I think Alfred Nobel made too challenging of a target. It's an annual prize to be awarded to those who have "done the most or the best work for fraternity betwe

I think Alfred Nobel made too challenging of a target. It's an annual prize to be awarded to those who have "done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses" Think of the absolutely immense amounts of political capital that any of those things require, and how likely it is to find a person in any given year who could be personally credited with improving relationships between countries, or reducing standing armies. It's also not democracy-friendly, funnily enough. In most democratic countries such actions are a collective effort. A single member of a parliament can't get anything done on their own, and there doesn't necessarily need to be some sort of charismatic leader pushing such efforts. An army can shrink just because we have a general consensus that war isn't a good thing and the army can do with a smaller budget, and who do you award for that? So it makes perfect sense to me that the committee ends up blundering it. Maybe if it was a once a decade thing it'd be a more reasonable one.