Game Theory, Information, and Deliberative Democracy

We contend that, with a suitably broad notion of rationality and a diverse set of motivations, the game-theoretic tradition is particularly well suited for generating insights about effects of deliberative institutions and that progress in the development of deliberative democratic theory hinges on making proper sense of the relationship between game-theoretic and normative theoretic approaches to deliberation. To advance this view, we explore the central methodological issues at the core of that relationship and address the arguments raised against the relevance of game-theoretic work on deliberation. We develop a framework for thinking about the differences in how the normative and the game-theoretic approaches frame and answer questions about deliberation and articulate an approach to a deliberative democratic theory that builds on the strengths of both of these theoretic traditions, properly informed by empirical scholarship.     

Attention distribution as a measure of issue salience

Public Choice - In spatial theory a central concept is salience, or the relative importance of issues in a voter’s mind in evaluating candidates’ platforms. Traditional, self-reported...     

Book Reviews

Book review in this article:
Reconceiving Decision-Making in Democratic Politics: Attention, Choice, and Public Policy . By Bryan D. Jones.
Economic Politics . By William R. Keech.
Social Policy in the United States: Future Possibilities in Historical Perspective . By Theda Skocpol.
The Brazilian Voter: Mass Politics in Democratic Transition, 1974–1986 . By Kurt von Mettenheim.     

Antitrust public choice(s)

Antitrust legislation and enforcement has over the last few decades been increasingly informed by ever more sophisticated analysis while—at the same time—evidence has continued to mount that the results of antitrust remedies fall far short of the promises held out under still prevalent ‘nirvana fallacy’ (Demsetz in Journal of Law and Economics 12(1):1–22, 1969) expectations. I draw upon a recent Supreme Court decision as well as the results of Young and Shughart’s (Public Choice, 2010. doi:10.1007/s11127_009-9531-y) novel approach to the analysis of antitrust enforcement activities to discuss the extent to which public choice theory is vital in solving the puzzle regarding the “unintended” effects of antitrust (public) choices.     

How to vote,whether to vote: Strategies for voting and abstaining on congressional roll calls

This paper develops and tests a theory of voting and abstaining on Congressional roll calls. The theoretical model assumes that the voting behavior of legislators is oriented toward reelection, and that constituents vote retrospectively. Among the predictions of the theory are that supporters of a program are more likely to abstain than opponents, that conflicted legislators are more likely to vote on the losing side (but will abstain when the vote is very close), and that indifferent legislators will abstain when votes are not close but trade their votes when the outcome is uncertain. The empirical test is based on a series of votes on appropriations for the Clinch River Breeder Reactor from 1975 to 1982. We estimate a nested logit model of, first, the probability of voting for Clinch River, and second, the probability of abstaining from the vote, conditional on preferences regarding the program. All of the empirical results are consistent with the theoretical predictions, and most are statistically significant by conventional standards. The implication is that the abstention decision, as well as yes or no votes, can be purposive, and that the pattern of abstentions is not random among supporters and opponents.The authors gratefully acknowledge research support from the Brookings Institution and the University of Michigan School of Law, and useful comments on an earlier draft by Randall Calvert, Morris Fiorina, Rodney Fort, Amihai Glazer, Keith Krehbiel, Thomas Romer, Kenneth Shepsle, Rodney Smith, Barry Weingast, the UCI Public Choice Study Group, and the Hoover Workshop on Collective Choice.     

Agenda trees and sincere voting: a response to Schwartz

Schwartz (Public Choice 136:353–377, 2008) has identified a controversy within the voting theory literature pertaining to the representation of agenda structures and the consequent definition of sincere voting. This note responds to Schwartz’s remarks by arguing that the kind of agenda tree he uses does not adequately represent some common parliamentary agendas, and that consequently his definition of sincere voting cannot always be applied.     

Review Essays

Patrick Dunleavy: Democracy, Bureaucracy and Public Choice
Hartmut Kliemt: Papers on Buchanan and Related Subjects
George Tsebelis: Nested Games. Rational Choice in Comparative Politics
Krister Ståhlberg (ed.): Parlamenten i Norden
Erik Damgaard (ed.): Parlamentarisk forandring i Norden
Martti Noponen (ed.): Suomen kansanedustusjärjestelmä .     

The effect of trust of a political party as a moderating variable on the leadership towards voters' loyalty

This paper aims to conducting an analysis and research with a view to testing and analyzing the effects of leadership on voter loyalty with political communication, a party's image, and voter satisfaction as the intervening (mediating) variables. This research employing a survey method was conducted in the Special Capital Region of Jakarta precisely in July 2013 until August 2013 where the population consisted of fixed voters in the area of Jakarta which, according to the data from the General Elections Commission of the Special Capital Region of Jakarta (Komisi Pemilihan Umum [KPU] Daerah Khusus Ibukota [DKI] Jakarta), the number of fixed voters in the regional‐head election in 2012 amounted to 6,996,951 people. The sample size was calculated using Slovin's formula with a 5% error level and obtained a sample of 400 respondents selected randomly. The implications of this research is The higher the variable Leadership is, the higher the values of the variables Political Communication and A Party's Image are. Variables A Party's Image and Voter Satisfaction which have a significant and positive influence on Voter Loyalty. Variables Leadership and Political Communication which are not significant on the variable Voter Loyalty (Y4), Moreover, this research also discovers that A Party's Image mediates the influence of Leadership on Voter Loyalty. Loyalty of voters results from a process which is both complex and consists of multiple factors involving the individual voters themselves, the environment, and political parties.     

Teaching Party Systems: A Culinary Demonstration

Abstract

Duverger’s Law—the principle that first-past-the-post systems tend to promote two major political parties while proportional representation systems tend to promote multipartism—is a commonly taught topic in introductory and some upper-level political science courses across subfields. However, it also contains concepts that are difficult for undergraduate students to grasp, particularly those who are unfamiliar with other electoral systems. In partial response to these concerns, this article introduces a memorable in-class demonstration that utilizes food items to illustrate the logic behind Duverger’s Law. The demonstration serves as a flexible blend between lecture-oriented and active learning techniques, and can be adapted to teach other topics—such as directional and proximity models of voting, the Median Voter Theorem, and other topics in rational choice theory. Preliminary evidence presented suggests that students enjoy the demonstration, remember the concepts, and perform better on assessments related to the topic. The article concludes by challenging political science educators to develop and share more demonstration-type activities, which are commonly used in STEM and other fields.     

Revisiting the Political Theory of Party Identification

Recently, Lewis-Beck et al. (The American Voter Revisited, 2008b) re-created The American Voter using contemporary data. Although these scholars ultimately conclude that voters today behave in ways that are consistent with the account of voting behavior presented in The American Voter, their work nonetheless highlights the importance and value of re-examining past ideas. Given that Lewis-Beck et al. have re-tested the findings of The American Voter, it is both timely and worthwhile to re-examine Fiorina’s (Retrospective voting in American national elections, 1981) political theory of party identification, which is often seen as a critique of the theory of party identification presented in The American Voter, using newly available panel data. In this paper, I re-examine Fiorina’s (Retrospective voting in American national elections, 1981) political theory of party identification using data from the 2000–2002–2004 NES panel study. In addition to applying Fiorina’s approach to party identification to new data, as a more robust test of Fiorina’s theory, I develop a model of party identification where changes in party identification are modeled as a function of the actual changes in retrospective political evaluations. Overall, my findings are broadly consistent with the findings from Fiorina’s original model of party identification; however, my analysis suggests that the distribution of opinions in the electorate and elite signals may be important to changes in party identification.     

Rational Choice and Politics

The rational-choice approach brings scientific deductive methods to bear on politics. Appropriate methods are derived from physics, when actors interact probabilistically but non-rationally, and from game theory when they interact rationally. Collective action problems occur in the provision of public goods. As policies are themselves public goods, this leads to the game-theoretic analysis of voting, bureaucracy and lobbies. It is inconsistent to believe that economic actors are basically self-interested but that political actors are not. Rather, one should treat people as equally (not necessarily wholly) self-interested in each sphere. The paradoxes of social choice are then shown to have important implications for political science.     

Why did pre-modern states adopt Big-God religions?

Public Choice - Over the past two millennia successful pre-modern states in Eurasia adopted and cultivated Big-God religions that emphasize (i) the ruler’s legitimacy as divinely ordained and...     

The evolution of cleavage voting in four Western countries: Structural,behavioural or political dealignment?

Since the heyday of cleavage voting in the 1960s and 1970s, the majority of studies presents evidence of a decline in cleavage voting – caused by either structural or behavioural dealignment. Structural dealignment denotes changes in group size responsible for a decrease in cleavage voting, whereas behavioural dealignment concerns weakening party–voter links over time. A third phenomenon posited in this article is the collective voting abstention of certain (social) groups, here referred to as ‘political dealignment’, which results in a new type of division of voting versus abstention. The purpose of this article is to examine the three underlying mechanisms for the decline in social class and religious cleavage voting across four Western countries (Great Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States) over the last 40–60 years using longitudinal post-election data. The results prove a strong presence of political dealignment and increasing turnout gaps regarding both the class and religious cleavage. Furthermore, whenever a decline in cleavage voting is present, it is mainly caused by changes in the social groups’ behaviour and less by changing social structures in a country.     

New evidence on the soft budget constraint: Chinese environmental policy effectiveness in SOE-dominated cities

Public Choice - This paper analyzes the efficiency of a set of environmental measures introduced by China’s 11th Five-Year Plan in 2006, using a rich and unique data set assembled from the...     

Islam and democracy

Using the POLITY IV and Freedom House indices, Rowley and Smith (Public Choice 139(3–4):273, 2009) found that countries with Muslim majorities enjoy less freedom and are less democratic than countries in which Muslims are a minority. Because the POLITY IV and Freedom House indices have been criticized on several grounds, I?reinvestigate Rowley and Smith’s finding using the new Democracy-Dictatorship data from Cheibub et?al. (Public Choice 143(1–2):67, 2010). The empirical results confirm that countries with Muslim majorities are indeed less likely to be democratic.     

Terrorist networks, support, and delegation

The paper presents a game-theoretic representation of a general terrorist organization (GTO) that delegates responsibility to local terrorist representatives in n countries. The GTO achieves a strategic advantage by deploying a more radical representative when the government is perceived to be weak and terrorist supporters are committed. When the government or terrorist supporters alter their posture, the GTO may regret its local representative. Outside assistance can change a besieged government’s posture, thereby removing the GTO’s delegation advantage. When both the GTO and the government delegate to surrogates, the delegators are worse off if the government appears to be weak.     

Poor versus rich countries: a gap in public attitudes towards fiscal solidarity in the EU

Abstract

Existing research has primarily focused on the role of utility and identity in shaping individuals’ European Union (EU) preferences. This article argues that macroeconomic context is a crucial predictor of attitudes towards transnational financial assistance, which has been omitted from previous analyses. Using data from the 2014 European Election Studies (EES) Voter Study for 28 EU member states, this article demonstrates that citizens living in poorer EU countries are less willing to support fiscal solidarity than their counterparts in more affluent countries. Country affluence serves as a heuristic, moderating the relationship between individual-level utility and identity considerations and willingness to show solidarity to member states with economic difficulties. When a country does not fare well economically, citizens’ views on providing help to others remain negative, irrespective of individual-level utilitarian and identity considerations. Our findings have implications for understanding the decision-making calculus underlying preference formation.     

James M. Buchanan and Frank H. Knight on democracy as “government by discussion”

Public Choice - The purposes of this presentation are to (1) provide a relatively short coherent picture of predatory states, (2) pull some of North, Wallis and Weingast’s important...     

Does money have a conservative bias? Estimating the causal impact of Citizens United on state legislative preferences

Public Choice - Recent work has suggested that the US Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United (2010), eliminating restrictions on independent campaign expenditures, increased the election...