - Fashion and T-Shirt Blog says:
[...] 3. Han Solo and the Economics of Rebellion Against Repressive Regimes. [...]
Star Wars and Rebel Game Theory « Students For Liberty says:
[...] week The Volokh Conspiracy commented on a recent New York Times post by Daniel Hamermesh in which he applies game theory to Han [...]