Out now in International Studies Quarterly is new work from Prof. Brad LeVeck, titled "The Democratic Peace and the Wisdom of Crowds." Congratulations to Prof. LeVeck and his co-author!
The paper demonstrates that groups of decisions-makers, voting on what to offer and accept in a bargaining games, can avoid costly bargaining failure more often than even individual foreign policy experts. The study uses data from experiments in which subjects engage in ultimatum bargaining games to compare the performance of individuals, small groups and foreign policy experts against the performance of larger groups of decision-makers. The findings may help explain why democracies, who typically include more decision-makers in the foreign policy process, are better at avoiding costly wars than non-democracies.
