Cooperation in PD Games: Fear, Greed, and History of Play

The impact of the cardinal relationships amongpecuniary payoffs, and of social history and reputation, on thechoice of strategies in four one-shot Prisoner's Dilemma games isexperimentally examined. The results suggest that normalized payoffvalues linked to ``fear'' and ``greed'' are important as predictorsof behavior in the PD games. Success in coordinating on the payoffdominant equilibrium in previous plays of coordination games alsoincreases the probability of cooperative play in the PD games. Theeffect of past play is strongest when individuals are matchedrepeatedly with the same person in previous play, as contrasted tobeing matched randomly with another player.     

Learning Contested Lessons: Participation Equity and Electric Utility Regulation

Electric utilities have typically enjoyed a close and cooperative relationship with the state regulatory bodies that oversee them. In 2001, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission mandated that the largest Colorado utility build a wind power plant as part of its conventional generating capacity, despite the utility's vigorous objections. Local environmental groups, intervening in a form of rule making called Integrated Resource Planning, succeeded in overturning regulatory capture. This paper explains this anomalous case and highlights the role of knowledge and learning in the outcome. The case shows the opportunities and limitations of using contested technical knowledge to push for institutional learning. The case also suggests the importance of repeated policy processes. Wind energy advocates perceived that they had acquired participation equity, ownership in the process akin to Kingdon's “softening up,” which led policy makers to take their arguments more seriously, opening up the possibility of institutional learning.     

Subnational Responses to Fracking in Canada: Explaining Saskatchewan's “Wild West” Regulatory Approach

This article assesses the regulatory response to fracking by Saskatchewan, Canada's second largest oil‐producing province. Public officials and industry representatives claim fracking regulations are “comprehensive” and “robust”; however, there has been no comparative assessment of this claim. To address this gap, we outline the dominant regulatory pathways of U.S. states and Canadian provinces, ranging from applying existing regulations with minimal revisions, to enacting broader revisions or bans. We account for this variation using a framework from Davis ( 2012 ) emphasizing governments’ dependence on the oil sector, the level of support for fracking among elected officials and policy makers, and the influence of key “constituencies.” The article then traces the growth and impact of fracking in Saskatchewan and analyzes new trends in the province's regulation of fracking. Given the province's application of existing regulations with minimal revisions and active weakening of enforcement, we identify Saskatchewan as taking Rabe and Borick's ( 2013 ) “conventional” regulatory approach, typical of Davis's “energy dominant” states.     

Power Markets: Transferring Systematic Risk to Lottery Players

This article shows how a state could design a lottery that absorbs some of the financial market's systematic risk. Under this lottery, prizes would be positively correlated with the stock market. This lottery could be a profitable complement to existing state lotteries.     

Lobbying and Concessions: Comparing Nash to Stackelberg Games

We analyze how the standardresults in lobbying theory change when one side has asecond instrument at its disposal. We look at theeffect concessions by one side have on the outcome ina Nash and a Stackelberg game.     

Understanding Minister–Bureaucrat Relations: Applying Multi-Theoretic Approaches in Public Management

The study of public management has remained theoretically limited. This article tests out the value of a multi-theoretical approach as applied to one area of public management research — minister–bureaucrat relationships. Three models are identified — agency theory, bureaucratic politics and institutionalism. All three models are shown to provide valuable insights into the relationship and I argue that this example indicates considerable scope for the further development of mulit-theoretical approaches within public management.     

Policy Games and Venue‐Shopping: Working the Stakeholder Interface to Broker Policy Change in Rehabilitation Services

How should bureaucrats engage effectively and ethically with stakeholders to achieve legitimate policy change? This essay draws upon findings from a case study of the introduction of an evidence‐based rehabilitation program for injured workers with soft‐tissue injuries in a workers' compensation jurisdiction in Australia. Despite initial enthusiasm for collaborative policy reform, clinical associations soon withdrew their support. In a classic case of venue‐shopping, a coalition of clinical associations formed in opposition to the foundation principles of the proposed policy, overturning the bureaucrats' preferred consultation strategy: a think‐tank comprising of invited clinical experts. The policy game turned from highly cooperative to fiercely competitive. These policy upheavals are interpreted through the lens of two theoretical perspectives: Sabatier's Advocacy Coalition framework, and Scharpf's Actor‐centred Institutionalism framework. The contrasts in perspectives are melded into propositions for bureaucrats seeking to engage with stakeholders in a contested policy drama.     

Changes in Trade Union–Government Relations 1974–2002

Even if the role of unions is less than it was, they are still an important aspect of civil society in a democracy like the UK, so that changes in the relationship between the TUC and the government are an important aspect of changing patterns of governance in the UK. Here, we analyse this relationship during the period between 1974 and 2002 based upon the reports of the General Council of the TUC to each TUC Annual Conference. The analysis shows that the contacts between the TUC and government have fluctuated significantly over this period. They did decline in the Thatcher years although, interestingly, contacts were greater under Thatcher than under Major. The election of a New Labour government in 1997 was accompanied by an initial increase in contacts, but contacts declined subsequently. These fluctuations clearly reflect policy changes so, for example, contacts decreased when incomes policies became a thing of the past. However, they also reflected changes of personnel in government; so the replacement of Pym by Tebbit in 1982 was quickly followed by a fall in contacts. As far as New Labour is concerned, their historical links with the trade unions still mean that contacts are greater now than they were under the Conservatives. However, the initial surge in contacts probably reflected a broader pattern, with New Labour delivering on a promise of greater consultation made in opposition.     

Regulatory enforcement and compliance: Examining Danish agro‐environmental policy

This study of municipal enforcement of agro‐environmental regulations in Denmark provides an empirical understanding of how enforcement affects compliance. A key contribution is sorting out the relative influence of inspectors' different styles of enforcement and choices made by enforcement agencies. The latter are shown to be more important in bringing about compliance than are inspectors' enforcement styles. Municipal agencies are shown to increase compliance through the use of third parties, more frequent inspection, and setting priorities for inspection of major items. The findings about enforcement styles of inspectors suggest it is necessary to get tough up to a point, but beyond that the threat of coercion can be counterproductive. These findings cast doubt on the effectiveness of overly legalistic enforcement styles, particularly for the Danish culture with its strong emphasis on cooperation and consultation in regulation. But the findings also advise us to be cautious about the use of cooperative styles of enforcement in that we find evidence for capture of the enforcement process by agricultural organizations. This leads to a more nuanced view of enforcement rather than the broad generalizations found in the literature concerning legalism and cooperation. © 1999 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. <@:>     

Institutional Change Through Policy Learning: The Case of the European Commission and Research Policy

Research initiatives to enhance knowledge‐based societies demand regionally coordinated policy approaches. By analyzing the case of the European Commission, Directorate‐General Research and Innovation, this study focuses on examining the cognitive mechanisms that form the foundation for institutional transformations and result in leadership positions in regional governance. Drawing on policy learning theories, the study emphasizes specific mechanisms of institutional change that are often less noticeable but can gradually lead to mobilizing diverse groups of stakeholders. Through historical and empirical data, this study shows the importance of policy learning through communication processes, Open Method of Coordination initiatives, and issue framing in creating a stronger foundation for policy coordination in European research policy since the 2000s.     

Learning to Cooperate: Learning Networks and the Problem of Altruism

We explore how two populations learn to cooperate with each other in the absence of institutional support. Individuals play iterated prisoner's dilemmas with the other population, but learn about successful strategies from their own population. Our agent-based evolutionary models reconfirm that cooperation can emerge rapidly as long as payoffs provide a selective advantage for nice, retaliatory strategies like tit-for-tat, although attainable levels of cooperation are limited by the persistence of nonretaliatory altruists. Learning processes that adopt the current best response strategy do well only when initial conditions are very favorable to cooperation, while more adaptive learning processes can achieve high levels of cooperation under a wider range of initial conditions. When combined with adaptive learning, populations having larger, better connected learning relationships outperform populations with smaller, less connected ones. Clustered relationships can also enhance cooperation, particularly in these smaller, less connected populations.     

发挥我党在社会管理中的主导作用

2011年2月19日,胡锦涛同志在省部级主要领导干部社会管理及其创新专题研讨班开班式上明确提出了"提高社会管理科学化水平"的重大命题。我党作为社会的领导者,要通过主导管理格局、主导党群关系、主导基层基础工作、主导社会组织、主导虚拟社会、主导核心价值,提高社会管理的科学化水平。     

Video Games and Violence: Legislating on the ‘Politics of Confusion’

This article explores the way that politicians and legislators have responded to concerns over the link between videogames and violence in the UK, particularly in terms of ensuring that inappropriate content remains inaccessible to minors. It explores the recent changes to the regulatory framework centred on videogames, arguing that the move to a universal statutory framework has implications that are more symbolic than real‐policy is still underpinned by the ‘precautionary principle’ and the framework remains equally likely to be undermined by the actions of parents who ignore ratings and purchase age‐inappropriate games for their children. Perhaps predictably, the political establishment has been unwilling to engage with this parental neglect, attributing it to ‘ignorance’ and ‘the need for a simplification of the ratings system’. This paper argues that such responses are essentially a smokescreen used by governments which are understandably unwilling to take prosecutions into the home and retail space.     

Markets,Hierarchies, and Networks: An Agent‐Based Organizational Ecology

Markets, hierarchies, and networks are widely understood to be the three primary forms of social organization. In this article, we study the choice between these forms in a general, agent‐based model (ABM) of cooperation. The organizational ecology is the product, an emergent property, of the set of choices made by agents contingent on their individual attributes and beliefs about the population of agents. This is one of the first attempts to theorize explicitly the choice between different organizational forms, especially networks and hierarchies, and certainly the first to do so in an ABM. The insights of the model are applied to current research on transnational networks, social capital, and the sources of hierarchy and especially autocracy.     

International Cooperation to Manage High‐Skill Migration: The Case of India–U.S. Relations

Highly skilled people are among the most valuable factors of production in the contemporary world economy. Some have characterized the competition among nations for these people as a “brain drain” or “war for talent,” which imposes significant costs on the countries of emigration. However, the distribution of costs and benefits that results from high‐skill migration is not necessarily zero‐sum or fixed. It may be altered through international cooperation, producing a self‐reinforcing “win–win” scenario for sending and receiving countries. Bilateral cooperation, focused on specific sectors affected by migration, is the most promising approach for realizing such a scenario. This paper explores the prospects and potential for such cooperation between India and the United States, which comprise what is probably the world's largest high‐skill mobility relationship. After sketching the broad contours of the relationship, we explore the prospects for mutually beneficial cooperation in three specific fields of high‐skill migration: information technology services, medicine and nursing, and graduate education.