(Page 4 of 16) - "Burden-Sharing": The International Politics of Refugee Protection authored by Thielemann, Eiko.

of a traffic light, do not take away the light’s utility for other persons. At the same time,
it would be impractable and very costly to reserve the usage to certain persons and to try
to exclude others from using it. Even though traffic lights in some ways ‘behave’ like
private goods (they can be bought and sold), ‘the traffic light regime—the lights, their
shared meaning and behavioral expectations they entail—is a public good’ (Kaul,
Grunberg and Stern 1999: 4, emphasis in original). Another example is national defense.
Once provided, it becomes a collective good from which even non-contributors cannot be
excluded. For example, even if some citizen do not contribute to the national defense
effort by paying taxes or serving in the military, they cannot be denied the benefits that
come from being a resident of the defended state. At the same time, a citizen can benefit
(consume) the collective good of national defense without reducing the benefits (or
consumption opportunities) available to other citizen. Nowadays, however, more and
more public goods are international or even global in character. Examples include a
growing number of international (regional) or even global regimes in areas such as
communication, trade, monetary policy or the environmental protection. Olson notes 'the
desire for peace … for orderly financial arrangements for multilateral trade, for the
advance of basic knowledge, and for an ecologically viable planet are now virtually
universal, yet these collective goods are only episodically or scantily supplied (Olson
1973: 873). At the international level, where similar coercive structures are usually
absent, actions towards the common good are inherently more difficult to achieve. In the
words of Kindleberger: 'How do we produce international public goods without
international government?' (Kindleberger 1986). In a state context, governments play an
important role in addressing collective action problems and improving conditions for
cooperation by creating institutions (that e.g. guarantee property rights or set norms and
standards) or through providing (fiscal) incentives or imposing penalties. As Kaul et al.
put it: ‘In some cases the coercive power of government produces socially optimal
outcomes’ (1999: 8). In an international context, the challenges to provide public goods
are thus even more challenging that they are within a states.

In the international realm, a prominent example for an international public good is
deterrence provided by strategic nuclear weapons in NATO (Sandler and Hartley 1999:
29). Here the good of deterrence is non-excludable, as the deterrence provider (say the
US) cannot fail to deliver the promised retaliatory response against the attacker of
another ally without putting up with unacceptable collateral damage to itself (e.g. to US
troops stationed in Europe). Nuclear deterrence is also non-rival among allies as its
ability to deter enemy aggression ‘is independent of the number of allies on whose behalf
the retaliatory threat is made’ (Sandler and Hartley 1999: 29). If an alliance retaliatory
response is automatic and credible, the marginal costs of extending its benefits from the
alliance’s nuclear umbrella to an additional member are zero. What public goods have in
common is that so-called externalities arise when they are produced. Externalities arise
when an individual (or a country) does not bear all the costs (in the case of a negative
externality) or the benefits (in the case of a positive externality) of a particular action.
Some use the term ‘public good’ when the externalities created are positive for third
parties and the term ‘public bad’ if externalities (i.e. the utilities created) are negative.
For example, air pollution from industrial production in country A will have negative
externalities to a down-wind neighboring country B, while environmental regulations
imposed in country A to curb the pollution of a transnational river flowing through its
territory will provide positive externalities to down-stream country B.