Support for behavioral nudges versus alternative policy instruments and their perceived fairness and efficacy

An extensive debate has emerged in recent years about the relative merits of behavioral policy instruments (nudges) aimed at changing individual behavior without coercion. In this article, we examine public support for non-deliberative nudges and deliberative nudges and compare them to attitudes toward top-down regulation and free choice/libertarian options. We also examine whether support for both types of nudges is associated with perceptions of fairness and efficacy. We test these expectations with a survey experiment with 1706 UK adult respondents (representative of the population on age, gender, and location) in two policy areas (retirement savings and carbon offsets for airline passengers). We find higher levels of public support for both nudge policy options compared to top-down regulation. Support for nudges is associated with the perceived fairness of nudges more than their efficacy.     

Values,norms and policies

Norms are defined as specific but tacit standards of what is socially and individually acceptable; values as explicit but general statements of principle, of which the content is continually changing through changing norms, changing circumstances, changing policies and the accompanying ethical debate. The relation of norms, values and policies is shown by an historical example. The inherent conflict within both norms and values is discussed and the role of the policymaker is defined, both as an artist in conceiving and devising one among many possible but always partial realizations of contemporary norms and values, and as a partially conscious agent in reshaping the norms and values of his time. The psychological implications of this are briefly indicated.     

Tolerance and social adjustment to new norms and practices

All forms of political tolerance—political, racial, religious, and social—involve a measure of social adjustment to unconventional groups, ideas, and activities. Tolerance does not depend entirely on the generosity of those who are willing to restrain themselves from punishing and repressing those who deviate from society's norms. Rather it depends also on the ability of people to assuage fears and anxieties and to reconcile themselves to social change. Because people are able to adapt psychologically to changes in norms and practices, increases in tolerance are not necessarily accompanied by increases in self-restraint, social strain, or tension. Several illustrations of social adjustment drawn from diverse arenas are presented as well as a more exact dynamic model of how this process works. In olden days a glimpse of stocking/Was looked upon as something shocking/But now, God knows/Anything goes/Good authors, too, who once knew better words/Now only use four-letter words/Writing prose.../Anything goes. from Anything Goes, lyrics by Cole Porter     

Power,norms and theory. A meta-political inquiry

Realism criticizes the idea, central to what may be called ‘the priority view’, that philosophy has the task of imposing from the outside general norms of morality or standards of reasonableness on politics understood as the domain of power. According to realism, political philosophy must reveal the specific standards internal to the political practice of handling power appropriately and as it develops in actual circumstances. Framed in those terms, the debate evokes the idea that political power itself is lacking normativity until such time as norms are devised that govern its use. In contrast, this essay identifies a normative dimension internal to (the conquest and exercise of) power. Power depends on recognition and support in the form of belief. This dependence explains how an interest in power introduces a responsiveness to normative considerations into the domain of politics.     

The criteria for belonging to a terrorist group

The new agreement between Italy and the Holy See has important consequences for the status of the Jewish community.     

Location Efficiency and Mortgage Risks for Low-Income Households

Abstract

Household energy expenditures, especially for transportation, are fairly inelastic. Their effects on low-income households may be significant, due to the potential for energy consumption to displace other types of consumption when energy prices rise. Using accessibility as a proxy for lower transportation costs, we test the hypothesis that low- and moderate-income residents are less likely default when they are located in more accessible places. We find that regional accessibility has almost no effect on risks of default, but local job diversity has moderate mitigating effect.     

Communicating sociocultural norms and social and religious practices in Iranian death notices

Drawing on a corpus of 100 randomly collected death notices published in an Iranian national newspaper, this study examined generic structures as well as their lexico-grammatical patterning to reveal what communicative functions are articulated by these generic components. Basing our identification of moves on Swales [1990. Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press], we identified 12 rhetorical moves in the corpus. We illustrated that these recurrent rhetorical moves reflect the Iranian sociocultural norms, as well as social and religious beliefs. Also, the results substantiated [Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. 1996. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge] multimodality perspective on textual analysis in that they rejected linguistic items as the only meaning-making device and identified colour, position, photo and size, among others, as worthwhile veritable semiotic devices.     

Monopoly vs. competition in light of extraction norms

This note demonstrates that whether the market is competitive or monopolistic need not be the result of ideology, political power or non-convexity of the technology. The answer can be determined by a government that maximizes the extracted resources from the alternative market structures. Our claim is illustrated by assuming that demand and supply are linear functions and that the government can extract the same share of the producers?? profit under the alternative market structures. This share can be extracted from the actual producers or from the potential producers who take part in the contest to get a license to produce.     

论城市公共物品供给的效率与公平

改革开放20多年来,我国城市化进程日益加快,城市公共物品的供给总量虽然达到了前所未有的规模,但就城市化进程中的实际需求而言,这一供给明显不足,还存在着巨大的短缺.由于我国正处于全面建设小康社会和改革开放的攻坚阶段,社会主义现代化建设事业的各个方面都亟需政府的财政支出,财政压力明显过大.因此,如何在既能保证效率又能兼顾公平的前提下,提高城市公共物品的有效供给以满足日益增长的城市公共需求,缓解城市公共物品供需矛盾,就显得非常必要.     

论电子政务与行政效率

电子政务已经成为各级政府转变职能,创新管理方式,提高行政能力的重要途径和手段,是全方位提高行政效率的一场革命。要从实际出发,探讨加快电子政务建设提高行政效率有效的途径。     

司法公正与效率

公正与效率问题,是当今社会政治、经济和伦理生活中的一个重大问题。能否解决好这个问题,关系到广大人民群众根本利益的实现,关系经济发展和社会稳定,关系社会主义政权的巩固。     

From norms to programs: The United Nations Global Compact and global governance

Norms shape policy when they get translated into concrete programs. What if a widely shared norm gets translated into a weak program? How might this influence the program's legitimacy? We examine these issues in the context of the United Nations Global Compact, a voluntary program that embodies the widely shared norm of corporate responsibility. While both international intergovernmental organization (IGO) and international non‐governmental organization (INGO) networks support this norm, they differ on the adequacy of the Compact's program design. We explore how this tension affects the diffusion of the Compact across countries, which vary in their levels of embeddedness in IGO and INGO networks. Our findings suggest that embeddedness in IGO networks encourages adoption, while embeddedness in INGO networks discourages it. Our analysis provides important lessons for sponsors of voluntary governance mechanisms. Widespread support for a norm does not automatically ensure support for a program that claims to embody it.     

The evolution of norms: American policy toward revolution in Iran and Egypt

Is there a growing norm against violence towards civilians that constrains how the United States deals with its client states? This article examines two similar cases that suggest there is. In Iran in 1978 and in Egypt in 2011, the United States faced a possible revolution by a democratic/Islamist opposition, yet American policy makers gave their major regional ally opposite advice. In 1978, the White House urged the Shah to crack down on the opposition, and, in 2011, it pressed the Mubarak regime, as well as other regimes, to refrain from violence. This indicates that in situations where the American government is culpable for a potential bloodbath, policy makers are loath to take on that responsibility, which significantly shapes their policy toward revolution in a way that it did not when President Carter called the commitment to human rights “absolute.”     

Prime ministers' identity in semi-presidential regimes: Constitutional norms and cabinet formation outcomes

Abstract.  This article examines how presidential involvement in the cabinet formation process affects cabinet formation outcomes in the semi-presidential regimes of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. It analyzes whether the formal distribution of appointment-dismissal powers allows for the development of useful indicators for predicting a prime minister's location on the continuum between the ideal points of the president and the legislature. First, to derive theoretical expectations about a prime minister's identity in the different types of semi-presidential regimes, the article discusses constitutional variation in the formal distribution of cabinet appointment-dismissal powers across semi-presidential constitutions. Second, the empirical outcomes of cabinet formation are then compared with the theoretical predictions. Empirical tests, while providing substantial support for the hypothesized effect of variation in cabinet appointment-dismissal powers, indicate the importance of other variables. Qualitative and quantitative differences in the character of the party system and the nature of the electoral cycle also have a systematic effect on cabinet formation outcomes.