Congrats on this report Rani—it’s excellent, and an important contribution to the longtermist conflict research literature.
The post is long and detailed, so I want to draw out the big implications for Forum readers who are less immersed in what’s going on with this kind of research. The story you tell in this report is something like:
Track II diplomacy is particularly interesting among interventions to reduce conflict risks because it’s more direct than research and can easily be funded by philanthropists
But it’s really hard to evaluate the effect of Track II dialogues because they don’t happen that often, we can’t do RCT or RCT-like studies, and many factors influence both the feasibility of Track II and the outcomes of conflict (endogeneity)
We have some hope, though, because as John Halstead points out in “Evaluating Policy Organisations”, for policy interventions we just need to know how big the biggest wins were—that’s where (almost) all the impact comes from
So we can just look at a few cases, and do the messy, journalistic work of reconstructing the theory (and practice) of change to understand what actually happened, and whether the dialogues had an effect
Because we’re looking for big wins, you do this for the Pugwash Conferences, the paradigmatic example of Track II dialogues
Before you started this project, I was genuinely unsure about what you’d find . The Pugwash Conferences are so narratively compelling (inspired by Einstein-Russell, involving scientists from around the world, etc.) that it was plausible to me that they became famous for being cool, not for having a policy impact. But your conclusion is that it seems pretty likely that they did have an effect! That the dialogues allowed the Americans and Soviets to build relationships and exchange arguments, and that this led some participants to change their mind on important issues. The Soviet scientists then went on to influence policymakers.
Of course, it’s hard to be certain. John discusses the problems with reconstructing these case studies for contemporary policy organisations. It’s even harder when you’re reconstructing a case that happened 50 years ago and involved policy changes within a secretive government that worked in a language you don’t speak! But in section 4 you get really stuck into the details and make a relatively compelling case for thinking the dialogues made a difference.
I’m really impressed with your work on this post! I’ve updated towards thinking Track II dialogues will be worth funding in certain cases, and we should definitely be looking for Pugwash-like opportunities to support (there are clear parallels between the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and various military AI or other emerging tech issues today).
(Disclaimer: I supervised Rani this summer while she wrote this report)
Congrats on this report Rani—it’s excellent, and an important contribution to the longtermist conflict research literature.
The post is long and detailed, so I want to draw out the big implications for Forum readers who are less immersed in what’s going on with this kind of research. The story you tell in this report is something like:
Track II diplomacy is particularly interesting among interventions to reduce conflict risks because it’s more direct than research and can easily be funded by philanthropists
But it’s really hard to evaluate the effect of Track II dialogues because they don’t happen that often, we can’t do RCT or RCT-like studies, and many factors influence both the feasibility of Track II and the outcomes of conflict (endogeneity)
We have some hope, though, because as John Halstead points out in “Evaluating Policy Organisations”, for policy interventions we just need to know how big the biggest wins were—that’s where (almost) all the impact comes from
So we can just look at a few cases, and do the messy, journalistic work of reconstructing the theory (and practice) of change to understand what actually happened, and whether the dialogues had an effect
Because we’re looking for big wins, you do this for the Pugwash Conferences, the paradigmatic example of Track II dialogues
Before you started this project, I was genuinely unsure about what you’d find . The Pugwash Conferences are so narratively compelling (inspired by Einstein-Russell, involving scientists from around the world, etc.) that it was plausible to me that they became famous for being cool, not for having a policy impact. But your conclusion is that it seems pretty likely that they did have an effect! That the dialogues allowed the Americans and Soviets to build relationships and exchange arguments, and that this led some participants to change their mind on important issues. The Soviet scientists then went on to influence policymakers.
Of course, it’s hard to be certain. John discusses the problems with reconstructing these case studies for contemporary policy organisations. It’s even harder when you’re reconstructing a case that happened 50 years ago and involved policy changes within a secretive government that worked in a language you don’t speak! But in section 4 you get really stuck into the details and make a relatively compelling case for thinking the dialogues made a difference.
I’m really impressed with your work on this post! I’ve updated towards thinking Track II dialogues will be worth funding in certain cases, and we should definitely be looking for Pugwash-like opportunities to support (there are clear parallels between the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and various military AI or other emerging tech issues today).
(Disclaimer: I supervised Rani this summer while she wrote this report)