Political scientist Dan Drezner has an interesting essay in Foreign Policy magazine that explores how different international relations theories would cope with an invasion of zombies. It’s based on his forthcoming book Theories of International Politics and Zombies, scheduled to be published by the Princeton University Press. Drezner analyzes the possible responses to a zombie invasion predicted by realist, liberal, and neoconservative theories of international relations. Great stuff!
Unfortunately, he doesn’t consider the possible predictions to be derived from libertarian theories of politics. So I will take a (merely metaphorical) stab at it myself:
I would expect many governments to try to use zombies for their own nefarious ends. Zombies might be an excellent tool of repression for authoritarian states. Government efforts to combat the zombie menace might well be hampered by public choice problems. Various interest groups would surely exploit the zombie crisis as an opportunity to lobby for special benefits for themselves under the pretext of combatting the zombies. For example, farm subsidies for dead farmers will surely go up, as lobbyists argue that the dead farmers might turn into zombies themselves unless they are paid off. In democracies, anti-zombie policy might also be compromised by widespread voter ignorance of zombies and irrationality about them. I venture to predict that voters are likely to be even more ignorant and irrational about zombies than they are on most other policy issues.
Finally, I want to congratulate Drezner on his success in persuading a major academic press to publish a book on this subject. It is a great inspiration to all academics who love science fiction and fantasy literature. As soon as I finish my own forthcoming books on political ignorance and the Kelo case, I hope to try to follow up Drezner’s achievement. Perhaps it’s not too early to to see if Princeton University Press might be interested in publishing my proposed book on the law and economics of orcs? As numerous fantasy novels will tell you, they’re a much more imminent threat than zombies.
UPDATE: In the comments, Dan Drezner writes:
While the excerpt in FP does not address the issues you raise, I promise that the book does discuss the ways in which regime type, interest groups and public opinion would shape/constrain counter-zombie policies.
I can’t wait to read all about it! This will surely be the definitive social science work on zombies.
UPDATE #2: Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg responds to this post here:
I think Somin is letting his commitment to libertarian theory overtake his judgment. It is fundamental to all zombie scenarios that efforts to “weaponize” zombies fail almost immediately. To be sure, governments would try to use zombies for their own nefarious ends, but these efforts would only hasten the advance of the zombie menace….
I will have more to say about this. But let me just throw it out there: a true zombie invasion will trump traditional international theory (never mind farm subsidies!). The computer modeling of zombie proliferation alone would convince realists, neocons, even the vast majority pacifists to either liquidate the zombies at all costs or to bunker down for their own protection. Zombies, quite simply, would be a game-changer.
I think Goldberg may be letting his commitment to conservatism overtake his judgment here. If you’ve ever played Dungeons and Dragons, you know that tyrants have many ways to control zombies and use them for for their nefarious purposes. Even if such efforts are doomed to failure, that doesn’t mean they won’t be tried.
I’m also not convinced that a zombie invasion would necessarily trump all other considerations and suspend the usual tendencies of political systems. In the past, interest groups exploited even the greatest crises (including the Great Depression) to lobby for special benefits. I’m not sure a zombie crisis would be any different. Moreover, Goldberg implicitly assumes that zombies would spread quickly and endanger everyone more or less equally. In reality, their spread might be uneven and some places may be more at risk than others. This would tend to undercut efforts to unite against them.
wm13 says:
Also, Professor Somin might suggest that the current members of our government, though alive, are not as alive as he thinks they should be, and that the best remedy would be to affirmatively vote in the zombies.
And, if there were a young, cool zombie (the Edward of zombies), we could expect the staff of Reason to vote for him en masse, on the grounds that it is better to be ruled by a cool zombie than a living dork.
June 22, 2010, 9:02 pmSteve says:
Well, the only important thing is that you cut or blow a zombie’s head off.
Given this hard and fast rule, nations with strict anti-gun or anti-weapon laws will find themselves up a certain creek without a paddle. At that point, I think international relations with said countries become irrelevant.
But I’m just biased this way.
June 22, 2010, 9:11 pmDan Drezner says:
Ilya,
While the excerpt in FP does not address the issues you raise, I promise that the book does discuss the ways in which regime type, interest groups and public opinion would shape/constrain counter-zombie policies.
Dan
June 22, 2010, 9:18 pmIlya Somin says:
While the excerpt in FP does not address the issues you raise, I promise that the book does discuss the ways in which regime type, interest groups and public opinion would shape/constrain counter-zombie policies.
I can’t wait to read about it!
June 22, 2010, 9:20 pmDavid Welker says:
You know, the book initially sounds very lame. It is like, this can’t be serious.
BUT, you know what, I guess there is nothing wrong with combining education and entertainment, even with a major academic press. Why not? It is not like readers will not come away with a better understanding of international relations concepts. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they remembered the concepts better than if realistic examples had been used instead.
So, who knows. Good luck to Dan Drezner. Maybe his book will be amusing enough to be assigned in foreign relations classes to students with short attention spans.
Here is the real risk. If Drezner’s book bombs, then it might do real damage to a new genre that might actually be cool. No pressure Mr. Drezner, but maybe more rides on you writing a good book than you realize… =)
OTOH, one could see how such outlandish fact patterns might actually overemphasize the power and importance of theory compared to, you know, actual historical facts. Perhaps IR theories don’t always fit so nicely when applied to the real world as when applied to zombie-land. But that is another issue.
June 22, 2010, 9:27 pmJaimeInTexas says:
ROFL … cannot wait for the movie!
Zombies would be considered unlawful combatants, right? I would hate to be a Gitmo prison guard.
June 22, 2010, 9:53 pmEH says:
I hope this is real, and I hope I can find someone to give it to as a gift.
June 22, 2010, 9:56 pmalkali says:
Many otherwise sensible policy discussions have been interrupted by pale lumbering creatures, mindlessly intoning: Maa–arket will solve …
June 22, 2010, 10:15 pmMonte Meals says:
It may be a little known fact but,
Chicago politics have been influenced by voters from the grave for decades.
June 22, 2010, 10:29 pmFreddy Hill says:
I for one would welcome our new zombie overlords.
June 22, 2010, 10:29 pmjuris imprudent says:
First, you need to understand that the audiences of both Beck and Olbermann already ARE zombies.
June 22, 2010, 10:30 pmJoe Triscari says:
Politics aside, any choice of policy that doesn’t involve aggressively slaughtering zombies on sight will result in the destruction of humanity.
June 22, 2010, 10:44 pmJustin Levine says:
Sorry, but the entire zombie genre has jumped the shark in the past year.
Its now just an overused and lazy way to try and bring attention to works that would otherwise be ignored.
(By the way, it sounds as though the zombie book ‘World War Z’ has already touched on what ‘Theories of International Politics and Zombies’ purports to cover. Only it does so as a fictional history book rather than a fictional political analysis book.)
In the near future, I’m sure we can look forward to these inspiring literary and film works:
Treasure Island: Zombie Invasion
Zombies on a Plane!
24 with Zombies (A government agent has 24 hours to stop an outbreak of zombie plague. All told in real time.)
Bonfire of the Vanities and Zombies (making the deep analogy between Wall Street and zombies takes a true creative genius, after all.)
Enough already. Lets give zombies, vampires and pirates a rest for a decade. Maybe then it will start to feel fresh gain.
(Glad to be the cynic in this instance. I’m sure the commenters of this thread will want to bash me in defending this genre now long-past its due date. Have at it!)
June 23, 2010, 12:11 amAlan K. Henderson says:
What kind of extraordinary rendition would work on a zombie?
June 23, 2010, 12:41 amNickM says:
Most legislators would be safe in case of zombie invasion. Zombies eat brains.
Nick
June 23, 2010, 2:22 amPubliusFL says:
The key question is: Romero-style zombies, or Return-style zombies?
You mean Plane Dead? Already been done.
June 23, 2010, 6:26 amkarrde says:
I’ve seen at least one internet wag say that if you are prepared for the rise of the undead and a horrendous Zombie Apocalypse, then you are ready for pretty much anything.
This was stated for the individual.
I wonder if it still applies at the national/international levels…
June 23, 2010, 7:48 ammaryanna says:
We know from WWZ that the most effective weapon against zombies is the lobotomizer – which is merely a sharpened shovel. I am unaware of any jurisdiction on earth that has outlawed shovels.
June 23, 2010, 8:43 amDavid says:
You torture a zombie by holding a nice fresh brain just out of its reach, but within its sight.
However, you can’t interrogate zombies. They have no information in their own brains. ;)
June 23, 2010, 9:09 amBZ says:
Actually the Posleen invader books by John Ringo have exhaustively mined the anti-zombie invasion military tactics genre (the Posleen were centauroid reptilians whose “normals” were very much like politicians, in that they were morons, led by a few God Kings). The problem with any “up-close and personal” solution is that it can be overwhelmed by numbers; you need an area denial weapon.
June 23, 2010, 9:10 amThe Axis of Evil Dead » First Thoughts | A First Things Blog says:
[...] The Volokh Conspiracy) Comments [...]
June 23, 2010, 9:31 amKamal says:
This is awesome. Out of curiosity, how would libertarians response to the zombie threat differ from that of Neoconservatism? I understand they would be paranoid, as stated by Ilya, but wouldn’t their response be the same?
June 23, 2010, 10:11 amrmd says:
But ninjas are still cool, right? Right?
June 23, 2010, 10:27 amClayton E. Cramer says:
My wife assigned students a paper on the most pressing problem confronting our society today. One student turned in a very serious paper about…zombies.
June 23, 2010, 11:17 amfalafalafocus says:
That’s precisely the problem that books like Mr. Drezner’s is attempting to address, isn’t it? After all, if zombies rested on their own, they wouldn’t be such a menace.
June 23, 2010, 11:36 ammaryanna says:
@BZ –
I like the comparison of the Poslena’ar to politicians – quite apt. However, there are significant differences between Ringo’s invaders and zombies. Namely that zombies do not have 3mm railguns and hypervelocity missile launchers, nor do they have flying god-kings with even more powerful weapons or any ability to build an advanced technological civilization.
Area denial weapons can be useful against zombies, but remember that the goal is to be able to move back in once the zombies are gone. I wonder if a neutron bomb would work against zombies?
June 23, 2010, 11:46 ammack says:
World War Z is an entertaining book as was the previous book the Zombie Survival Guide. But taking the impossible premise as a given (as with all works of fiction/fantasy/horror) – the weapons of choice and their practical application to the problem of zombies – is to put it charitably – poorly thought out and flies in the face of years of practical martial arts and weapons experience.
What has been established from real world experience is that firearms are a vastly more effective means of individual self-defense against all types of animal and human predators than any other type or types of weapon. An inexperienced person can be trained to rudimentarily use a firearm with significant effectiveness within a few minutes – effective use of most hand to hand combat weapons require significantly more training and also require much greater levels of physical strength, fitness, and coordination.
In the case of Zombies that require penetration of the skull to destroy the brain the force and accuracy needed to achieve that end is much more easily accomplished with a firearm and a bullet – than by any other means.
Mr. Brooks is a good writer but a poor self-defense or weapons expert. When the Zombie Apocalypse comes have a gun – there are after all an estimated 300,000,000 firearms in the US – so despite what Brooks says – I would much prefer to be in the US or Switzerland than most anywhere else when the zombies come. My 14 year old daughter and resident zombie and vampire expert assures me that we are well prepared for the zombie hoards as we also have a three foot crow bar, twelve pond sledge, and Twinkies – though I have to keep buying the Twinkies.
Personally I am somewhat skeptical about the Zombie Apocalypse – though I have my suspicions about the zombie status of most politicians – who if not brain dead themselves – seem to be inclined to support pro-zombie policies.
June 23, 2010, 1:02 pmInstapundit » Blog Archive » THE POLITICS of zombies. says:
[...] THE POLITICS of zombies. [...]
June 23, 2010, 1:43 pmA.W. says:
yeah, i am firmly in the camp of people who groan at the very idea of this discussion. at some point you guys will get so academic that you will disappear up your own arse.
June 23, 2010, 1:52 pmA.W. says:
i will add, that to a certain extent i enjoy legal academia. but there is such a thing as too much.
June 23, 2010, 1:55 pmSome Political Guy says:
My politics on the question of zombies lean towards 7.62×39.
June 23, 2010, 1:59 pmsardonic_sob says:
There’s an online zombie novel whose name escapes me where a character is looking at a pre-zombie-crisis map from some anti-firearm group labeled “Per-capita firearms ownership” and reflects that it should now be labeled “Surviving Human Population Density.”
June 23, 2010, 2:30 pmJason Bontrager says:
At least we already know how they’ll vote. After all, the dead have been voting Democrat for decades now!
June 23, 2010, 2:48 pmAndrewphus says:
In the zombie arena, George Romero has become Bob Shrum and Mark Penn, rolled into one. Not simply passe. Undead.
June 23, 2010, 2:50 pmAlinka says:
I predict a second amendment renaissance!
June 23, 2010, 2:55 pmrmd says:
I posted this same link the last time zombies were being discussed here but I think it’s good enough to post again.
Jonathan Coulton, “re: Your Brains”
I like to think that Bob is from Corporate Legal.
June 23, 2010, 3:10 pmKelly Parks says:
Awesome! Yes, the subject of zombies is endlessly fascinating. My friends and I made a zombie web series (“Universal Dead”, starring DB Sweeney, Doug Jones and Gary Graham) and we tried to think through the details as realistically as possible, including exactly how zombies function. A virus simply can’t explain it. But more to the point, we make it clear that people would disagree (and have many theories) over why it happened.
June 23, 2010, 3:45 pmsfalphageek says:
Communist!
June 23, 2010, 3:49 pmsardonic_sob says:
According to WWZ, the only thing worse than zombies is RADIOACTIVE zombies.
Which were, at one point, actually created by the Soviets. (By accident.)
Anyway, it would depend which sort. Mystic zombies or WWZ pseudo-mystic zombies, no. 28-Days-Later infected-but-living-human zombies, yes, it would.
Although zombies within the total-destruction radius of the weapon would be destroyed just like everything else, obviously.
June 23, 2010, 4:03 pmHotspur says:
Forget about the hypothetical zombies. What do we do about the ones that already walk among us? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAIpI8IxgFs
June 23, 2010, 4:22 pmzed says:
Senator Robert C. Byrd . . . zombie.
June 23, 2010, 4:27 pmSenator Harry Reid . . . . fresh zombie.
styrgwillidar says:
Dust off and nuke them from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
BTW, I hate fast zombies.
June 23, 2010, 5:52 pmThe Politics of Zombies | theConstitutional.org says:
[...] In the comments, Dan Drezner writes: While the excerpt in FP does not address the issues you raise, I promise [...]
June 23, 2010, 5:53 pmmalclave says:
Geoff Montgomery (Richard Carlson): It’s worse than horrible because a zombie has no will of his own. You see them sometimes walking around blindly with dead eyes, following orders, not knowing what they do, not caring.
Larry Lawrence (Bob Hope): You mean like Democrats?
(from The Ghost Breakers, 1940)
June 23, 2010, 5:58 pmPlugInMonster says:
Watching enough Resident Evil movies, I know exactly what to do if attacked by zombie hordes.
June 23, 2010, 6:48 pm1911Man says:
The only thing worse than radioactive zombies is Armored Zombie Bears.
June 23, 2010, 7:28 pmRobert Zombie says:
I must strenuously object to whoever it was that lumped zombies, vampires and pirates together as tired fads. That is totally unfair to zombies. Vampires have been trite and overexposed for 20 years now. More importantly, unlike with vampires, whiney self-hating socially inept teenagers don’t dress up in rags and pretend to be zombies, so that alone makes the zombie thing far less annoying than the vampire thing. Vampires were overexposed by about the 3rd year of that Buffy show, even before the two hundred vampire movies and tv shows. There haven’t been more than a few really mainstream zombie movies, and no tv shows that I can think of. It’s really mostly an internet thing, and thus far more easily ignored if you don’t like it. Most importantly, the zombie schtick is at least mildly clever and original sometimes. There is nothing more lame than vampires, unless it is people who spell vampire with a “y” instead of “i”. (Pirates? What pirates? Did I miss a cultural trend somewhere? Does a couple of Disney movies based on a theme park ride count as an overexposed cultural trend now?)
June 23, 2010, 11:16 pmNancy says:
Of course our “leaders” will use zombie technology to further their interests. They are historically short sighted. As I watch and listen to our loudest political mouths today, I wonder ….
June 24, 2010, 10:54 amArt says:
I have to agree with the “give it a rest” crowd.
It is fun to suspend belief for an hour and a half to watch Zombies wreak havoc, but what makes them any more politically or academically interesting than the Easter Bunny?
June 24, 2010, 11:07 amKamal says:
WOW. How can the first example of using a crisis for political gain that comes to your mind be the great depression? Wouldn’t the response to 9/11 be a much more apt example?
Well, the Easter Bunny has something to do with Jesus so I think they take it more seriously.
June 24, 2010, 11:38 amArt says:
I did read “World War Z” and IMO, it is the perfect illustration of how to take something entertaining, and make it tedious.
June 24, 2010, 12:24 pmTexas Lawyer in DFW says:
What, no Pride & Prejudice & Zombies references?
June 24, 2010, 1:00 pmSyd Henderson says:
I favor the establishment of a Zombie homeland. Since the Zombies were part of the British Invasion, we know where to establish the homeland.
June 25, 2010, 12:13 amTracy Johnson says:
Would zombies be subject to current labor law and get a minimum wage. Could they unionize? Could hiring zombies put a damper on illegal immigration if you could hire zombie workers?
June 25, 2010, 11:54 amJaimeInTexas says:
Zombies are reanimated bodies, right?
Would zombies fall under the jursidiction of Health and Human Services? Similar to how Indians, Puerto Ricans, etc. fall under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Interior.
Could zombies be able to enter restaurants, grocery stores, etc?
Are zombies free from all laws, after all, they are dead?
Can zombies establish residency, vote?
Can they get their inheritance tax refunded?
Will there be law specialization for zombie issues?
June 25, 2010, 4:30 pmBill Nelson says:
What about the very real possibilities of non-violent zombies? Perhaps a virus has created walking bodies that are mindless – perhaps they are non-violent and can barely take care of themselves. Some are only slightly infected or for some reason aren’t as bad off, so they mix with society. First their brain goes and then they don’t take care of themselves and soon they look like the walking dead.
I don’t want to think about what rights they have, if they don’t understand that doing something wrong is not right. What. If. They. Are. Contagious? Does that change anything? This scenario is more likely than we think given the brain devastation of mad-cow disease, the contagion of avian-type viruses, and the deviated minds of a terrorist nation state. I’m glad to see some discussion and planning in the academic environment regarding political and economic repercussions of such an event.
June 26, 2010, 6:25 pmMirco says:
I think zombies are so popular because they can not be copyrighted. Aliens (the Ripley Type) are the same, only more intelligent and fast. Zombies have only an advantage over Aliens, they breed faster (the turning go from seconds to minutes or a few hours) where the Aliens need to maturate their eggs/facehuggers (few hours to days).
But any civilization that would be brought to his knee by mindless zombies is not worth to exist.
I agree that writers of zombie tales are clueless on real weapons or need to look so, as combating zombies would be so much easy that would defy imagination.
For example, a steamroller is a perfect weapon against zombies. Do they dodge it? No. Just, for better protection, put a couple of steel [whatever would work] plates on the sides). Not enough steamrollers? Tanks (any) will work as better. Not enough tanks? Agricultural machines or trucks. In the movie about Joan d’Arc (with Milla Jovovich – see Resident Evil) the Englishmen had a war machine to defend the Caste of Orlean (a gigantic morning star with three spiked ball of iron rotating)- The effect on a french trying to taking the wall of the caste was instant decapitation. And this could go on and on.
Just put a bunch of guy in a truck, slow moving along a road making noise so zombies come after them (but they are too slow to catch them). Then shoot them one at time.
In 2005 the US soldiers used 250.000 bullet for every enemy killed
Now, zombie or not, if someone shot 1.000 bullets in somebody you need a vacuum cleaner or a street sweepers after.
Libertarian solution would be that inept governments could auction off land to settlers that free the land from zombies.
June 28, 2010, 12:00 pmHalo: Reach, Extended ‘Deliver Hope’ Trailer, More Noble Team | GamingViral.com says:
[...] and offer your zombie skills in trade for a pre-order. Due to some unacceptably discriminatory anti-zombie politics (who says they’re not safe?) zombies are no longer allowed to earn an income. Your best bet [...]
September 9, 2010, 3:24 am