Stackelberg rent-seeking

In this paper I present a formal analysis of rent-seeking games in which the players do not move simultaneously. I consider rent-seeking situations where the players are risk neutral and may value the prize differently. The subgame perfect equilibrium outcome in this Stackelberg game provides several surprising and interesting results. I extend the problem to deal with cases of incomplete information concerning the value a player has for the politically contestable rent.     

Exploring the ‘Something for Nothing’ Syndrome: Confused Citizens or Free Riders? Evidence from Sweden

This article examines the occurrence of political non‐attitudes in Sweden and identifies the population segment possessing a ‘something for nothing’ (SFN) mentality regarding social spending. Sweden – often regarded as epitomizing the advanced welfare state – constitutes an analytically interesting case, providing a useful counterpoint to the predominantly American‐based evidence on the subject. It is argued here that national political institutions fundamentally affect the prevalence – and social base – of the SFN segment. To identify SFN sentiments, two question batteries measuring social spending preferences are used. One battery contains ‘priced’ items emphasizing the cost of public spending, while the other set of ‘unpriced’ items does not explicitly connect increased public spending with increased taxes. The patterning of attitudes across these items is explored in order to determine whether SFN sentiments are common in the Swedish electorate. The observed attitude patterns are then linked to broader sets of attitudes to the welfare state, testing whether the degree of ideological coherence differs fundamentally between the SFN segment and other groups. The analysis then explores the individual‐level determinants associated with different attitude patterns. The overall results show that: SFN sentiments are not dominant among the Swedish citizenry; the quality of the SFN segment's belief system, in terms of ideological coherence, does not represent a deviant case; and the background characteristics associated with SFN sentiments suggest that members of this segment should rather be viewed as free riders in economically vulnerable positions than ignorant and politically confused citizens.     

Self-determination as a universal human right

Conventional wisdom suggests that promoting self-determination for peoples and protecting the human rights of individuals are competing priorities. However, many recent international human rights documents include rights of peoples in their lists of basic human rights. In this paper, I defend including at least one people’s right, the right to self-determination, in the list of basic rights. Recognizing that self-determination is a constitutive element of human dignity casts state sovereignty in a different light, with interesting consequences both for international law and for philosophical debates about the rights of minorities.     

Rent-seeking with non-identical sharing rules: An equilibrium rescued

Nitzan's (1991) analysis of differential sharing rules in a collective rent-seeking setting is reconsidered. Two groups, each with more than one member, are presumed to use different linear combinations of two sharing rules, one based on an equal-division of the prize, and the other on each member's relative effort. We show that an equilibrium always exists for this type of game, and then characterize the equilibrium. Our result is contrary to Nitzan's claims that (a) in the general case an equilibrium often does not exist, and (b) an equilibrium never exists when the groups use the polar extreme rules.     

Redistributive politics: A theory of taxation for an incumbent in a democracy

In order to maximize votes, incumbent politicians design and implement redistributional programs. These programs benefit some voters at the expense of others. In the simple two group (or tax payers and beneficiaries) case we identify the nature of vote maximizing transfer policies. This model's basic approach is shown to hold for multiple group models as well. Strategic implications for the organizers of sub groups of the population (or group leaders) are developed. Other extensions of the model are discussed. qu]Where the budget is clever is in its detail. Each little measure is designed to hurt (but not too much) people who are not politically important, while tossing a bone to people who are. You can see this in a host of different ways.     

Government termination in multilevel settings. How party congruence affects the survival of sub-national governments in Germany and Spain

ABSTRACT

Past studies on government survival in parliamentary democracies have been limited to national governments. However, most societies live in a multilevel polity where different policies are decided at distinct governmental layers. So far, the conditions triggering sub-national governments’ termination have remained unexplored. Our paper makes a twofold contribution to the literature. First, we explicitly focus our analysis on the sub-national government level. Second, we expand the analytical scope by assuming a multilevel setting, in which the survival of sub-national governments is dependent on both the party composition of the national government (vertical congruence) and their sub-national peers (horizontal congruence). We test the impact of both congruence measures on the early termination risk of regional governments. Our analysis is complemented by including “traditional” factors from national government termination literature, such as structural attributes of governments and their bargaining environment, into empirical modelling. Analysing a novel dataset on 494 regional governments in Germany and Spain we find that the risk of sub-national government termination is related to varying levels of vertical congruence. Furthermore, we find interesting explanatory variation between the two countries with regard to the effect size of economic performance, regional authority and congruence.     

A contest success function with a tractable noise parameter

I propose a simple contest success function which is a variant of the Tullock probability function under certain conditions. It relaxes two features of the Tullock probability function. I show that this contest success function could be used to obtain interesting results and is more tractable than Tullock's function in certain cases. In particular, researchers who are interested in examining the degree to which luck as opposed to effort affects behavior in different contest settings might find it easier to use this contest success function than the Tullock success function. Unlike the Tullock function, there always exists a pure-strategy equilibrium for all values of the parameter which captures the degree of noise. The proposed function has been used in Kolmar and Wagener (2004) with interesting results.     

OBSTACLES TO SEEMINGLY SIMPLE REFORM: A CASE STUDY OF BAIL REFORM

This study involves analysis of the implementation of a new release on recognizance (ROR) policy governing misdemeanor cases in a small, mid- western county. The case study is interesting because the policy seems to be characterized by several factors that might lead to predictions of high compliance with policy intent. The findings, however, suggest that consid- erable slippage between intent and implementation occurred. It is argued that this slippage is the product of communication problems, the disposition of street-level implementors, and the failure to include implementors in decision making. These obstacles are then compounded by the lack of performance monitoring. The problems are viewed as interrelated and revolve around the top-down implementation strategy that failed to involve those responsible for implementation – the street-level implementors.     

Rents, dissipation and lost treasures: Comment

In an interesting recent paper, Dari-Mattiacci and Parisi (2005) extended Tullock's (1980) rent-seeking game with an entry decision. The mixed strategies identified by Dari-Mattiacci and Parisi for the case of increasing returns in the contest success function (r2) do not constitute an equilibrium of the game they study. However, these strategies are an equilibrium if the strategy space of the game is restricted by a minimum expenditure requirement, and this minimum expenditure requirement is an element of a specific interval.     

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin against the Settlers: A Stakeholder Analysis

This case study considers how a minority stakeholder group of Israeli settlers blocked Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's peace initiatives. Drawing on interviews with those who served in Rabin's administration and with the settlers' leaders, this article contends that the prime minister's use of adversarial public rhetoric against the settlers denied the legitimacy of an influential stakeholder group, triggering a backlash of intense militancy from the right-wing minority. This, coupled with Rabin's failure to deal with opposing coalitions, diminished his capacity to implement "land for peace" initiatives. The case illustrates a leader's failure to maintain adequate forms of engagement with key stakeholders. The accompanying analysis demonstrates that stakeholder theories, though incomplete in their existing forms, can still illuminate the high risk and ineffectiveness of denying the legitimacy of stakeholder groups and the strategic importance of maintaining channels of flexible negotiation and cooperation with seemingly marginal groups when high-stakes rivalries are likely to ensue.     

构建多元协作性社区治理机制解决集体行动困境——一个“产品-制度”分析（PIA）框架

在重新分析有关集体行动的各种经典描述和简化模型的基础上,首先从资源/资本、人性、产品和组织四个角度分别探讨了为当前学界研究所忽视的导致集体行动困境的各种深层原因;进而,在抽象社区和五个基本社会行动者的简单理论假设的前提下,从"产品-制度"分析(PIA)的角度系统探讨了解决集体行动的各种理想模型--四种自主治理模式(社区治理模型、俱乐部治理模型、优势群体治理模型和私有化治理模型)和四种他助治理模式(政府治理模型、企业治理模型、学者型治理模型和伦理道德型治理模型),描述了集体行动的社区治理类型树,主张在各种理想或元模型的基础上通过构建多元协作性社区治理机制来解决社区集体行动困境;最后,通过对社区内外因素、社区内部机制、"产品-行动"框、行动者在特定外部影响因素下的选择机制,以及产品性质和其他特征如何影响博弈理论分析框架的诸种变量的逐一分析,发展了不同治理模式选择的规范模型(同时可以看作是一个基本的政策或决策分析框架),并进行了简单的例证分析.     

To adapt or to defend? Comparing position shifts among Bundestag candidates between 2013 and 2017

In this research note, candidate survey data from the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) is used to analyse positional shifts of German Bundestag parties between 2013 and 2017. Two developments make Germany a particularly interesting case: (1) the liberal but also controversial policies of the Merkel cabinet during the European refugee crisis and (2) the change of leadership within the right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Applying scaling techniques to locate candidates of both elections in the same two-dimensional policy space, the analysis demonstrates that in 2017 the AfD took a distinct radical right position in the party system of Germany. Moreover, the study finds that almost all parties moved to the right on the cultural left–right dimension in 2017, whereas for the economic left–right dimension this has not been the case. Contrary to the mantra of an ideological delineation against right-wing populism, there has been a robust socio-political conservative shift in the German party system.     

Judging unethical behavior: the different effects of external and public service motivation

ABSTRACT

While the claim that Public Service Motivation (PSM) has a positive effect on ethical judgment is well-established in the literature, this link is less clear for external sources of motivation. Little is known about how these two types of motivation can be influenced to boost ethical judgment. This article addresses these two shortcomings, studying the effects of PSM and external motivation on the judgment of unethical actions, and the process of assumption of institutional logics by individuals with more basic needs satisfaction. The empirical analysis applies full structural equation modeling, testing the hypotheses on a sample of 574 case managers working on a program that integrates health and social services in Catalonia (Spain). The results illustrate the distinct relation of PSM and external motivations with the judgment of unethical acts. They also indicate that the satisfaction of basic psychological needs indirectly reduces the acceptance of unethical acts. However, this indirect effect only happens through PSM. These findings have important implications for academic research and for the prevention of the development of mild judgments of unethical behavior in the workplace.     

The development of interest groups in the Balkans: Background and contemporary characteristics

Understanding the political development of the Balkans can be challenging even for historians and social scientists. This is particularly the case with the region's past and present interest group systems as virtually no research is available on the subject. With this in mind, this article provides basic background on the region and its fledgling interest group system as a foundation for approaching the analysis in the 7 country articles that follow. The topics considered include an overview of the common elements of the 7 group systems and their differences, developments that shaped these systems, and an initial look at the role of interest groups in consolidating the region's pluralist political systems.     

Performance of Public–Private Partnerships and the Influence of Contractual Arrangements

This article seeks to answer two research questions: does public-private partnerships (ppp) live up to its promises to government? How do contractual arrangements affect ppp performance? We propose a conceptual framework to evaluate ppp performance by comparing actual project outcomes to government goals in initiating the partnerships, and to explore how a set of contractual arrangements affect the ppp performance on each identified goal. The framework is applied to a comparative case analysis of highway ppp experiences in the commonwealth of virginia (us) since the 1990s. The results show that these ppp cases were successful in accessing innovative finance, but their performance was mixed on reducing construction risk and transferring revenue risk. Generally improved over time with later projects, the ppp performance was affected not only by interaction among contractual arrangements –private partner selection, financial arrangements, role division, risk allocation, and project characteristics – but also by authorizing and supportive legislation in the policy domain.     

Pitfalls in Strategic Planning: Lessons for Legitimacy

The paper considers how planning as a political activity is underpinned by concepts of justice and how professional practitioners are consistently faced with making ethical choices in the public interest. The key objective is therefore to identify the centrality of ethics in praxis. In this context, political liberal theory is empirically useful in exploring both the role of participants and the processes employed in strategic planning. A case study analysis generates key issues which are relevant to planning in the wider arena and an extensive series of interviews provides interesting insights into the dynamic between those involved and the effectiveness of procedures followed.     

Balanced-budget redistribution as the outcome of political competition: A comment

This comment is concerned with the relation between the basic model of elections and income redistribution in Lindbeck and Weibull (1987) and the model in Coughlin (1986a). Its purpose is to (i) isolate the (small set of) assumptions that separate these closely related models, (ii) identify a special case of the Lindbeck-Weibull model where their results immediately provide direct extensions of four of the results in my paper, and (iii) point out that one of the lemmata in my paper identifies the precise location of the equilibrium income distribution for this important special case of the Lindbeck-Weibull model. The comment also relates these observations to Lindbeck and Weibull's example of familiar assumptions that satisfy their sufficient conditions for the existence of a political equilibrium.I gratefully acknowledge (i) some helpful comments that Peter Ordeshook made as a discussant for Coughlin (1986a) (when I presented it at the 1986 Public Choice Society Meeting), which got me to start thinking about the issues that are addressed in this comment and (ii) some helpful suggestions provided by Peter Aranson.     

Cost Effectiveness Analysis and Transportation: Practices,Problems, and Proposals

Cost effective analysis (CEA) is used frequently in health and other fields in which controlled experiments are possible. The problem is, however, that for many activities that are outsourced in infrastructure finance, we have no comparison groups, and when comparison groups are present, we have no data on quality, presenting any interested researcher or decision maker with some serious dilemmas. In this article we establish some basic guidelines for the collection and use of quality data, and associate these with our own errors in attempting CEA with a lack of an existing quality measure.