REGULATING THE UNDEAD IN A LIBERAL

WORLD ORDER

Like the realist paradigm, there are many varieties of liberalism.1 All liberals
nevertheless share a common belief: cooperation is still possible in a world
of anarchy. Liberals look at world politics as a non-zero-sum game. Mutual
cooperation on issues ranging from international trade to nuclear nonprolif-
eration to disease prevention can yield global public goods on a massive
scale. These gains are not always distributed evenly, but they do make all
actors better off than they would be in the absence of policy coordination.
Major actors in world politics therefore have an incentive to realize the be-
nefits that come from long-term mutual cooperation and avoid the costs that
come with mutual defection.
Liberals do not believe that cooperative outcomes always happen in
world politics. In some cases, preferences might be so divergent that no bar-
gain can be struck among the actors. Even if a non-zero-sum bargain is pos-
sible, the incentive to realize these gains does not guarantee that collabora-
tion takes place. The benefits generated by cooperation are often nonexclud-
able—in other words, anyone will benefit from broad-based cooperation
even if they themselves do not cooperate. For example, if a plucky band of
survivors were to devise a way to eliminate the plague of the undead, all hu-
mans would benefit regardless of whether they helped or not. This creates a
free-rider problem, as the payoff structure in table 2 demonstrates. The conun-
drum for liberals is that while an outcome of mutual cooperation is better
than one of mutual defection, all are best off in a situation in which they can
unilaterally defect. Since every actor has these same incentives, the outcome
can be a “tragedy of the commons”—everyone defecting, even though every-
one is better off cooperating.2
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This situation is not hopeless, however. The liberal paradigm offers mul-
tiple strategies to overcome the tragedy of the commons.3 Conditions that
lengthen the shadow of the future increase the likelihood of cooperation.
The longer one’s time horizon, the greater the rewards from mutual coopera-
tion are in comparison to the fleeting benefits from free riding. If an actor
expects to be around for a while, then response strategies that punish nonco-
operation but play well with “nice” actors—such as tit for tat—can sustain
multilateral cooperation over the long run.

TABLE 2
Tragedy of the Commons Game

Player B
Cooperate Defect
Cooperate (3,3) (0,5)
Player A Defect (5,0) (1,1)

Other gambits can increase the rewards from cooperation and reduce the
benefits from defection. Economic interdependence reduces the incentive to
defect by magnifying the gap in gains between a world of collective action
and a world of mutual distrust.4 Governments will be less likely to cheat in
the short term if they know it means they will lose the benefits from trade in
the long term. Multilateral institutions that monitor and disseminate inform-
ation can ensure that cheating will be detected and punished.5 Institutions
reassure all participating actors that they are on the same page in terms of
the rules of the game—and they clarify how and when those rules will be
broken.
Finally, democracies are more likely to cooperate with each other. Liber-
als posit that democracies are more likely to have similar preferences, mak-
ing cooperation easier. More significantly, domestic laws and institutions
provide democracies with the means to credibly commit to international
agreements.6 Liberals allow that the Hobbesian war of all against all
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predicted by realism could happen, but only under very extreme conditions.7
A world of economic interdependence, democratic governments, and inter-
national institutions should foster extensive amounts of multilateral
cooperation.
At first glance, the liberal paradigm appears to be a bad fit for a zombie
genre that specializes in apocalypses. Indeed, the tragedy of liberalism in a
universe with zombies is that some of its central tenets would accelerate the
spread of flesh-eating ghouls. Liberals advocate an open global economy in
order to foster complex interdependence and lock in incentives for govern-
ments to cooperate. Just as open borders foster greater migration of peoples
and pandemics, they would also facilitate the cross-border spread of both the
undead and infected human carriers.8 In sharp contrast to realism, liberal
policy prescriptions would appear to exacerbate the first stages of the zom-
bie menace. It is little wonder, therefore, that so many critical theorists
equate the unchecked spread of zombies with the unchecked spread of capit-
alism itself.9
Similarly, liberals acknowledge that sustainable cooperation with zom-
bies would be next to impossible. One would be hard-pressed to devise sanc-
tions that would compel zombies into cooperating. The divergence of prefer-
ences is also too great. The refrain in Jonathan Coulton’s song “Re: Your
Brains,” written from a zombie’s point of view, best encapsulates the implac-
able nature of the zombie bargaining position:

All we want to do is eat your brains

We’re not unreasonable; I mean, no one’s gonna eat your eyes
All we want to do is eat your brains
We’re at an impasse here; maybe we should compromise:
If you open up the doors
We’ll all come inside and eat your brains

If this represents the zombie bargaining position, then the liberal assump-
tion of a non-zero-sum bargain does not hold. As table 3 shows, in the
Tragedy of the Zombies game, the dominant strategy for zombies is to eat
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humans. Tit-for-tat strategies do not work. Neither cooperation nor coordina-

tion is possible with the living dead.
A deeper cut, however, reveals that the liberal paradigm can offer signi-
ficant analytical bite. Romantic zombie comedies—rom-zom-coms, for
short—contain both implicit and explicit elements of liberalism. Ruben Fleis-
cher’s Zombieland (2009) is about the articulation and adherence to well-
defined rules for surviving in a zombie-infested landscape. Its central mes-
sage—beyond the need for cardio workouts—is the need for disparate indi-
viduals to credibly commit to each other. The characters in Edgar Wright’s
Shaun of the Dead (2004) cooperate with each other far more than in any of
George Romero’s films. Indeed, just before the climax, the characters find
themselves trapped inside a structure surrounded by the living dead. The
scenario is identical to Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), except that
these characters are in a pub rather than a farmhouse. Contra Romero,
however, in this film Shaun rallies his friends and relations with a stirring
paean to liberalism: “As Bertrand Russell once said, ‘the only thing that will
redeem mankind is cooperation.’ I think we can all appreciate the relevance
of that now.”

TABLE 3
Tragedy of the Zombies Game

Humans
Don’t kill zombies Kill zombies
Don’t eat humans (1,4) (0,5)
Zombies Eat humans (5,0) (4,1)
The liberal paradigm offers some intriguing predictions and explanations
for how a global zombie outbreak could affect world politics. Perhaps the
most important liberal insight is a possible answer to one of the biggest mys-
teries in zombie studies—the failure of ghouls to ever attack each other. In
Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978), a scientist observes that “there are no di-
visions” among the undead. Even those suffering from the “rage virus” in
Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002) focus their rage only on other
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humans—not their fellow infected. We assume that zombies have no wish to

eat each other, but it is surprising that they do not turn on each other when
trying to divvy up a human carcass—especially as human flesh grows scarce.
From Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) onward, however, zombies
have either tolerated each other’s company or actively cooperated to defeat
humans.
Why? The liberal paradigm provides a simple, rational answer: the living
dead have the longest possible shadow of the future. John Maynard Keynes
famously commented that “in the long run, we are all dead.” In the long run,
the undead still have to interact with each other—and therefore they have
the strongest of incentives to cooperate.10 If zombies hang together, then hu-
mans face the danger of hanging separately.
Despite the daunting degree of zombie solidarity, liberals would predict
that the incentive for multilateral cooperation among humans would be
powerful as well. The proliferation of the differently animated represents a
classic negative externality problem of economic globalization. Countries that
profit from trading with each other would nevertheless reward a third
party—flesh-eating ghouls—by unwittingly facilitating their spread. States
would therefore view zombies the same way they viewed other public bads
that emerged from the open global economy, such as money laundering or
food-borne diseases. Powerful governments would create and reinforce inter-
national institutions designed to control their spread. The US Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention publicly pledged to provide technical assist-
ance to “international partners” should the dead start to rise from the
grave.11 Indeed, the zombie menace would touch so many different spheres
of life that liberals would predict a “regime complex” to emerge.12 A welter
of international governmental organizations—including the United Nations
Security Council, the World Health Organization, and the International Or-
ganization for Migration—would promulgate a series of policies and proto-
cols designed to combat existing zombie hordes and prevent further out-
breaks.* A coordinating body, perhaps even a World Zombie Organization
(WZO), would need to be formed in order to handle all of the overlapping
health, trade, and security issues. In the end, some organization would
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announce a “comprehensive and integrated dezombiefication strategy,” with

sufficient buy-in from stakeholders across global civil society, as their plan of
action.**
The liberal expectation would be that a counterzombie regime complex
could make significant inroads into the zombie problem. The public benefits
of wiping the undead from the face of the earth are quite significant, boost-
ing the likelihood of significant policy coordination.13 The undead would fall
into the category of systemic threats—such as terrorism and global pandem-
ics—where states have engaged in meaningful cross-border cooperation. This
prediction is also consistent with key portions of the zombie literature. In
Max Brooks’s novel World War Z (2006), the decision to go on the offensive
comes after a United Nations meeting.14 Consistent with liberal international-
ism, the United States provided the necessary leadership and a strong sense
of social purpose in order to rally support.15
How effective would these global governance structures be in combating
the undead? The question of regime effectiveness has haunted international
relations scholarship for decades.16 To be sure, liberal security regimes such
as NATO or the Chemical Weapons Convention have a credible track record
of success.17 The ability of both security and health regimes to monitor and
spread information quickly in the era of instant messaging would facilitate
rapid reactions to the zombie problem at an early stage. Globalization has
certainly fostered the technical and regulatory coordination necessary for en-
hancing biosecurity.18 At a minimum, one would expect a significant rollback
and stringent regulation of the living dead, roughly consistent with the start
of Andrew Currie’s Fido (2006) or the outcome in Mira Grant’s Feed (2010).19
Although the macrosituation might appear stable, it would also be imper-
fect. At present, the regime for cross-border movement of the dead already
has significant loopholes.20 Even if the vagaries of current international law
are fixed, zombies represent a tough test for global governance structures.
They are the most difficult kind of governance problem—a prohibition re-
gime.21 Unless every single ghoul is hunted down and destroyed beyond re-
cognition, a recurrent spread of the undead remains a possibility. The inter-
national regimes designed to eliminate disease demonstrate the difficulties
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inherent in this task. The scourge of smallpox has been erased, but few other
diseases have been completely and totally eradicated.22 The persistence of
AIDS, polio, malaria, tuberculosis, and the myriad strains of influenza
demonstrate the challenges that would face an international counterzombie
regime.
The liberal paradigm would predict two significant loopholes that could
form within the confines of a global counterzombie regime. First, some coun-
tries might fail to provide timely information about zombie outbreaks until
the problem had escalated beyond local control. Authoritarian countries are
often reluctant to admit health crises because of the threat such an admis-
sion could have on state control over society. In Alejandro Brugués’s Juan of
the Dead (2011), for example, the Cuban government initially labels the liv-
ing dead as American-supported dissidents. Furthermore, as will be discussed
in the chapter “Domestic Politics: Are All Zombie Politics Local?” nondemo-
cratic regimes are less likely to invest in the public goods necessary to pre-
vent or contain disasters.23 This is one reason why the loss of life from dis-
asters is greater in authoritarian countries.24 Local officials could delay re-
porting a zombie outbreak up the chain of command for fear of being the
bearer of bad news. Developing countries might lack the infrastructure to de-
tect the reemergence of the living dead. They would certainly fear the eco-
nomic impact of any policy response by large market jurisdiction to an an-
nounced outbreak of flesh-eating ghouls.* China’s initial refusal to notify the
rest of the world of its cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in
a timely, transparent, and verifiable manner in 2002–3 is an exemplary case
of this kind of policy conundrum.25 China behaves in a similar manner in
World War Z—going so far as to trigger a crisis with Taiwan to disguise the
extent of China’s own zombie problem.26
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Protests against counterzombie policies would be unsurprising.

Second, it would not be surprising if nongovernmental organizations

(NGOs) devoted to the defense of the living dead acted as an impediment to
their eradication. The ability of NGOs to alter global governance structures is
a matter of some debate within international relations scholarship.27 At a
minimum, however, global civil society can raise the transaction costs of im-
plementing the rules of global governance. At least one nonprofit organiza-
tion in favor of zombie equality already exists—Great Britain’s Citizens for
Undead Rights and Equality.28 The formation of more powerful activist
groups—Zombie Rights Watch, Zombies without Borders, ZombAid, People
for the Ethical Treatment of Zombies, or Occupy Human Streets—would un-
doubtedly make it difficult for a WZO to achieve perfect eradication. The
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likelihood of a ZombieLeaks entity publishing sensitive and classified inform-

ation about the counterzombie regime seems strong.
While these pitfalls could prove problematic, they should not be over-
stated. China has moved down the learning curve as a result of the SARS
episode; authorities in Beijing were much more transparent during the 2009
H1N1 swine flu epidemic, for example.29 As countries have adapted to the
problem of pandemics, fewer of them would be expected to conceal a grow-
ing problem with the undead. Even if multilateral solutions proved to be in-
adequate, liberals would envision the emergence of “minilateral” or regional
organizations to act as a backstop. The United States would likely respond to
any failure of a WZO by creating a North American Counterzombie Agree-
ment to handle the problem regionally. Similarly, one would expect the
European Commission to issue the mother of all directives to cope with the
issue.* The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Mercosur, the Arab
League, and the African Union would not be far behind. The bulk of global
civil society would also be unlikely to raise too much of an objection to the
eradication of the undead. Zombie rights would likely be one of those issues
that more powerful NGOs would resist pushing on their advocacy agenda for
fear of triggering donor fatigue or political backlash. 30
The liberal paradigm would predict an outcome that would be imperfect
and vulnerable to political criticism over time—much like the European
Union in its current form. That said, the system would also be expected to
function well enough to ward off the specter of a total zombie apocalypse.
Zombie flareups would no doubt take place. Quasi-permanent humanitarian
counterzombie missions, under United Nations auspices, would likely be ne-
cessary in failed states. Liberals would acknowledge the permanent eradica-
tion of flesh-eating ghouls as unlikely. The reduction of the zombie problem
to one of many manageable threats, however, would be a foreseeable out-
come. To use the lexicon of liberals, most governments would kill most zom-
bies most of the time.
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*Given that zombies would be covered under genetically modified organisms,

the European Union would immediately invoke the Cartagena Protocol on
Biosafety as the key regulatory mechanism for the cross-border movement of re-
animated dead tissue.

**This liberal prediction hinges crucially on whether the initial policy re-
sponses could mitigate the spread of ghouls. If decision maker concluded that no
action could halt the spread of the undead, then the shadow of the future would
disappear; liberals would predict actors to pursue endgame strategies of nonco-
operation. Hiding and hoarding would be the appropriate responses at this
juncture.

*This problem is not limited to developing countries. If flesheating ghouls

were detected, two immediate and obvious predictions would follow: the
European Union would impose a complete ban on British beef, and Japan and
South Korea would impose a similar ban on US beef.

*It is beyond the scope of this text to discuss how zombie comitology within
the European Union would be handled. There is little doubt, however, that it
would be painful.