A few years ago in the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks report, they made the understandable warning that international collaboration on things like climate change (global pandemics weren’t yet a thing) was withering in the face of a seemingly daily barrage of derision from the Trump White House.
At the time, the Trump administration was seen as a bulwark of nationalism against the kind of globalism that was seen as necessary to tackle what are largely global problems. Recent research from the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods suggests that when it comes to cooperation, such nationalism is not as uncommon as we might think.
Analyzing cooperation
The researchers look at how 18,000 people from 42 countries cooperate to try and understand whether it’s more likely that we cooperate with fellow nationals or those from elsewhere. The results show that people from every single country prefer to cooperate with their fellow citizens rather than foreigners.
The volunteers participated in the classic game theory task of the prisoner’s dilemma. Their partner in the game was either from their own country or another country. In each task, the volunteers were given 10 “monetary units”, and in the true nature of the game, were told to decide whether to keep some for themselves or to give some to their partner.
Any money that they chose to give to their partner was doubled, with the same the case for any money they received from their partner. This, in theory at least, creates a condition whereby the best strategy for both parties is to give away all of their “money”. Some of the teams were told that their choices would be made public, whereas others were told their decisions would be strictly private.
Instant trust
The results show that people appear to cooperate more when they were paired with someone from their own country, with this finding true in 39 of the 42 countries the experiment was conducted in. Indeed, even the remaining three veered in this direction but it was not by a statistically significant margin.
What’s more, this trend was not reliant upon whether the decisions of each player were made public or not, with “national parochialism” the order of the day in both scenarios. The same results even emerged when fictional money was exchanged for real money.
While there didn’t appear to be any variation in international cooperation based on one’s political leanings, the results did appear to suggest differences between nations. For instance, international cooperation tended to be higher in egalitarian countries and in countries where opportunities for such relationships to be formed were greater.
Cross border cooperation
All of which perhaps makes the concerns expressed by the WEF a few years ago all the starker. With borders largely shut down during much of the Covid period, it can be easy to forget just how important cross-border cooperation is for global prosperity. A time reminder comes via recent research from the University of Eastern Finland, which highlights how much potential currently lay untapped.
For instance, the border region of Cascadia that connects Seattle in the United States and Vancouver in Canada has seen precious little economic cooperation, despite policymakers on both sides of the border promoting it, and numerous initiatives existing to support cooperation.
The research used a combination of survey and statistical data to gauge the success of cross-border cooperation around the world. A particular focus was given to forms of innovation-related cooperation, such as in science and R&D. This was measured using metrics such as the number of co-patents and co-publications.
Untapped potential
In the cross-border region of Cascadia, such cooperation is remarkably rare, with few scientific outputs emerging from the collaboration between the US and Canada. It’s a finding that somewhat surprised the researchers.
“The economic profiles of Seattle and Vancouver are very similar, and increasingly close collaboration between the two is encouraged. This should foster cross-border cooperation, but it is still very seldom that partners are sought from across the border,” they say.
Sadly, such a scenario is not confined to the border regions of North America, with similar findings emerging from European border areas.
“Although cross-border cooperation in the European Union and in its adjacent areas is supported by, e.g., the Interreg and ENI programmes, the outcomes have remained modest in terms of cooperation in science, research and product development,” the researchers continue. “For instance, patents filed as a result of cross-border cooperation are rare.”
For instance, the Öresund region connects Sweden and Denmark and is often cited as a perfect example of international cooperation, but even this region produces relatively few innovation-based results, bar a few notable exceptions, such as in medicine.
The authors believe their work highlights the often yawning chasm between the rhetoric of cross-border cooperation spouted by policymakers, and the reality in terms of clear and concrete outcomes.
“The current relations between the EU and Russia, and the coronavirus pandemic, put the sustainability of cross-border cooperation to test. How to maintain cooperation even at current levels is a cause of concern,” the researchers conclude.
