The Political Economy of Intervention in the Conflict Against ISIS
Haeffele, Stefanie, ed. Knowledge and Incentives in Policy: Using Public Choice and Market Process Theory to Analyze Public Policy Issues. Rowman & Littlefield, 2018.
70 Pages Posted: 25 Jun 2016 Last revised: 4 Nov 2021
Date Written: June 22, 2016
Abstract
Western elites and the general public agree that foreign intervention is needed to halt the
dramatic rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Policymakers hope to militarily defeat
ISIS while also resolving the civil crises in Iraq and Syria that allowed the group to flourish. In
the economics literature on foreign intervention there is an ongoing debate about whether the
approaches suggested for combating ISIS will be successful. The purpose of this paper is to
contribute to the conversation about Western intervention against ISIS by considering some of
the major challenges to achieving this objective from an economic perspective. Adapting a
framework used by economist Christopher Coyne and his coauthors for examining the
constraints on foreign intervention, I identify three “problems” that policymakers face: (a) the
knowledge problem, (b) the coordination problem, and (c) the problem of unintended
consequences. Cases of recent foreign interventions in the Middle East provide evidence for why
these problems should be taken seriously when formulating policy toward ISIS. I also explore
alternative policy options to foreign intervention.
Keywords: ISIS, Islamic State, Political Economy, Interventionism, Syria, Iraq
JEL Classification: D74, O20, P16
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation