7. Threat Misestimations and the Role of NGOs

In this chapter, we investigate the impacts on collective risk management of mistakes made in estimating the severity of a threat. In general, in the real world, it is difficult for policymakers to make precise estimates of threats to their country. Although the governments intend to collect precise information on threats, the collected information can contain significant errors and is also often biased in bureaucratic administrative processes. Moreover, interest groups try to influence the evaluation of the information and the policymaking process through lobbying. Using the alliance model developed in this book, we examine how misestimation of a threat affects burden-sharing among allies. Allies may “over”-estimate the threat so that the estimated level is higher than the true level of the threat. We will show that if an ally overestimates the threat to an alliance, it may contribute more to the public goods than when its estimates are accurate.