LaBossiere Podcast

#23 - Chris Blattman

Episode Summary

On sampling in life, Colombian gangs, and the perpetuation of peace

Episode Notes

Chris Blattman is the Ramalee E. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies at The University of Chicago’s Pearson Institute and Harris Public Policy. He is an economist and political scientist who studies poverty, violence and crime in developing countries. He has designed and evaluated strategies for tackling poverty, including cash transfers to the poorest. Much of his work is with the victims and perpetrators of crime and violence, testing the link between poverty and violence. His recent work looks at other sources of and solutions to violence. These solutions range from behavioral therapy to social norm change and local-level state building. He has worked mainly in Colombia, Liberia, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Chicago’s South Side. Dr. Blattman was previously faculty at Columbia and Yale Universities, and holds a PhD in Economics from UC Berkeley and a Master’s in Public Administration and International Development (MPA/ID) from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Episode Transcription

Chris Blattman 
 

[TRANSCRIPT IS AUTO-GENERATED ]


[00:00:00] Alex: Chris Blattman is the Ramalee E Pearson professor of global conflict studies at the university of Chicago's Pearson Institute and Harris public policy Institute. He's an economist and political scientist who studies poverty, violence, and crime in developing countries. He's designed and evaluated strategies for tackling poverty, including cash transfers to the poorest. 
 

Much of his work is with the victims and perpetrators of crime and violence testing the link between poverty and violence. His recent work looks at other sources and solutions to violence. These solutions range from behavioral therapy to social norm change and local level state building. He's worked mainly in Colombia, Liberia, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Chicago's south side. Dr. Blattman was previously faculty at Columbia and Yale universities and holds a PhD in economics from UC Berkeley and a master's in public administration and international development from the Harvard Kennedy school. His latest book, why we fight, the roots of war and the path to peace is available for pre-order now. Today we talked about sampling in life, Colombian gangs, and the perpetuation of peace. Hope you enjoy. 
 

  
 

  
 

[00:01:06] Alex: Well I guess first of all, before we get into anything, I should say congrats on the, on the new book. I'm excited to get my hands on it in the spring.  
 

[00:01:13] Chris: Yeah, no, I'm eager to get my hands on one myself early  
 

[00:01:17] Alex: next. Gotcha. Gotcha. Excited for it. So, you know, before, before this great, like stint in academia, you were, you were a business consultant and an accountant if I remember correctly, but you still point to rock climbing, instructor and music store salesman as being the best two jobs you've ever had, which is, which is quite the deviation. 
 

So to kick things off, I'm curious how you ended up doing what you do now.  
 

[00:01:41] Chris: It came from a family where all, everybody worked in business and banking and they were all sort of like everybody, like my dad and my grandfather and my uncle, they were all these, like, didn't go to college, started in the mail room, ended up as like senior positions in banks and things in Canada. 
 

And so, so that was just sort of the model, I guess, you know, we all sort of follow in certain footsteps. And they seem to like what they did. And so I started taking that route. And then when, you know when it was time to go to university, I didn't, you know, I figured I'd probably the, in Canada, they have these undergraduates, you can do a, B commerce, like a bachelor's in commerce and bachelor's in accounting and things like what you don't have here. 
 

And so I just, I looked into these programs that I stumbled into one and found myself. Doing that, but just didn't really like it. And particularly hated the accounting, which is where I started. It was just not a good fit for me personally. And, and then I guess just in my, around the mid college crisis is like a good description. 
 

I think I realized I didn't, like, I was able to realize that I didn't like it because of school. I went to Canada had. Cooperative program where you do your four year degree over five years and you'd spend four to six months a year working on internships. And it was very structured and, and you'd get channeled into great internships, but it meant I had the benefit of having like a year to work experience and learning what I didn't like before I graduated college. 
 

And so in my third or fourth year, I was able to pivot and I, I was taking some economics and some political science classes. Which were more, I don't know, historical, and they weren't like the Matthew ones necessarily. They were the ones who have big ideas and that just captured my interest. And and, and, and I decided I wanted to work on social issues. 
 

And I grew attractive in theory to international issues. Cause it's, they seem neglected. And they were but I didn't know how to get from here to there. And so I, I switched my major, finished with an economics degree, and then I went into business and then I started looking for opportunities to do international work. 
 

And the only path I could see was trying to go and get a degree. A master's degree in international development. And so I that's what I did. I applied into some international development master's degrees and I got into one at the Harvard Kennedy school. And then that led to a bunch of things, but that was basically, it just sort of tried to get the work experience I could, and then use a master's degree to like,  
 

[00:04:18] Alex: And here we are, right? 
 

Yeah. That's crazy. Sounds like the mid college crisis has been pretty beneficial for, for the both of us, I guess. I'll see how I turn out. But,  
 

[00:04:26] Chris: Yeah. Okay. Some people, I mean, everybody, if some people do it, you have to try a few crew. Some people stumble upon their first career right away. And, and otherwise I think you have to think of it as sampling. 
 

So you try something during school and try something after, and yeah, I guess I just learned very quickly that if it didn't feel like the right fit would probably wasn't the right  
 

[00:04:48] Alex: fit, right. Yeah. You know, I think there was a part of me. That's always been. A bit jealous of people, for example, going into medicine and things like that, where they like, they know since they're like four years old, you know what I mean? 
 

But I, I definitely agree. I think it's sort of a bandwidth issue, right? Like it's just so much time allotted to you and you have to take the time to try as many things as you can to sort of figure it out from there.  
 

[00:05:08] Chris: Yeah. I think it's led to like a philosophy where I just try to sample things in general. 
 

So. I'll walk out of a movie halfway through I'll leave replay after act one. I will before I met my wife, if I didn't think a relationship was going anywhere, I'd ended after like three months. And I would just always, and so, and, and I think whenever or in with careers, like I would try and different careers. 
 

And if I didn't feel like the right fit after a few months or a year, I would need them. And so It was harder the first time, but then I sort of just fell into it and I, and I think, and then ultimately I would find something I loved and I stuck with it and that's, what's true with marriage and that was true with career. 
 

And so, yeah, I, and it's true with plays, so I, it's a good, I think it's a good strategy.  
 

[00:05:55] Alex: Wow. I, I. Probably need to take that into a, into more account. I like the strategy of you've been employing there you know, to shift gears for a second. One thing that I think has really piqued my interest is some of your recent work in Maine in Columbia. 
 

Because I'm actually half Colombian myself and I have some family who've lived there all that aside. So from, from what I understand, you spent time there basically studying. Why we fight through the lens of street gangs in the area. Really interesting work. I'm curious how the project came up to begin with why mitigating? 
 

[00:06:29] Chris: Well, it was kind of, I mean, I, I worked on the subject of like our groups and armed recruitment, mostly in the context of civil conflicts and mostly in Africa. And then around five or six years ago, I was coming up for tenure. I was really focusing on a few projects and not starting anything new. 
 

And so by the time that happened, I just had, I didn't have quite a an empty desk, but I have, I had the, I w very consciously, like, created the room to like, do something new. And I also follow this pattern, right. Tend to like work in a place for five or six years. And then I keep working there a little bit, but then I moved somewhere else. 
 

So I've worked in Uganda for five or six years and I worked in Liberia for five or six years. And then I was thinking, okay, now it's time to. Go somewhere new. And honestly, I I, at that point I had small kids and I said, I have to find a violent country where I can bring my family. And so that meant like either it was basically so I narrowed it down to Kenya, Indonesia, Colombia, and I went and I spent a couple weeks in Kenya. 
 

And, you know, in serving struggles, struggling to like come up with leads, you know, pull threads and they didn't go anywhere. I started a project in Indonesia with some colleagues, didn't have a chance to go because I went to Columbia. We just went for a month as a family, worked at the university to our ground and did some tourism, but also like developed some things and then it just spun into. 
 

Initially, it's fun to work with the police in Bogota, which I knew from the outset, wasn't going to be very interesting, but it was like a good way just to get going. And I figured one thing would lead to another. And, and the short story is that the graduate student I met there became a friend. I started advising him, he's a Columbia and he's from Metagene. 
 

And about a year in, he said, why don't, why don't we here's a conference in Metagene. Why don't you come to the conference, but show up a week ahead of time. And we'll like case join, right? I'm from there. I used to work in the government. There's a lot of gangs, but we don't know much about them. You know, someone who he'd worked in the government worked on crime in the city for years. 
 

Really, he like everyone else, a really rudimentary understanding of like how these things are organized. And so we went and we spent a week just talking to people and it sort of became clear that there's, here's a city with 350 really well organized criminal groups, at least like hundreds. And there was just all this variety. 
 

And there was this immense opportunity to, we have this access. We just, people would talk to us. It just was clear that this it was, so we just thought, how can we not try to study this? We didn't know how it took us like a year or two and figure out how to collect data, how. Inroads into these groups, how to qualitatively figure out what was going on, but we just decided to make this big investment. 
 

And it's been, yeah, just super fascinating.  
 

[00:09:17] Alex: How is it interacting with people in areas like, you know, middle of winter in Columbia as something of an outsider? I can imagine it's tough sort of getting key players to cooperate,  
 

[00:09:29] Chris: you know, it's funny. I mean, you always have to have like a local collaborator of some kind. 
 

So, I mean, in, in Columbia, I have this peer, this other academic who and then we also have field staff who are from there. One of our, eventually one of our main research assistants is a former. Basically mafia member who had performed and worked for the city government. And he would just, we met him and he was just a very gifted, he just turned out to be very gifted qualitative researcher. 
 

And so he worked for us full-time now. And so you need that hook in, in Uganda, that kind of capacity was never there, especially in the north where the war was going on, where I worked. And so, but we always had, we always developed one or two research assistants who basically would become Just our right-hand man or women, and just help us who were just really, really, really good. 
 

And many of them went on to become successful researchers afterwards. So you need somebody who can connect you, but then, you know, it's funny because you're an outsider, it's sort of, people will feel safer talking to you about. When I'm in Chicago doing some of the similar stuff, like I'm deeply enmeshed in the politics of it. 
 

Like there's no way I'm not an outsider. Cause I'm like, I'm on one side. Whether I like it or not, like, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm just sort of viewed with some suspicion. I'm kind of applying my nature partisan. There I'm just this, like, people are like this curiosity. And it's also really safe in some ways to speak to me because who do I know? 
 

Right. I'm just going to talk to a whole bunch of people in another country. I'm going to write some article for a bunch of academics. So, so it's difficult, but once you get in people and then frankly, the point is you just have to go and talk. People are sort of interested to talk about their work or talked with their lives. 
 

And so ran some random. Person shows up and starts asking penetrating questions about you. And it's just fascinating what you have to say. And most people are quite happy with that.  
 

[00:11:25] Alex: You know, you mentioned doing some work in Chicago and you know, for better, for worse, it's, it's probably a good place to be for the type of work that you're doing. 
 

What are some analytics. You've found between, you know, the south side of Chicago where we're both based out of and in a place like mundane. 
 

[00:11:42] Chris: Yeah, that's a good question. So 
 

one thing that's different here, that's a big advantage in Chicago is there's these generations of. People who grew up in gangs and criminal organizations went to prison in part, and then get out older and wiser, often reformed, not all of them, but a sizable number. And then they want to do something in their community. 
 

B often. Th they don't have a lot of legitimate job options, you know? Cause if you killed somebody 20 years ago and then you served 20 years and you're a gang member, like what who's gonna hire you. And so there they do these, this thing that's called outreach street outreach and they are, and they, their, their job is basically to know what's going on in the neighborhood. 
 

Know who's doing what step in to. Stop violence or connect people to services. They're sort of, they've become like an arm through which other organizations can provide like social services, legal services and that. That doesn't exist in managing. We had to kind of create that. And so it's interesting to me why that's just the, but to me, that's like the bedrock of a lot of social services and outreach and in, in, in, in Chicago and it doesn't exist in medicine, so we've had to create it. 
 

And I think that's interesting. I don't know where it's sort of this question, like where are all the 50 year olds? Because these like Chicago, these gangs have been around for decades. And, and we haven't quite figured that out. I think a lot of them just get out and become sort of quasi legitimate businessman. 
 

And, but I don't know. And a lot of them die and maybe just a lot of them spend their lives in prison.  
 

[00:13:28] Alex: The,  
 

[00:13:29] Chris: but that's sort of the opposite of what you asked. Cause it's a distinction. You know? Yeah. I don't know. It's similar in the sense that every neighborhood has a, a youth gang, but it's just so much more structured there it's much more hierarchical. It's much more ordered. And I think that's partly idiosyncratic, just managing is one of the more ordered and hierarchical. Places in terms of organized crime. 
 

I think it's just systematically that the, the, the block enforcement strategy in the United States in particular in Chicago has just been cut off the head, cut off the head, cut off the head, cut off the head. And so I think what you have on this in the south and west side, therefore is just a lot of young leaderless groups, whereas. 
 

That wasn't, that was not done as intensively or as effectively in Metagene and or in, when it was, when you're putting prison, you can still run your empire from prison. It's very straightforward, whereas that's not true here. And so so that just has advantages and disadvantage. And the advantage is that like organized crime is organized. 
 

And so there's, you know, at least in the case of Metagene, it's less violent than Chicago and they provide services to citizens. And they have, they graduated degrees legitimacy. And that's good in the sense that it's more peaceful and people have another person to turn to, to solve problems. And it's bad in that for the obvious reason that here's this not  
 

[00:14:58] Alex: elected relatively  
 

[00:14:59] Chris: unequal group of, of, of ruffians who, and, and, and guys who were selling drugs and, and, and. 
 

And exerting coercion and controlling neighborhoods, so.  
 

[00:15:15] Alex: Gotcha. Gotcha. You know, my, I think one of my main takeaways from that research and medicine in particular was it sort of gave me a different viewpoint of, of peace. I think altogether we have the super idealistic view. I mean, it seems of, of getting along Generally, but you seem to break it down more clinically and to just this tipping of incentives, I know we're getting more into the realm of your book here. 
 

So to whatever extent you want to answer, but what's, what's maybe a more practical example of that, that people might be able to relate to.  
 

[00:15:46] Chris: Well, I mean yeah, I mean, getting along this. And harmony and integration are terrific objectives. And if you can achieve that, it's like protective insulation against conflict. 
 

But you don't need that for peace. I mean, one example, like just the cold war, right? The Americans and the Russians, the USSR, generally just, they, they didn't. Erupted nuclear warfare. Thank goodness. They never liked one another. There was just this sort of, they just loved one another and peace and there was skirmishing and fights along the margins. 
 

And so if you were in Vietnam or central America, you'd felt. It doesn't feel very peaceful, but for given the size of the potential conflict, that it was reasonably peaceful and that kind of tends stand off. And you're starting to, you're starting to see that with China and the U S I think as well, it's unlikely that they will go to war. 
 

It's possible for various reasons, but it just doesn't make sense. Cause it's, it's just too, too disastrous. And so that's true for everybody. And it's more true when you both nuclear armed.  
 

[00:16:49] Alex: Is that sort of a common theme when you're looking at something like the future of conflict or the future of violence or war that, you know, maybe the likelihood of anything large happening just sort of decreases because the stakes are so much higher. 
 

Is  
 

[00:17:03] Chris: that generally. I mean, it's, it's going to be complicated. I mean, as a general rule, just 99 times out of 100 or 999 times out of 1,000 two enemies, don't go to fight. And so they don't go to war. And that's true for villages and that's true for ethnic groups and it's true for religious sects and it's true for political factions within the country. 
 

It's true for countries. So, so And then there is, yeah. As the costs, as the cost of conflict rises, that's a big disincentive. I guess, what can, it's not quite so simple as to say the more costlier is war the less likely it is to happen, just because, you know, there's other complexity there. You know, if, if trying to imagine a world where, you know, take China and the US or take any two enemies, but suppose one, realize there's this huge pie, right. 
 

Which is the global order and the economy. And. And if you have sort of a window of opportunity where you could knock out your enemy and grab the whole thing then, then the size of the pie and it's sudden, and the fact that, you know, wars is potentially that's going to actually make war very likely. 
 

And that's people, people use that window of opportunity story to sort of explain most world wars So world war I world war II, basically there's lots of factors that go into this, but basically one side had a window of opportunity to just get the whole thing. And whether that was a reasonable belief of theirs or self-delusion that was like the fundamental motive between the wars is one story. 
 

And that kind of what you'd call maybe dynamic incentive is isn't necessarily affected by this  
 

logic. I mentioned.  
 

[00:18:53] Alex: Gotcha. Gotcha. You know, I want to touch quickly on your work sort of looking at the perpetuation of poverty or violence. I think more specifically some of the work that you didn't Liberia just starting more generally, how much of getting out of sort of a cycle of poverty or a cycle of violence? 
 

How much of that if at all, is education and then how much of that is having experienced it firsthand?  
 

[00:19:20] Chris: Well, I mean, if you're talking about violence, the, the idea that like a lot of people think that poverty is going to lead to violence, lack of education needs to violence. It's generally not quite true. 
 

The fact is, is like two very poor people. To very poor villages to coordinations the war is still very painful for them. And so they still have an incentive to find a deal. And so once again, 99 times out of a hundred, they're not going to fight. And so if you shrink the pie, people are fighting over. 
 

It doesn't necessarily make them any more or less likely to just find deals is, is one thing that said W and, and, and so the other thing I'll say is take something like Chicago, like what you'll you'll you'll hear mayors say things like, well, we need to provide jobs to reduce the violence. Just like in this poor country context, you say, well, we have to develop the economies. 
 

There has to be trade. There has to be jobs to reduce the conflict. That's I just don't think that's true for a couple of reasons. One is just that Well, two things. One is just this point I've already made, which is that the, there was already incentive to find a deal. And so providing people, jobs are not as it doesn't necessarily change those basic incentives. 
 

Something was interfering with that. And the absence of jobs is probably not the thing that was interfering with peace. So providing them is not the solution. It might be good for other reasons. I've done a lot of my work in my career on job creation. But I don't think it's what would it takes. The other reason is like, it's totally like at the end of the day, the people who are making the decision, whether or not to go to war between the two groups or shoot on the streets of Chicago is a very small number of people. 
 

Right. So there's a, in a country that's just a, I don't know, a few dozen generals and politicians and some soldiers and things. And in Chicago, there's maybe, you know, a few thousand guys who are members of, of, of mobs and cliques and gangs and things who, who have the opportunity. Right. So, and then there's a million people. 
 

In these high, violent neighborhoods. Right? So even if jobs were the solution, if I suddenly provide jobs in these two poor countries already said, let me provide jobs on the south side of Chicago. What are the chances that I'm even going to like. Hit the people who are actually decisive in the violence. 
 

Right? And so the, the strategy for countering violence is almost always target, target, target, target, target, find this very small number of people who actually have the capacity to exercise violence and intervene with them and figure out why they're being violent and then tailor what you're doing to the reason they're being. 
 

And, and that most public policy just fails that very basic tests. You know, it's,  
 

[00:22:12] Alex: it's an interesting way of putting it because I've read that a lot of, or something that you speak quite a bit about is just direct cash incentives is sort of a cost effective way to help things. It seems like, you know, general governance is almost like a sort of spray and pray type mentality. 
 

Whereas, you know, if you can get a little bit more intentional or accurate with, with the aid you're trying to provide, it might work out a bit better. Is that. Nice way of characterizing  
 

[00:22:38] Chris: it. Well, I think for violence, that's true. I mean, with something like cash, which was this other thing I've worked, I mean, in some ways that turned there, we weren't so much trying to target violence as we were going to try to target poverty. 
 

You know, that, that actually turned out to be a little bit wrong. You know, you can listen. If you give people, if you give someone who is poor and doesn't have enough cash, they will eat more. That's good. That's why we, so as a humanitarian thing generally, and people spend it well, we learned, we, you know, we tried giving cash to the last people on the planet you want to give cash to, and even they spent it well. 
 

So, so, so people are going to go and buy food and shelter. And so that's good. We should do that all the time, but there was an ID. Cash transfers could set people on a, on a new trajectory. Right out of poverty. And that, that was, that was just based, that's based on different. That was based on the idea that there was something holding them back. 
 

They were, they didn't have access to credit was hard for them to save the good ideas, but they couldn't get, they couldn't surmount these challenges and cash would get them past that. And then they fly and that just turns out not to have been true. Gotcha. It, it helps them to. But then it wasn't that big a barrier and everybody else catches up is, is the emerging evidence, you know, it's too soon to say, but that's, that's what I would say is the case. 
 

Maybe the only group that's not true for. It's the very, very, very, very poor. And then they catapult ahead to nearly being very far in a sustained way, which is a big.  
 

[00:24:15] Alex: You know, you mentioned in some of your research, I think it's Liberia that it costs I think it was three or four times as much to do something there as it did in somewhere like rural Kenya. 
 

So anything like transport or fuel or the cost structure they have there. How do external forces or to what extent do external forces like that play a role, do you think.  
 

[00:24:35] Chris: I mean, you can kind of think like different economies have really different cost structures, right. That come from how easy is it to grow food and how is the transport? How is it communicate? And, and the more all of these things build up the partner is just to do anything, right? So it's harder for me to run a research project, which just means that unless I have to be, unless I really want to study something that. 
 

I need to be in say potentially violent unstable place or really want to work with ex-combatants. It doesn't really make sense for me to work in Liberia. Likewise, if I were just running a business, every single person who wants to start a business locally or internationally just has to contend with the fact that it's just much costly or to work there and therefore dozens and dozens, millions. 
 

Investments that would make sense in one place. Just don't make sense in Liberia. So it just stifles all economic activity, all these things that are just marginally profitable in one place are unprofitable in Liberia. And but to a huge degree because everything and everything just is difficult. And so if I'm a big business, You know, if that same in agribusiness, I'm going to, I mean, just start trying to try making farms and I'll grow tea for export in Kenya, not in Liberia, but even if I'm just a little farmer with a plot of land, am I going to like start a third plot or not? 
 

And so every decision, every margin, it just reduces investment. So it reduces output and it just makes life hard. And some of those. Yeah. And, and some of those are just because whatever, all the infrastructure and education, everything was wiped out by years of neglect and war as part of it. And so hopefully that'll crawl back with like external and internal public investment, but it'll be a long time. 
 

[00:26:25] Alex: I think this is probably a cool way to tie it in, but you know, the, if we're talking about the Chicago or like purely economic way of thinking, we're, we're sort of seeing people as being like generally you know, rational decision makers, you know, you see a guy like Faler, who might argue otherwise and say, no, we're all actually kind of nuts. 
 

But what what's your experience? Or, or thinking on people's rationality on their own self-interest when you're dealing with something like poverty or like.  
 

[00:26:51] Chris: I mean, I think to a first date, first approximation, just the idea that people in groups are kind of calculating and self interested is like a good starting point. 
 

If you dispense with that, then you'll probably get things wrong. And then I think the, and then of course we're not all rational and every decision, or I guess there are specific areas where we may be depart from that. Systematically. And so I think, I think like the failures of the world are just successful because they've, they focus on the kinds of decisions that get waylaid by are the psychology of individuals or the psychology of groups. 
 

And so so, so it's more like you have to find the pockets of, of things where we get really way late and then try to think about how that gets fixed. So, so for example, in like, There was this whole, the average person got the average, the average young person, the average, relatively poor person, even the average person who'd been affected by the war even been the next combatant was calculating and. 
 

Everything functioned well enough that they reintegrated normally into life and they got kind of what they needed. They have the basic social skills and incentives to function. And then there was this small margin of society that just had missed out on some really basic skills, social skills, personal skills, and around just managing conflict, managing their lives. 
 

And so they were the destitute and the violent and the criminal. Like please really margin of society. And so we sort of showed that actually you can go and you can, remedially teach these people, some of these skills. And in using a tool of behavior change called cognitive behavior therapy, and that can actually help a good chunk of them really turn their lives around. 
 

And so they were stuck in a rut where they just didn't realize what they were capable of and they didn't even know what they were missing. They didn't even know that it was possible for them to change their ways. Calculating, but, but they, in some sense, they, they weren't aware of what was, what was possible for themselves and how to get there. 
 

And so we just sort of illuminated that way. But it, but, but the important thing to remember is that 99% of people didn't necessarily need that. It was just this fringe. And so, so for me, the trick is just finding these really important margins. Where people get totally way laid by these behavioral issues and then you, and that's a great place for public policy for. 
 

[00:29:22] Alex: I appreciate the time really sure.  
 

Awesome. Cheers. Have a great.