Peace and Prosperity in an Age of Incivility

Peace and Prosperity in an Age of Incivility presents a comprehensive theory about peace and prosperity. It asserts that three core political values-liberty, order, and equality- must be allocated by societies through law and policy. This book shows that the optimal allocation is pure balance. Balance of values provides the origin of the "democratic peace," the observation that democracies rarely fight each other and when they do, it is brief, does not escalate, and quickly results in a diplomatic resolution. By building on simple forms of spatial and game theories, this stunning analysis shows that the democratic peace is a "Nash equilibrium," where no player has an incentive to deviate from the solution, given the choices of other "players." Democracy, because it fosters compromise, drives the political values of liberty, order, and equality to intersect in perfect, or at least relative, balance. Maximum peace and prosperity is the consequence of balancing critical values. A nation's level of peace and prosperity, while perhaps not great, will be no greater than when these core values are in balance.