Cross-Disciplinary Failings and Successes: The Copenhagen Consensus

Michael Sheflin
(A Midterm)

I. Introduction
In 2004, Professor Bjørn Lomborg organized a conference of economic analysts and experts to prioritize the most beneficial uses of additional foreign funding for new international opportunities to combat global challenges. The Consensus covered a broad range of issues, suggesting topic areas for each of the challenge papers. Each Challenge Paper is followed by two response papers that directly address the issues, analyses, and proposals raised in the challenge papers. This argument-response structure theoretically serves to further legitimate the academic credibility and scientific integrity of the writings on each issue area. As a synoptic but critical review, this paper has four distinct goals: 1) to summarize the main arguments of the consensus, 2) to give an impression of the substantive elements added by the challenge and response papers, 3) to provide a critical examination of the substantive and theoretical elements of the Consensus, 4) and to briefly examine what the Consensus adds to IR and economic literature. In so doing, this paper follows a very straightforward approach.

In the first section, we examine the main arguments and core elements of the consensus, primarily as set out by Lomborg’s introduction. In the second section, we examine individual cases to serve two purposes. Firstly, this paper attempts to provide a snapshot of some of the format of the challenge and response papers and the substantive material therein. Though the substantive content is sometimes lacking or troubled within the Copenhagen Consensus, the structure set up has special import both to the social sciences and to the field of IR. It would not do the Consensus justice for this paper to generalize across the entire set of ten challenges and twenty responses. Secondly, the issues within the challenge and response papers that typify issues with the overall Consensus can be addressed as they arise in the challenge papers. We also, however, address general issues with the Consensus overall, such as its successes and failures. The final section of conclusions, briefly expands upon the general failures we perceive to be hurting the validity and credibility of the Copenhagen Consensus. Professor Lomborg explicitly explains that the Consensus is an economic cost benefit analysis (CBA), but in dealing with global problems and solutions, the Consensus has either consciously or unwittingly entered the arena of academic International Relations.

This paper takes the perspective that despite a highly ambitious project, the Consensus fails to tangibly contribute to IR literature in a meaningful way. Beyond that, its reliance solely on economic means, models, theorists, and analysis makes its inclusion in the existing IR discourse and literature troublesome. Despite strong theoretical IR objections, and the resultant failure to include cutting edge IR research, the Consensus is highly ambitious both in its goal of prioritizing international opportunities, and in its attempt to create detailed CBAs for each issue. Before deconstructing the document from an outside perspective, it is necessary and relevant to examine what the organizers and contributors were attempting to accomplish.

II. The Copenhagen Consensus: Goals, Arguments, Methodology
Consensus(?):
This summary of the Copenhagen Consensus begins with a thorough summary of the document as a whole. What are its goals, its structure, and its methodology? This second section analyzes the three former questions through the format of Lomborg’s introduction. It then briefly examines the scope of the challenges examined by the report before examining two particular challenges and responses. The Copenhagen Consensus is a rigorous and thorough document, but it is not immune to criticism. Before passing to a critical analysis of the main arguments and goals of the Consensus, and its specific substantive challenge papers, the document as a whole deserves rigorous investigation.

The Copenhagen Consensus is an economic CBA that examines global problems, and attempts to prioritize international solutions, according to which has the greatest economic benefit. At the beginning of his introduction, Professor Bjørn Lomborg acknowledges that problems of allocation, methodology, and institutional competition have previously dampened efforts to create a CBA of global problems and solutions (Lomborg 1). Nevertheless, the Consensus attempts to create a hierarchy of importance for “first world money outside the first world nations” (ibid 2), in so-called “doing-good areas” (ibid). The idea stems from the application of the economic concept of scarcity to prioritizing in International Relations. In an environment of scarce resources, certain monetary allocations will have greater positive effects than others. Undoubtedly the disbursement of new funds raises new issues of allocation: who benefits, who pays, and how is money used and distributed?

The Consensus begins with an introduction by its founder and organizer, Bjørn Lomborg. It next launches into ten cases that identify a particular problem or set of problems and then engage in rigorous economic analysis of potential solutions to these problems, or “opportunities.” Each case is followed by two response papers, which question the validity of the challenge paper, as well as its methods, data, and conclusions. The ranking of the panel of economic experts, provided after all the challenge and response papers, is itself a relatively short section called “Part II.” The panel of economic experts were tasked with addressing the “‘the best ways of advancing global welfare, and particularly the welfare of developing countries, supposing that an additional $50 bn of resources were at governments’ disposal’” (Lomborg 605). Cases were prepared for, and prior to, the expert panel ranking to act as a guide and a source of cutting-edge empirical data for issues that may not have received rightful attention in previous literature. Response papers were included both to provide legitimate academic criticism of the cases prepared and to encourage the idea that the cases prepared provide overarching coverage of the issues, problems, and solutions engaged.

The Copenhagen Consensus is avowedly concerned with global welfare rather than the welfare of certain groups (Lomborg 3). The authors of all the cases and response papers are all economists by design of the Consensus. Still, it would be impossible to ignore the disproportionate effects of certain policies on certain subsets of global, regional, and national populations. Issues of allocation are raised in greater or less detail by certain cases, in attempting to asses the effectiveness of certain opportunities. Despite certain difficulties in the framing of the Copenhagen Consensus, its goal is not so much to save the world as to examine “the best opportunities” (ibid 3) for additional global funds. The idea of new opportunities no doubt is derived from part of the Consensus’s attempt to highlight the opportunity cost of emphasizing certain policies over others in best addressing global welfare.

In his introduction, Lomborg explains that the causality of international problems is often difficult to pinpoint or identify. Because “many ‘big’ problems do not have any well-defined, technical solution[s]” (Lomborg 4), it would be more difficult to address a nebulous problem rather than a well-compartmentalized solution. For instance, different wars may have significantly different (though probably interrelated) causes, and thus it would be difficult to provide a generalized set of interventions to address war in and of itself. For grand issues that require big solutions, Lomborg is convinced that “we have no general solution” (Lomborg 4). Thus rather than focusing on an issue like war, the Copenhagen Consensus instead focuses on “conflicts and arms proliferation” (ibid). This provides a clear link between the problem, which is conflicts and the proliferation of arms, and certain linked solutions like controlling arms proliferation.

Another reason for this provincial view of challenges and opportunities lies in the idea that marginal cost rises, and marginal benefit falls, as we approach the completion of an initiative or the solution to a problem. An example given by Lomborg is telling:

“Giving access to the first 50 per cent … more isolated and further away from an appropriate water source.” (Lomborg 4).

Thus initial disbursements of aid from the North to the South are likely to provide a certain level of returns to marginal benefits to a point, such as reductions in levels of a particular disease. Thereafter, an increasing volume of aid will have increasingly less beneficial effects on the reduction of levels of that disease in the recipient country. Diminishing returns, as this is called, is common within economic literature. Thus from an economic perspective, the most efficient solutions, or the best opportunities, are likely to be those toward the beginning of marginal cost curves. Opportunities on this end of the curve benefit from the scale of production and distribution (economies of scale) and the externalities associated with that scale (positive externalities). After that point, it becomes increasingly less efficient to provide more of the same good.

The Cases:
Having addressed certain general elements of the Consensus’s arguments, structure, and methodology, we now move to a brief and general discussion of the challenge papers and responses, which we shall henceforth refer to by the unitary term ‘cases.’ Each case addresses a different set of solutions, each with a rationale relating to particular global challenges. Initially, the panel of economic experts was asked to compile a list of thirty-two challenges that “would have the most promising opportunities in terms of CBA” (Lomborg 4). From this list, the Copenhagen Consensus Secretariat then narrowed the list to ten distinct challenges for which existed the opportunities likely to be most highly-ranked (ibid). The authors of the challenge papers were asked to do three things: 1. overview the dimensions of the challenge; 2. identify between one and five opportunities that are most practicable and most applicable to the existing literature on an issue; 3. utilize an ‘extensive overview’ of CBAs in existing literature (Lomborg 5-6).

Thus the list of challenges, and the final ranking of opportunities was created entirely by economists, a process central to the Copenhagen Consensus’s design of creating an objective economic CBA. Lomborg justifies this decision in that asking experts in each field of expertise would lead to a lack of consensus on priorities. Rather, economists who are trained to evaluate the opportunity costs of various issues would be best placed to prioritize funding in a study whose key “focus… was economic prioritization” (Lomborg 6). Thus, while it was required that each economic expert have a strong and broad knowledge of social issues (ibid 7), it was imperative that each be methodologically and theoretically trained in economic analysis. Therein, the experts could rank “the issues entirely by benefit-cost ratios” (ibid), and thus examine and measure only the value of additional funding as the input and additional global welfare as the output. In the view of the Consensus Secretariat, this leads to a less biased process of ordering International Relations issues and priorities than that designed by scholars trained in International Relations theory and knowledgeable of the literature relevant to that particular field.

The hard decisions of the hardest soft science methods led to ten diverse cases ranging from climate change to governance and corruption; from communicable diseases to conflicts. In the space provided, it would be impossible to go through a thorough summary of all the models, details, information, and literature discussed throughout the more than 500 pages of challenge and response papers. In chronological order, the Consensus provides cases for the following ten issues: climate change, communicable diseases, conflicts, access to education, financial instability, governance and corruption, malnutrition and hunger, migration, sanitation and access to clean water, and subsidies and trade barriers. We believe that the scope and rigor of the cases provided within the Copenhagen Consensus are admirable and impressive. Each case attempted to extract models from existing economic (and particularly CBA) literature on a particular challenge, and then attempt to use existing information and these models to create data sets about costs and welfare effects for particular opportunities. These models were highly theoretical, but primarily leaned towards the adoption of economic models and methods rather than theoretical models from International Relations literature and theory for each challenge area. Thus the issues, challenges, and opportunities were placed firmly in the context of the economic literature and little else. In the same way that these models and papers could conceivably benefit from a greater rooting in IR theory, the intended benefit of such exclusion is that each challenge and response paper is instead strongly rooted in economic theory and literature.

IR theory is, to a certain extent, insular and inaccessible to those far outside the quickly evolving discourses on IR and social science epistemology (and also a plethora of meta-debates). Theoretical solutions to theoretical problems, just like extracting causality in a complicated world of social interaction, are often unclear to those outside of the field. Conclusions often appear murky and indecisive to those trained in the natural sciences and even those outside the IR community. It is for this reason that the Consensus claims it deals with more provincial rather than grand problems. Because of the complexities of IR theory, there are often issues with operationalizing problems (translating them from theory to practice), let alone the resulting solutions. Thus Lomborg explains that “rather than playing to our bad conscience, [a concentration on opportunities rather than problems] encourages positive and concrete action” (ibid 9).

A piece of critical import is how particular challenge papers contribute to, or engage with the discourse on a particular case. Response papers are not intended to debunk the validity of the challenge papers (in all cases), but rather serve to fill in gaps in the challenge papers. They help make the analysis of an issue more complete within the range of economic opinion and discourse. Because these authors are not experts in the respective fields on which they are writing, many of the response papers attack the modeling elements of challenge papers, and the empirical methodology employed therein. Nevertheless, some response papers also add valid criticism to the choice of policies employed in challenge papers or the analysis of the problems and issues extant within the field of the particular challenge and opportunities.

III. Examining the Cases
The following examination of two particular issues (challenge papers and response papers) included in the Copenhagen Consensus serves two purposes. This section expands and expounds upon the previous section by adding a summary of the cases on communicable disease, and governance and corruption. This section also begins to add a critical eye both to the general goals of the Consensus and to particular elucidations of these goals as portrayed through the cases. In this way we bridge the earlier objective summary of the Consensus with a critical review stemming from the thesis of this paper. The challenge papers reveal certain shortcomings of those unfamiliar with academic IR and the debates and meta-debates therein attempting to engage such discourses. The dialogue between the challenge and response papers tends to reveal methodological inconsistencies or practical issues with the selection of opportunity (strategies). Overall whereas the substantive content of challenge and response papers may be sound, they reveal structural and institutional problems with the Copenhagen Consensus in engaging with previous IR literature, academic knowledge, and social science progress.

Communicable Diseases:
This case examines the challenges and responses for communicable disease. We particularly concentrate on the methodology employed and the discourse between the challenge and response papers. The following section will largely concentrate on the conclusions offered for opportunities and the discourse created by the responses about those opportunities. In the second challenge paper, Anne Mills and Sam Schillcutt (M&S) were tasked with examining communicable diseases, and chose to focus on three challenge areas: controlling malaria, controlling HIV/AIDS, and strengthening basic health services. The challenge paper expectedly begins with a summary and outline of the scourge of these two horrific diseases, and the scope of efforts to combat them.

They then explain that their methodology utilizes a combination of sources. For HIV/AIDS and malaria M&S used 1) studies of the macroeconomic impact of disease; 2) studies of the cost-effectiveness of interventions; 3) and evidence of costs and benefits of large-scale projects (Lomborg 63). For basic health services they used regression analyses of health expenditure’s effect on health outcomes, and two reports – one being the 1993 World Development Report’s assessment of the costs and benefits of interventions. The unit of measurement for translating disease into economic costs and returns is averting a DALY, or a averting a disability-adjusted life year (DALY) (ibid 69). Regardless of the means used to value life, which is unavoidable in this type of study, this valuation does not take into account quality of life or other non-economic or social factors pertinent to humanizing human life. Simply because income per capita of one state is lower than another does not necessarily mean that the life of one person in the poorer country is worth less than that of one in the richer country. Economically, it may mean that the poorer citizen’s output economically is less, and that he contributes less to global output (lower value added). Nevertheless, any of these statistical approaches inherently devalue the cost of human life in a way that is unavoidable through economic methods (Response 2.1 (ibid 121)).

Even if one does not accept such a non-scientific humanitarian argument, one must also look at the nature of disease. Though, as the authors explicitly acknowledge, disease tends to affect certain communities more intensely or prevalently than other communities, disease is nevertheless largely an indiscriminate killer. While children are more greatly affected by malaria because they are less resistant (Lomborg 72), this does not bar adults from contracting (usually a non-fatal form of) the disease, just as HIV does not beyond an individual’s actions. Even though certain risk factors increase the likelihood of contracting HIV, there is still a positive non-zero chance that the effect of HIV/AIDS is undervalued in the challenge and response papers because of the possibility it will be contracted by the rich as the poor. One may choose to discount this line of argumentation because of the unequal nature of health care access between the poor and rich in virtually the entire world. The authors explicitly state the need for improved and strengthened basic health if only to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (ibid 99). Without going into too much further detail, a health service flooded with patients is likely to be unable to address health problems without external assistance. Moreover, strong private health services and wealthy patients with deficient public expenditure on health are likely to further crowd-out public health service provision and reduce social welfare.

Malaria:
The next three sections of the challenge paper examine the particular challenge areas addressed: malaria, HIV/AIDS, and strengthening basic health services. The section on malaria is subdivided first into a brief summary of existing data and literature on types of the disease, types of treatment, side-effects of the disease, macroeconomic impact of the disease, and microeconomic effects of the disease. They explain that malaria raises household costs and makes surplus labor within a household more highly-valued (Lomborg 74). They also acknowledge macroeconomic effects like changes in national spending, investment, and labor force (ibid 75). In relation to the grander CBA, the macro and micro effects are clearly more relevant to the Copenhagen Consensus. Yet the summary of types of treatment is pivotal to the authors’ assessment of prevention and treatment interventions, which comprise the opportunities examined by the authors in the next sections.

Because malaria is transmitted through mosquito bites primarily in poor, tropical countries, the first preventive treatment is stepping up insecticide-treated (bed)net (ITN) efforts – efforts to distribute treated mosquito nets (ibid 80). If one can prevent the disease from being transmitted from human to mosquito and mosquito to human, then the burden of the disease would be reduced measurably. There seems to be little room for contention here, as more money for more nets to protect more people seems to have simple, purely monetary costs and strong, tangible benefits. However, in Response Paper 2.2, Jacques van der Gaag argues that the successful ITN programs that exist now may not need funding but rather better government cooperation with the private-sector and vice versa (ibid 125). The low-cost sale of nets, rather than their free distribution, has tended to have greater positive effects. The second intervention is also preventive and involves expanding intermittent presumptive treatment of pregnant women (IPTp) who are at increased risk of contracting malaria and spreading it to their children (ibid 81). Again the theory behind the intervention is intuitive, but van der Gaag further notes that despite a doubling of international funding for malarial prevention and treatment, there is no evidence of a significant reduction of the burden of the disease (ibid 124).

The final opportunity is a treatment intervention, proposing a shift from existing treatments (primarily chloroquinine (CQ)) to artemisinine-based combination therapies (ACTs) along with dipstick diagnostic tests (ibid 83). This treatment is the most interesting intervention described by Mills and Shillcutt for malaria because instead of requiring a significant increase in funding, it shifts funding away from less effective CQ treatments toward more effective ACT treatments (ibid 85), all of which are relatively inexpensive. The authors do, however, acknowledge that there is a funding gap in excess of $3 billion (ibid 86) and that these proposed interventions are unlikely to succeed without the requisite health services (ibid 87). In Response Paper 2.1, David B. Evans questions the feasibility of any non-long-term horizon for the implementation of a switch from CQ to ACT treatments (ibid 118). In the second Response, van der Gaag criticizes M&S’s use of the example provided by KwaZulu Natal province in South Africa, which implemented an ACT program. The authors touted this as a success story in reducing the burden of malaria and no doubt it is. But unlike most other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), South Africa has a relatively well-developed health service, and thus implementing a program within a reasonable time-frame is unlikely to be as feasible elsewhere (ibid 124).

HIV/AIDS:
By contrast to malaria, HIV/AIDS provides a larger problem than malaria in terms of scale, prevention, and treatment. Treatment is still relatively costly despite technological advances, and it requires regular visits to health practitioners that may not be possible without the requisite health and transportation infrastructure that would allow rural persons to travel to clinics. Like with malaria, M&S discuss the macroeconomic impact and microeconomic effects of HIV/AIDS, stressing that because of the rate of its growth into a pandemic it has potentially devastating effects. They survey the literature on interventions and cost-effectiveness and then split the affected areas into three categories: nascent epidemic, concentrated epidemic, and generalize epidemics (ibid 92-93). Van der Gaag estimates that M&S actually “vastly underestimated” the costs of the AIDS pandemic (Lomborg 126) and did not properly stress the projected devastation if intervention is not taken in those places with nascent epidemics.

Basic Health:
The final section on strengthening basic health services also begins with a review of literature on health services. M&S’s methodology assumes no impact of education or level of income on health (ibid 101). In Response 2.1, Evans questions this read, explaining that recent studies suggest no impact of government expenditure on health but do suggest an impact of education on health (ibid 119). Evans goes on to explain that excluding private expenditure on health in the regressions led to misleading data (ibid 120). In part, as Van der Gaag explains, this is because up to 75% of Sub-Saharan Africa relies on private treatment (ibid 126). It is unfortunate that there was not a greater concentration on the effects of poor infrastructure generally, such as a lack of roads, on health care access and provisions. Not only does transportation infrastructure affect the ability of people to get to practitioners, it does so very inequitably. Those in rural parts of affected areas will have to incur far greater costs both in longer transportation times and lost wages. Evans strongly stresses, and M&S also acknowledge, that good basic health services underlie other improvements like disease control and prevention (ibid 120). There also appear to be indications that education and information can have health improvements indirectly, which are not directly addressed by M&S.

General Issues:
Van der Gaag also stresses that M&S also rely on data for countries that have functioning health services (ibid 125). Obviously in much of the world this is not the case, for myriad reasons. The dialogue between M&S, Evans, and Van der Gaag that develops raises a serious issue. Firstly, Evans correctly states that the opportunities offered by M&S favor the first world (ibid 121). Put simply and bluntly, because life is valued more highly in richer countries, treating diseases that affect rich people will have a greater net positive effect on global warfare than treating diseases that affect a greater number of people in poorer countries. Interestingly, Van der Gaag suggests that because of the reliance of SSA on the private sector and the lack of profitability in treating the poor, international aid could be used to make treatment of the poor profitable through externalities. Nevertheless, what firms instinctively prioritize in profit-seeking terms are not necessarily the correct means of judging life in international politics. The authors use DALYs to measure the value of life, but this explanation holds for any valuation that measures life in terms of economic output or wealth. One potential irregularity with the use of DALYs is that DALYs are different than actual health impact on a GDP, so regression results for the two variables might differ between the same interventions (ibid 115). Evans also criticizes the aggregation of costs and benefits as a reasonable measure of costs (ibid 118), though the figures are apparently accurate regardless (ibid 119).

Governance and Corruption:
In the brief space remaining, we wish to look at the sixth case, that of Good Governance and Corruption by Susan Rose-Ackerman. Rather than concentrating on methodology and dialogue as in the previous section, we instead wish to concentrate on the areas explored by the challenge paper and the opportunities offered. This particular angle is chosen because we believe that the reforms this paper describes are fundamental backbones to solutions for most other challenges discussed in the Copenhagen Consensus. If governments are literally siphoning off aid and making projects less efficient, and if that efficiency can be improved, then resources can be saved and reallocated without providing any new funding. In her challenge paper on governance and corruption, Susan Rose-Ackerman discussed the following five challenge-areas for opportunities: 1) oversight, participation and transparency; 2) procurement reform; 3) customs and tax administration; 4) business regulation; and 5) international efforts.

This section also primarily concentrates on the first two challenge-areas as having the most broad-reaching effects on normal corruption (Ackerman acknowledges that the world bank contrasts normal corruption with state capture in which the state is controlled by corruption to the extent of dysfunction). The final three opportunities are relatively straightforward and involve similar reform opportunities according to Ackerman. Because tax structures are complicated and difficult to monitor, she suggests experimenting with incentives to pay taxes (Lomborg 330), or with limiting bureaucratic discretion to reduce bribes (ibid 331). For business regulation, Ackerman suggest expanding the World Bank initiatives to document inefficient and efficient regulatory practices (ibid 333), toward the similar goal of reducing red tape. She says that the international community can play a role in strengthening these efforts, such as current efforts of the World Bank (335).

Response 6.2 author Jean Cartier-Bresson claims that improvements in national governance require improvements in global governance (ibid 358). He appears also to take issue with Rose-Ackerman’s privileging of bottom-up studies and cases over cross-country research (ibid 355). Whether or not global good-governance leads to local good-governance or vice versa, it is clear that at some point and on some level good-governance must be demanded at locally. This may be why Rose-Ackerman favors bottom-up studies, which examine the arbiters of that governance (at least theoretically) – the people. Her first proposal of local citizens’ involvement in the provision of services (ibid 316) is well-taken, although she suggests it on an experimental basis. Requiring a careful selection of projects for aid may be important, but may not be feasible for all new earmarks of funds. However, she explains that the Ugandan school system managed to increase the efficiency of its funding through a combination of locally-based enforcement and national information campaigns. By printing information about funding surpluses, and through a relatively well-developed parent-teacher organization, the volume of resources siphoned was reduced (ibid 318). A similar example occurred with the devolution of the authority for building public roads. When people were able to benefit directly, they used more efficient labor practices that reduced graft and increased productivity and output (ibid 319).

These success stories are promising, but the status quo no doubt has strong beneficiaries. In order to produce meaningful change away from status quo graft, such local individuals will often be forced to confront powerful interests either within the government or from without. In one case described by Rose-Ackerman, villagers feared retaliation from authorities in response for reporting corruption (ibid 321). Even if this is not always the case, devolution of authority runs the risk of replacing national or international graft with local graft (ibid 320) that may represent no better outcome (although less scale). Rose-Ackerman’s proposals for reform are essentially “to improve accountability… that provide accountability” (ibid 322).

Though an economic CBA is incapable of dealing with social externalities effectively, it would also be impossible to ignore the socio-political effects of institutionalizing norms of corruption in a national society. Ignoring this point in favor of what the case does provide, Jens Christopher Andvig, the author of Response Paper 6.1, agrees that the expansion of data on corruption is important (ibid 347). Perhaps information is one means of deconstructing long-term constructed norms like corruption. Rose-Ackerman’s data on perception of corruption and disapproval also shows that targeted information and reforms may have a significant effect in breeding out such norms. Nevertheless, Andvig also questions why no MNCs are on the World Bank’s list of corrupt firms (ibid 350-351). International institutions must act with governments to endeavor to provide a strong check on graft, and in particular to protect citizens who report corruption. Cartier-Bresson, in the second response, describes the particular problems of wresting control from clientalist and neo-patrimonial networks (ibid 359). Regardless, with the globalization of communications technology, governments must expend more resources to expand and improve their means of monitoring people. As people achieve independent abilities to communicate with the rest of the world in large numbers, it will be difficult for governments to impede the creation and distribution of efficient information, and it will become increasingly hard for them to allow large-levels of graft undetected.

A similar process is true with regard to procurement reform, which affects “sub-national incentives…properly” (Lomborg 325). Theoretically, corruption is a means of favoring leaders and their supporters over public welfare. In economic terms, leaders and government officials siphon resources away from public goods toward their own private goods that assist them in prolonging their rule and allow them to solidify their rule by distributing private goods to their supporters (rather than public goods to the polity as a whole).* Large purchases, like large-scale construction projects, or sub-national procurement of resources from national governments, have a unique potential to siphon resources away from legitimate transfers because of the scale of such transfers. Resource distributions like these also end up creating inefficient levels of consumption and distorting investments (ibid 323). Rose-Ackerman suggests that countries should “experiment with benchmarking, experience-rating for contractors, the adoption of more transparent processes, and civil service reform” (ibid 328). Her rationale is that by expanding information and allowing resources to follow efficiency will provide external and internal incentives to government to clean up its act. Andvig adds that feedback-linked aid could make the use of earmarked aid more efficient because funds rely on it (ibid 351).

Rose-Ackerman’s opportunities are thoroughly discussed, but they lack any type of numerical consistency. In fact, she prints her results in a table that analyze the costs and benefits, but this table also contains no numerical results. The empirical literature she discusses, and the data she adds to the literature are not translated into tangible opportunity costs, possibly because she suggests careful picking and choosing projects to which to apply the opportunities. While the summary provides a decent though incomplete account of theoretical problems and solutions to bad governance and graft, it includes only economic sources. In part we see the relevance Cartier-Bresson’s criticism that Rose-Ackerman prefers cases rather than cross-country data as indicative of the type of result given by Challenge Paper 6. Ironically, Andvig actually claims the opposite, that because “Chapter 6 does not… dimensions than are warranted.” Thus he claims that Rose-Ackerman’s results are in fact misleadingly concrete. We take issue with this interpretation. Suffice it to say that her discussion of challenges and opportunities is probably the most thorough in the Copenhagen Consensus because of its nuanced view of causality and of literature on graft and governance. Nevertheless, she did exclude certain cutting edge and recent research involving the more rigorous application of cross-country empirical data, like that in The Logic of Political Survival.

IV. Conclusions:
The second case of good governance and corruption was chosen both to examine the opportunities provided, but also to stress the important links between graft and bad governance and other issues. We are of the opinion that many of the issues described in the Copenhagen Consensus are causally interdependent. This being the case, the diversion of resources toward certain purposes will have greater effect than others. This does not mean that we should funnel resources to the priorities stated by the Consensus. On the contrary, we believe that the Consensus ignores certain underlying factors and causes of global problems. We have explained that Lomborg intended to de-preference problems with difficult causality because the said problems are difficult. Nevertheless, from within the IR field, it is impossible to remove causality from a problem in addressing that problem’s solution. Narrowing issues does provide a clear link between the solution – like conflicts and arms proliferation – and the cause – like conflicts and arms proliferation. Nevertheless, such circular logic may not actually address the problems at hand.

Corruption has the potential to ravage the benefits of additional aid opportunities, and thus the improvement of governance would have tangible improvements in every other challenge-area. If $3 billion of aid is allocated but only $1 billion reaches an affected area, then there are three solutions. Either aid could be cut, or it could be increased to $9 billion so that the target $3 billion actually reaches its goal. Alternatively, if states and citizens attack corruption in tandem, the target might be more closely reached without allocating more money. This is implicit in the switch to ACT suggested by M&S as well. Since the Copenhagen Consensus attempts not to focus on problems, “but rather on realistic solutions” (Lomborg 4), it would do well to not ignore other realities of international politics.

This brings us to the final point I wish to address before concluding this paper, regarding the way in which priorities were achieved through the Copenhagen Consensus. As we have already stated, there are complications arising from mainstream International Relations theories, with the way the Consensus was compiled. Challenges were intentionally constrained in order to make opportunities more feasibly approachable. We have also already discussed the reliance on economic literature, experts, and methods used in the Consensus. As a result, traditional IR priorities have been devalued for a number of reasons, in part because they are difficult to study and measure. Yet this is where economic fails to bridge the gap between the two social sciences. While it is true that some elements of IR are murky by social science standards, IR has still produced a large volume of literature and empirical results on traditional issues like war. The section included (Challenge 3) on war only addresses civil wars, because it is more numerous and a greater scourge avowedly. But constraining the issue to arms proliferation in civil wars actually constrains the IR literature in a way that makes the issue less examinable within IR theory – though perhaps the opposite within CBA literature. It may be more easily analyzable within economic literature, but it ignores the traditional issues of interstate war. My particular theoretical loyalties make this a large sticking point.

Nevertheless, this problem is general and prevalent in the Copenhagen Consensus as a methodological failure. All the theorists and experts are economists with their own priorities. They are all knowledgeable in economic literature and are tasked with figuring out which priority provides the greatest monetary opportunities. Thus not only are traditional IR priorities devalued compared to economic priorities, but their choices are further constrained by the proposals offered to them by the challenge and response authors. Extremely modest proposals, or those without strong numerical results like Governance and Corruption, may have a tendency to be devalued because they will have smaller returns and smaller investments (but larger benefit-cost ratios (BCRs)). The same opportunities may also be overlooked because they require concentrated efforts or other non-monetary costs. But this study attempts to prioritize additional funding, and thus the rankings occur in the order they do.

This issue is interrelated with the issue of inconsistency between theoretical IR’s explanations of causality and an economic approach that downplays causality. Experts have no real way of knowing how addressing one issue-area will affect the causes of other issue areas that they have prioritized more highly. We argue that this is the case with corruption and good governance. This may also be the case with war, whose causes and solutions can never possibly be confined to arms trafficking and proliferation. As a result, most though not all of the rankings highly downplay the importance of governance and corruption and generally ignore the importance of global conflicts (Lomborg 626, 630, 639, 644). This no doubt reflects a skewed organization of international priorities based on economic and not international political literature, and also based on definitions that may not be theoretically sound (within academic IR). The Consensus does an impressive job compiling issues, data, and methods. However, in attempting to bridge the gap between economic analysis and International Relations, its greatest failings result from its ignorance of International Relations theory and literature – its greatest intended promise.

* Bueno de Mesquita et al. provide a very interesting and compelling account of the empirical evidence of corruption in The Logic of Political Survival (2003).