April 2025 Updates
Understanding trade and democracies better
Once again it is time to update the existing posts with new papers I have found. This time the majority of them revolve around how trade and democracy keep our society stable.
I also have a little request to my readers: Do you have any paper recommendations for me to read? I have a lot of channels to go hunting for new, interesting papers, but I figured I would be interested in what my readers find relevant. If you have a suggestion, feel free to leave it as a comment here or email me to existential_crunch at posteo.de
And now the actual updates.
Trade collapse
Food distribution, not just production, plays a critical role in food security. This principle extends to other essential goods as well. I previously examined the consequences of trade disruption or collapse in an earlier post. Since then I have come across two additional papers which explore new facets of this topic, especially in relation to domestic production.
How important is domestic production in comparison with trading food?
Another way to look at food trade is to explore when it is helpful to import a lot of food and when this is more of a liability and you should rather have grown your domestic food production. This is explored in an article by Verschuur et al. (2024). The researchers developed a bilateral trade model for 177 countries and four major crops (maize, wheat, rice, soybean) to simulate how different types of shocks affect food availability and prices. They modeled several scenarios: the Ukraine war, energy price shocks, trade restrictions, and a "polycrisis" combining all three—against 54 years of weather-driven production variability.
Key findings about trade as a buffer:
Trade generally helps mitigate localized shocks by allowing countries to source food from alternative suppliers. For example, when Ukraine's exports were disrupted, importing countries shifted to other suppliers.
In typical years, countries with high import dependency experienced smaller reductions in consumer surplus, suggesting trade networks provide resilience against moderate disruptions.
During the Ukraine war scenario, international trade flows increased as countries sought alternative suppliers, demonstrating trade's adaptive capacity.
However, trade has limitations as a buffer:
During extreme "tail risk" events (the worst 10% of scenarios), higher import dependency became a vulnerability rather than an asset—especially for maize and rice. Countries with greater domestic production were better buffered against severe shocks.
Trade can transmit and amplify shocks across the global system. The compound "polycrisis" scenario resulted in consumer price increases of 23-52% across all crops, affecting virtually all countries simultaneously.
Trade restrictions (like India's rice export ban) severely impacted specific regions, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia.
The energy price shock proved most damaging overall, increasing input costs globally, while different regions showed varying vulnerabilities to specific shock types. The research suggests that both trade connectivity and domestic production capacity are needed in a "risk layering" approach to food system resilience.
In essence, trade provides crucial flexibility for the food system to adapt to shocks, but becomes less effective as buffers during compound, global-scale disruptions. This is a similar conclusion as Yıldırım & Önen (2024), but Verschuur et al. additionally back this up with modelling.
In the post about trade, I have also rewritten the concluding paragraph to account for both the present political situation and to include a report on geopolitics and trade.
This also highlights the importance of geopolitics for trade. We have seen that political ramifications had been a major factor when the trade network collapsed during the Bronze Age and also the shifts after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are obviously linked to politics. But we can look at even broader trends here. These decades-long geopolitical changes and their influence on trade are explored in Piñeiro & Piñeiro (2024). Specifically, they looked at how much trade was worth in comparison with GDP and found that it peaked before World War I, crashed down in the period of 1914 - 1945 and has consistently grown since then. However, it also seems that either the growth has slowed down or might even have reversed after ~2020. They argue that this recent shift has been happening as countries are stepping away from international treaties around trade. In parallel, many countries are starting to sort themselves into power blocks, especially around China and the United States. They decrease their trade with everyone outside their power block and increase it in their power block. Given the developments of the United States isolating itself more and more since Trump has become president again, it seems likely that in the coming years trade as a share of GDP will decrease and that the power block around the United States might shatter into smaller groups of countries, which would further decrease trade.
In summary, the global trade system, particularly in the food sector, is inherently vulnerable and it is very difficult to predict how disruptions might turn out. This highlights that it should be a priority to increase resilience, so we don’t follow the same path as the empires of the Bronze Age. It seems that domestic food production is an important factor here if you want to be resilient against major shocks. Food trade only seems to help well for smaller shocks. Additionally, the current geopolitical world situation seems to imply that we will see decreased trade in the coming years. While this is likely bad in general, it might increase resilience for some countries, as they have to become more self-reliant. However, globally this is a worse outcome, both now, as everything becomes more expensive when trade decreases, but also after major crises, as these tend to be managed better if countries trust each other and work together.
Democratic resilience
When the value of democracy is discussed, an argument that often comes up is that democracies are just too slow and cannot really look beyond their election periods. While looking into this, I found two very interesting papers that present quite solid counter-arguments against this view. The slowness of democracies is actually needed to make good decisions and over the long term, this leads to much better outcomes for the citizens of democratic countries. I used these two papers to extend my argument about the value of democracy for societal resilience.
Comparison to authoritarian regimes
But democracies are not only better at maintaining peace, they also tend to fare better when a geopolitical conflict breaks out. Brands (2018) used a review to explore how democracies and authoritarian regimes tend to approach great-power conflict and their conflicting worldviews in general. Economically, democracies consistently outperform autocratic regimes in building the wealth essential for strategic success. This stems from the free exchange of information, stable legal frameworks, and protection of individual and property rights that foster investment and innovation. Democracy's decentralized power structure helps avoid rash economic decisions with potentially disastrous consequences, like China's Great Leap Forward or going to war unprovoked. Additionally, democratic militaries tend to perform at higher levels than their authoritarian counterparts, as they typically employ professional forces comfortable with delegated authority and operational flexibility, while authoritarian regimes try to centralize power to be safe from coups.
Authoritarian regimes may boast advantages in speed and decisiveness, democracies excel in sustainable decision-making processes over the long term. The very features that can make democratic governance appear slow and inefficient—checks and balances, power transitions, and robust public debate—are precisely what enable reasoned deliberation and necessary course corrections. Conversely, authoritarian systems, which concentrate power in a small elite while stifling debate, are more prone to significant errors when leaders make emotional or illogical decisions without adequate feedback mechanisms. This long-term decision quality may prove especially critical when addressing complex global catastrophic risks that require sustained attention and adaptive management rather than merely swift action.
A similar point is often made around the ability of autocrats to govern for the long term. Here the argument is that democracies fail to foresee problems over long time horizons, because they can only think along their election periods (so mostly 4-5 years), while autocratic regimes are not bound by this and can therefore plan for decades ahead. The validity of this argument is explored in Millemaci et al. (2024). To study this, they looked at economic growth and long term positive societal outcomes (think education, health, public transport, taking public opinion into account) and compared it between democratic and autocratic countries. For economic growth they find results similar to previous literature, meaning that generally democratic countries outperform autocratic regimes. However, autocratic regimes have heavier tailed distributions. This means that while autocratic regimes are generally worse when it comes to economic outcomes, they also represent the largest outliers for both very slow (or even negative economic growth), but also very fast growth. But economic growth in and of itself is not something we really care about, because a higher GDP does not automatically mean that people are better off. This makes the study of Millemaci and co-authors especially interesting, as they also take into account positive societal outcomes in addition to economic growth and here the results are very clear. Democratic countries across the board deliver better societal outcomes to their citizens in things like health or education. This finding even stays robust when you control for how rich the country is in general. Therefore, Millemaci et al. conclude that there are no benevolent dictators who govern for the long term. They might be able to boost economic growth, but this only means they have more riches for themselves and their cronies. Their population would have a much better quality of life, if their country were democratic instead.
Lessons from the past for our global civilization
In this post I explored what lessons we can get for our present world by studying history. These lessons are especially relevant in a time of complex crisis, as we have now, as they give additional points of reference and orientation. I extended the discussion in the post by another paper which also argues for the relevance of premodern history for today.
The relevance of premodern history for today
After the above-mentioned papers have explored from what kind of societies we can learn, I also want to discuss a review paper by Haldon et al. (2024), which explored the ways history is relevant for policy makers and especially, how we can make sure to take reliable lessons from the past.
They argue that we rely on history all the time to make political decisions, because if you face a crisis, it is only natural to try to figure out how past decision makers reacted in similar situations. You need something to ground yourself in. However, this runs into several problems. History is complex and policy makers are often stripped for time. This means they tend to cherry pick easily, as they default to the most well known history facts from their own country. However, this leaves out the vast majority of lessons we could take from history. For example, this leaves out lessons from large sample and modelling studies, both of which try to capture the more general trends in history.
Haldon and co-authors also make several suggestions on how we could improve history uptake in politics in the future. They think that especially expert elicitations are underused here. With this they mean to ask a large group of experts about a specific topic, which is relevant to policy and then aggregate all those voices into one report, which highlights the main lessons to be drawn and also in what areas the experts' opinions diverge from each other. In addition to this, they suggest we should aim for qualitative-quantitative data integration. With this they mean combining the strength of large datasets, with specific case studies. Use the large dataset to identify a recurring trend and then give an example of how this trend played out in a particular historical crisis, which is relevant to what the policy maker is looking for (1). Their hope is that such an approach will make it easier to rely on history for policy makers, as in current debates, the insights of scientists from the natural sciences are often ranked higher in their trustworthiness. It is important for history to bridge this gap, as otherwise many important insights from history will remain unheard in our policy debates.
How long until recovery after collapse?
In this post I had explored how long it might take a society to go from hunter-gatherers to modern day civilization. I added another short paragraph to discuss a bit more the factors that decide if a state is founded or not.
Likely, the factor relevant here is you have to have an environment which is conducive to agriculture. This not only includes climate, but also things like your local soils or if you have plants and animals available which can be domesticated. This argument is underpinned by a study from Borcan et al. (2021). They collected a dataset which consists of the majority of societies who created states. What they wanted to find out was the question if usually you had agriculture first and then the formation of a state or the other way around. Their results show that this is the case. In pretty much all cases you had first agriculture and state formation only afterwards. Besides this they found that geography, climate, distance to other states and time since the first settlement founded in the area all play a role in the time it takes to go from hunter-gatherers to early states.
Further reading
If you come this far in the post and are still searching for more interesting content, here are some suggested readings from the archives:
Science denial and nuclear winter: Nuclear winter is the idea that after a nuclear war, soot will partly block out the sun and cause temperatures to fall globally. This hypothesis is contested, partly for scientific reasons, but also for political ones. In this post I explore the latter.
How long until recovery after collapse? In this post I try to estimate how long it might take us to recover from collapse of different levels of severity.
Is societal collapse just a random event? One of the possible causes that has been suggested for collapse is that sometimes societies just get unlucky and are destroyed by pure chance of several bad events happening at the same time. This post explores if this idea is a helpful way to frame things.
Until next time
Thanks for reading! If you want to talk about this post or societal collapse in general, I’d be happy to have a chat. Just send me an email to existential_crunch at posteo.de and we can schedule something.
References
Borcan, O., Olsson, O., & Putterman, L. (2021). Transition to agriculture and first state presence: A global analysis. Explorations in Economic History, 82, 101404. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eeh.2021.101404
Brands, H. (2018). Democracy vs Authoritarianism: How Ideology Shapes Great-Power Conflict. Survival, 60(5), 61–114. https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2018.1518371
Haldon, J., Mordechai, L., Dugmore, A., Eisenberg, M., Endfield, G., Izdebski, A., Jackson, R., Kemp, L., Labuhn, I., McGovern, T., Metcalfe, S., Morrison, K., Newfield, T., & Trump, B. (2024). Past Answers to Present Concerns. The Relevance of the Premodern Past for 21st Century Policy Planners: Comments on the State of the Field. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.923
Millemaci, E., Monteforte, F., & Temple, J. R. W. (2024). Have Autocrats Governed for the Long Term? Kyklos. https://doi.org/10.1111/kykl.12425
Piñeiro, M., & Piñeiro, V. (2024). Geopolitical changes and their implications for agricultural trade negotiations. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/151905
Verschuur, J., Murgatroyd, A., Vittis, Y., Mosnier, A., Obersteiner, M., Godfray, C., & Hall, J. (2024). The impacts of polycrises on global grain availability and prices. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3969801/v1
Yıldırım, C., & Önen, H. G. (2024). Vulnerabilities of the neoliberal global food system: The Russia–Ukraine War and COVID-19. Journal of Agrarian Change, n/a(n/a), e12601. https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12601
I’m currently enjoying “Making Sense of Chaos” by J. Doyne Farmer. It’s about complexity economics.
Why might it be relevant to your literature review? For example, an interesting case study for you to consider could be how Farmer and his collaborators modelled the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the British economy. There are a few more potentially relevant chapters in the book, given the importance of trade (and hence economics in order to understand trade) for global disasters.
Keep up the great work!
Thanks for your work, really impressed by what you're building here!
Not a paper recommendation, but reading the section about democratic resilience made me think of Acemoglu's The Narrow Corridor. It's been a few years since I read it, but found it super insightful. (My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3094979990)