This chapters surveys the main ideas and tensions in the classical liberal treatment of defense, international relations, and war-making. This sets the stage for a discussion of the feasibility of interstate federalism by identifying key issues and challenges that such a system will need to...

What is the connection between mass surveillance and institutions of individual agency, freedom, and self-governance? Recent literature on “surveillance capitalism” argues that over the past two decades, the capitalist system has been transformed by Big Tech companies, which have commodified...

In testimony before Congress in 1969, economist Kenneth Boulding argued that “The war industry is a cancer within the body of American society. It has its own mode of growth, it represents a system which is virtually independent and indeed objectively inimical to the welfare of the American...

This paper discusses the unique features of Austrian economics and some of the recent contributions of this school of thought. We organize these contributions in different research “buckets” in the hope that this will be a useful guide to readers while demonstrating the ongoing relevance of...

Contrary to predictions by many experts, Ukraine’s military has been resilient in the face of the Russian government’s invasion. Drawing on the logic of polycentric defense, this paper helps explain how Ukraine has remained resistant against a conventionally more powerful adversary. We argue...

What is the relationship between education and peace? While economists have written about the relationship between education and economic prosperity and about how economic trade and prosperity affect peace, in this paper we highlight a different and more direct connection between education and...

This paper connects the theory of the market process to scholarship on nonviolent action. Doing so advances market process theory by bringing its interaction with nonviolent action and its peace-building potential to the forefront. It advances scholarship on nonviolent action by extending the...

This paper develops the political economy of human rights scandals involving government agencies. Human rights scandals occur when violations of human rights are made public and cause, or threaten to cause, damage to the reputation of the agencies involved. It is argued that human rights...

This paper develops the political economy of the militarization of domestic policing. We analyze the mechanisms through which the “protective state” — where the government utilizes its monopoly on force to protect citizens’ rights — devolves into a “predatory state” which...