The Price of Prestige

98 chapter four

is to provide collective welfare, we should be most interested in the provi-

sion of the good rather than the identity of the provider. If anything, once

someone volunteers to pay for the good, we should expect the rest of the

actors to practice free riding. Accordingly, collective prosociality should be

carried out in a manner that best serves the desired welfare outcome rather

than in the most conspicuous way. Very little should be gained from getting

credit for being a do- gooder, even less from only pretending to be one.

Thus, for example, the collective welfare model cannot account for the

French behavior following UN Security Council resolution 1701 in the sum-

mer of 2006 , which led to a tenuous truce between Israel and Hezbollah. In

the days following the resolution, France, who initially agreed to head the

international effort to augment peacekeeping forces in Lebanon, retracted

its support for the peacekeeping force and offered only two hundred soldiers

instead of the thousands of soldiers it originally committed to the mission.

On August 22 , 2006 , Italy announced its willingness to lead the UN opera-

tions in Lebanon and to send between two and three thousand soldiers as the

backbone of this new UN force. It took France less than forty- eight hours to

change its mind again, pledge two thousand soldiers, and reclaim its leader-

ship. Such competitive behavior contradicts the expectations of a collective

action model. Once Italy stepped in, France should have been able to free

ride and enjoy the collective welfare that the Italian forces provided. How-

ever, French decision makers showed higher sensitivity to the identity of the

provider than to the provision of the good.

Similarly, it is difficult to explain why throughout the history of UN

peacekeeping, very few countries contributed willingly to the logistical

end of the missions even though the logistical dimension is just as crucial

for the success of the mission. When countries do contribute to UN mis-

sions, they prefer to focus on the more conspicuous and glamorous op-

erational side. Even Canada, a self- declared do- gooder and the initiator

of UN peacekeeping, contributed more personnel than logistical support

(Neack 1995 ). Similar patterns are observable in foreign aid. The forma-

tion of the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) in 1965

encouraged the Norwegians to upgrade their own aid program in order

not to fall behind one of the most prominent competitors in their pres-

tige space. The government immediately established a committee that

led to the creation of the Norwegian Development Agency (NORAD)

two years later (Van der Veen 2002 , 35 ). The Canadians followed suit and

established their own aid bureaucracy, CIDA (Canadian International

Development Agency), in 1968. Here again, the provision of public goods