The Perverse Effects of the Nobel Peace Prize

Ronald Krebs offers an outstanding piece of political science scholarship, at Political Science Quarterly: "The False Promise of the Nobel Peace Prize."

The essay notes that the purpose of the Nobel Peace Prize has changed from its origins in the first few years following Alfred Nobel's death, during the first decade of the 20th century. According to Nobel's will, the award was to go to those whose "accomplishments" had most advanced the cause of international peace. But over the life of the recognition -- and especially in recent decades -- the Nobel Prize Committee has sought to honor those showing the greatest promise of future peace. This is the Nobel's "aspirational" mode -- that is, an award for the best of peace to come. Not only is this a corruption of Alfred Nobel's original vision, it is deadly international politics as well. As Krebs shows:

Of the nine aspirational cases since 1971 aiming at domestic change (see Appendix), six produced the opposite effect of that desired; the other three seem to have had no effect; and in no case does the Prize appear to have played a substantial role in bringing about the changes favored and envisioned by the Nobel Committee. The Committee has the best of intentions in promoting responsive regimes and the protection of human rights, but the consequences can be perverse.

Krebs provides a case-study discussion next, but I want to back up a bit, and share a key section of theory. The perversion Krebs notes is how Nobel is a catalyst to heightened activism among the recipient individuals and groups, while simultaneously increasing government brutality:

... the Nobel Committee has increasingly sought, through its awards, to highlight political repression and human rights violations, in the hope that the brighter media light will lead authoritarian governments to behave better and even take painful steps toward democracy. This goal motivated the Committee to honor activist luminaries such as Andrei Sakharov, Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, and Aung San Suu Kyi. But the Nobel Committee thereby has implicitly presumed that regimes from the Leonid Brezhnev-era USSR to apartheid-era South Africa to Deng Xiaopingʼs Peopleʼs Republic of China (PRC) to junta-ruled Myanmar are so sensitive to their international reputations as “good” or “responsible” states that they would sacrifice their most-cherished values to maintain or cultivate their reputations. This is possible, but implausible. The more-likely alternative is that while the prize winners themselves, given their prominence, might be relatively spared, regimes will clamp down harshly on local dissidents to demonstrate their resolve and to prevent local and international activists from taking heart. To the extent that the Nobel Prize is successful in drawing worldwide attention to their plight, it may render an insecure regime even more anxious and thus more brutal and dangerous; regimes desperate to hold on to power are more sensitive to threats to their rule than to the good opinion of the international community. Moreover, insofar as local activists believe that the Nobel Peace Prize confers moral authority, that the world has thereby given its imprimatur to their cause, and that the international community has thereby signaled that it will protect them, they may ramp up their demands or at least intensify their protest activities—intensifying the regimeʼs fears of encirclement and its sense of vulnerability, boosting the regimeʼs desperation, and calling forth still greater repression. Ironically, if the Nobel Committeeʼs aspirations are fulfilled—if the Prize emboldens local actors, if it boosts global media coverage of regime repression, and if it pressures authoritarian regimes—it may produce effects precisely the opposite of those it intends, with moral victories substituting for actual ones. This article contends that this tragic chain of events, in which the Nobel Committeeʼs noble intentions at least temporarily set back the cause of democracy and human rights, is not only plausible, but relatively common in this important subset of cases. In fact, [Francis] Sejersted, the Nobel Committee chairman, has acknowledged that “in some cases the prize has in fact provoked conflict in the short term.” His admission is revealing, but it may understate the awardʼs human cost.

At the conclusion, Krebs returns to international relations theory. He suggests that in many cases, such as the 2009 award to President Barack Obama (a classic example of "aspirationalism"), the prize may have the exact opposite effect anticipated by the Nobel Committee:

In most recently honoring President Obama, the Nobel Committee clearly hoped to encourage his administration to further distance itself from the unilateralist tendencies, confrontational bearing, dismissive rhetoric, and disengaged posture of the George W. Bush years. Whether the Prize will have this effect remains to be seen, but, as this articleʼs analysis might suggest, there is reason for skepticism. Obama is hardly a vulnerable liberal activist in an authoritarian regime, but he must worry about how his Peace Prize will reverberate in Americaʼs domestic politics. To those (more conservative) Americans less enthralled with Obama, the Peace Prize may be seen as a warning sign that Obama perhaps shares the Nobel Committeeʼs international agenda (ultra-liberal, as they see it) and perhaps cares more deeply about advancing the common interests of the international community than about promoting the interests of the United States. The Nobel Peace Prize may thus prove a political liability for Obama and may compel him, in a political environment still deeply shaped by the legacy of September 11, to take steps to counteract the impression that he is some internationalist peacenik. Rather than release his inner dove, the Nobel Peace Prize may force him to brandish his public hawk. He may even feel required to part ways with the international community just to bolster his credentials as a defender of American interests. If this comes to pass, the Nobel Peace Prize may once again help produce a world at odds with the Committeeʼs intent and vision.

It's a PDF documnent (and it's working funky for me), so click the Political Science Quarterly website for the full homepage, just in case.