Addressing the next wave of Internet regulation: Toward a workable principle for nondiscrimination

The ultimate formulation of the Federal Communications Commission's “nondiscrimination on the Internet” principle could have a significant impact on economic welfare and on innovation. In this article, we explain the economics of discrimination as it applies to the Internet, and we offer a new approach for identifying anticompetitive discrimination. Our proposal would require a complaining content provider to prove (i) the broadband service provider has discriminated in favor of some affiliated content provider that is “similarly situated” to the independent content provider; (ii) such disparate treatment is based on affiliation and not on some other consideration; (iii) the independent content provider has been unreasonably restrained in its ability to compete; and (iv) the harm it suffers as a result of the discrimination would likely redound to the harm of broadband users.     

Influencing rent-seeking contests

This paper shows that a policy that uniformly increases contestants’ effort costs can lead to an increase in total effort. In asymmetric settings, this “levels the playing field” and therefore encourages weaker players (who otherwise would have stayed out) to enter. Paradoxically, a contest designer whose only objective is to maximize total effort may thus wish to make rent-seeking “more difficult.” These results suggest that the often-lamented bureaucratic red tape might in fact be a rational response to the problem of attracting lobbyists to participate in a contest.     

Competence and ambiguity in electoral competition

The level of competence that voters attribute to different candidates is an important determinant of election results. In addition, it is observed that some candidates tend to be more ambiguous in their campaigns regarding future plans, while others commit to specific policies. We offer a model where politicians who vary in their level of competence compete by making costly campaign declarations. We show that a separating equilibrium exists in which the ambiguity of a candidate’s campaign declaration reveals her level of competence. The model explains how politicians may use an “issue”-based campaign to create a competent image, and provides an additional explanation for different levels of campaign ambiguity.     

Lobbying and compromise

The compromise enhancing effect of lobbying on public policy has been established in two typical settings. In the first, lobbies are assumed to act as “principals” and the setters of the policy (the candidates in a Downsian electoral competition or the elected policy maker in a citizen-candidate model of electoral competition) are conceived as “agents”. In the second setting, the proposed policies are solely determined by the lobbies who are assumed to take the dual role of “principals” in one stage of the public-policy game and ‘agents’ in its second stage. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that in the latter setting, the compromising effect of lobbying need not exist. Our reduced-form, two-stage public-policy contest, where two interest groups compete on the approval or rejection of the policy set by a politician, is sufficient to show that the proposed and possibly implemented policy can be more extreme and less efficient than the preferred policies of the interest groups. In such situations then more than the calf (interest groups) wish to suck the cow (politician) desires to suckle thereby threatening the public well being more than the lobbying interest groups. The main result specifies the conditions that give rise to such a situation under both the perfectly and imperfectly discriminating contests.     

Cycle avoiding trajectories,strategic agendas,and the duality of memory and foresight: An informal exposition

This paper considers the notion of cycle avoiding trajectories in majority voting tournaments and shows that they underlie and guide several apparently disparate voting processes. The set of alternatives that are maximal with respect to such trajectories constitutes a new solution set of considerable significance. It may be dubbed the Banks set, in recognition of the important paper by Banks (1985) that first made use of this set. The purpose of this paper is to informally demonstrate that the Banks set is a solution set of broad relevance for understanding group decision making in both cooperative and non-cooperative settings and under both sincere and sophisticated voting. In addition, we show how sincere and sophisticated voting processes can be viewed as mirror images of one another — embodying respectively, “dmemory” and “foresight.” We also show how to develop the idea of a “sophisticated agenda,” one in which the choice of what alternatives to propose is itself a matter of strategic calculation.     

The war novel and human rights

The war novel, a distinct genre of fiction, has typically been read as a type of humanitarian narrative. This article explains how the war novel participates in humanitarian discourse but also has another role to play that addresses human rights more specifically. In the effort to identify accountability, war novels explore complex historical events and offer us important insights on the challenges of historical narration more broadly. Furthermore, in offering explanations for “who?” and “why?,” war novels model how we can approach the complex history of conflict for human rights. To illustrate how accountability is a central theme of war fiction, the essay turns to examples of novels about the Vietnam War.     

Does race matter? The determinants and consequences of self-reports of discrimination victimization

Few empirical investigations have explored the determinants of discrimination. Even more rare are studies that explicitly link reports of discrimination to harmful consequences. This article investigates the determinants and consequences of self-reports of discrimination victimization. It addresses how likely different kinds of people are to say that they have been the victims of discrimination. After estimating who is likely to report being victimized by discrimination, the article presents estimates of the relationship of self-reports of discrimination victimization to the earnings of different social groups. Results indicate that African Americans, Latinos, and immigrants report being victimized more frequently than whites with rates that exceed twice the national average. For African Americans, the “cost” of felt discrimination exceeds $6,200; for Latinos, the “cost” exceeds $11,300. Such findings suggest that reports of discrimination are not just the product of the imaginations of overly sensitive, raceconscious, victim-minded individuals. Rather, these reports appear to represent real experiences that negatively and demonstrably impact the quality of their lives.     

The Bush Administration Record in Latin America: Sins of Omission and Commission

The conventional wisdom among analysts and scholars is that at least since September 11, 2001, the United States has tended to neglect its relations with Latin America. As a result of that inattention, other countries from outside the region have been able to make inroads, and there has generally been a regional drift in the direction of election and policy outcomes that do not favor US interests. While this article assumes that conventional understanding of the outcomes in the region, the central argument here is that it is not neglect (or “sins of omission”) that best explains those developments. Rather, it is the actual US policies that have been pursued (“sins of commission”), as well as the effective strategies pursued by Latin American leaders and organizations, which are largely responsible for the situation that confronts President Obama in Latin America. The article focuses on Venezuela, Cuba, and Bolivia, the three countries that have sometimes been described as the Latin American “axis of evil.”     

Homelessness old and new: The matter of definition

Abstract

The contemporary emphasis on the pathologies of shelter denizens and street‐dwellers tends to conceal the great variety of makeshift ways of life that have characterized “homelessness” over the centuries. Diversity notwithstanding, those considered “vagrants” were historically marked as suspect members of a poor apart, even when their numbers increased sharply. Because kin ties have consistently proven to be the first line of defense against “literal homelessness,” skid row researchers thought their absence (along with the lack of associated ties to work and community) to be diagnostic of the condition. Indeed, earlier research tended to see as “homeless” any “disaffiliated” persons, housed or not, who lived alone in unconventional dwellings. Not only have the new homeless poor, by contrast, proven to be more diverse—their geographic locus, age, gender, ethnicity, and signal disabilities having all changed—but their common element is less often ascribed to faulty social connectedness than to sheer absence of shelter. This paper discusses such changes and reviews definitions of homelessness and several approaches to its social construction. The paper argues that, although definitions owe as much to political as to logical considerations, it makes both practical and historical sense to view the streets and shelters as but one variant of a class of informal or makeshift residential settings that increasingly characterizes the marginally situated.     

Spoiler effects in proportional representation systems: evidence from eight Polish parliamentary elections, 1991–2015

I consider a model of multiple winner elections with several types of spoilers. In single-office elections, a “classic” spoiler turns a winner into a non-winner and a non-winner into a winner. Such spoilers rarely appear in multi-office elections. In such elections, spoilers include a “Kingmaker”, who turns a non-winner into a winner; a “Kingslayer”, who turns a winner into a non-winner; a “Valuegobbler”, who subtracts from some competitor more seats than it receives; and “Selfspoilers”, who may be hurt by competing separately rather than creating an electoral coalition. Various strategic spoilers, such as fake parties, are possible as well. I look for spoilers in eight Polish parliamentary elections that have taken place since the fall of communism in 1989. In two elections, the consequences of spoilers were massive. In 1993, multiple spoilers on the right helped the two post-communist parties return to power, slow down decommunization and create strong institutional obstacles to further democratization. In 2015, a spoiler manufactured a majority for the largest party (PiS) and, as a consequence, enabled PiS quickly to implement radical reforms. In other elections, spoilers had smaller, but noticeable consequences. The results suggest that parliamentary elections using PR party-list systems are vulnerable to spoiler problems that may cause significant political effects.     

Pluralism in the Mind and the Structure of Cognitive Minorities

In his book The Many Altars of Modernity Peter L. Berger (2014) called for the replacement of secularization theory, which in his view no longer has much relevance today, with a theory of (religious) pluralism. Such a theory must encompass two levels, the level of the mind and the level of society. In this paper I will focus on the level of mind and explain some of the conceptual linkages with the level of society which Berger only touches upon in his book. The paper’s main purpose, however, is to sketch out a framework in which Berger’s ideas on “pluralism in the mind” could be investigated empirically. I will argue to focus on “cognitive minorities”, that is, on groups of people whose understanding of the world differs significantly from that of their social environment. As concrete cases I suggest a comparative study of a religious group (Evangelical Protestants) in a strongly secularized city (Leipzig, Germany) and a group of skeptics and seekers (Unitarians) in a city characterized by evangelical religiosity (Dallas, Texas). With the help of these settings – that is my thesis – it will be possible to investigate what Berger formulated as the central issue in his pluralism theory: How is it possible for people to integrate religious and secular worldviews in their minds, more or less simultaneously?     

马克思“哲学革命”与其“哲学立新”的共时性

深刻理解马克思“哲学革命”与其“哲学立新”的关系,对于澄清马克思“哲学革命”的真实性质,正确界定其起点,有重大学术意义。通过深入思考、辨析,可以确认：马克思的“哲学革命”与其“哲学立新”是相互关联、相互依存、互为条件的,二者在时间上一致,将它们认定为先后发生或进行的两个事件或两个过程是不妥的。他的“哲学革命”的历程,绝不是在其“哲学立新”完成后才真正开启,而是与后者同时开启、同步进行和深化。马克思的“哲学立新”是一个过程,其“哲学革命”同样是一个过程,二者的起点完全相同。澄清这些事实,有助于深刻认识马克思所发动的“哲学革命”及其特征,消除学界长期以来流行的所谓“马克思‘哲学革命’一次完成论”的消极影响,恢复马克思思想史的本来面目,推进学界的马克思主义哲学史研究。     

The Priority of Legitimacy in Times of Political Transition

This paper interprets the relation between justice and legitimacy found in John Rawls's Political Liberalism and then applies it to the field of transitional justice. The author argues that transitional mechanisms can be better defended in terms of “legitimacy” than in “justice,” because the circumstances of transitional justice admit of reasonable disagreement over “just” public policy. In such circumstances, policy recommendations can always be construed as falling short of justice, thus raising plausible concerns over their normative justification. This paper attempts to answer such concerns by justifying transitional mechanisms as morally appropriate yet less than fully just. The author explains how the concept of legitimacy facilitates such a justification and how such a justification can secure the normative grounds that are ironically threatened by investigations relying on a concept of justice.     

Emoticon convergence in Internet chat rooms

The present study examines sex and age differences in the use of emoticons (graphic representations of facial expressions) in Internet chat rooms. Data were collected from four Noesis chat rooms (“18+”, “30-something”, “40-something” and “50+”). Although women were more likely than men to use emoticons, there was no difference between the sexes in the range of emoticons used. The fact that men expressed a similar range of emoticons to women implies a general convergence towards female expression in mixed-sex communication contexts. Chat room users without a profile picture were also more likely to use winking emoticons. This may be because these types of emoticons are more flirtatious in intent, and it is easier for chatters to engage in risky communications when they are less identifiable. Furthermore, age had little bearing on the uptake of emoticons as well as the types of emoticons expressed. We draw upon Communication Accommodation Theory to help explain why emotional expression may converge in the chat room context.     

Types of Economic Voting in Regional Elections: The 2012 Catalan Election as a Motivating Case

The standard assumption that economic voting (EV) is “jurisdiction-specific” inevitably leads to a breakdown between “national EV” and “regional EV”. This paper challenges this overly simplistic distinction by proposing a more complex typology, whereby national and regional incumbents may be assessed in both national and regional elections, according to either national or regional economic conditions. Accordingly, new and more sophisticated types of EV emerge, such as “second-order EV” or “coattail EV”. In this paper, some of these new types of EV are verified with a suitable case study. The 2012 Catalan election was carried out in the context of severe recession, but also under the impression – among many Catalans – that the economic policies of the Spanish government were harshly punishing Catalan economic interests. Binomial logistic regression models confirm that, under political circumstances such as these, voters may use regional elections to assess the national incumbents' economic performance, whereas regional incumbents may end up exonerated from poor economic performance. This case study may be illustrative for other regional elections around the world.     

Googling the requester: Identity‐questing and discrimination in public service provision

Innovating upon previous field experiments and theories of identity‐based discrimination, we test whether public officials are using searches (“identity‐questing”) to profile citizens and acting on latent biases. Pairs of “institutional” and “noninstitutional” requesters send lower and moderate burden freedom of information (FOI) requests—providing no identity cues apart from undistinctive names, e‐mails, and ID numbers—to nearly 700 of Brazil's largest municipalities. Results show institutional requesters receive one‐fifth more responses than noninstitutional comparators. For moderate versus lower burden requests, noninstitutional requesters are 11% less likely to receive a compliant response than their institutional comparators. The only plausible explanation for these results is identity‐questing, a phenomenon that has far‐reaching policy implications. Most of the world's FOI laws, for example, contain vague ID obligations, which translate incoherently from laws to regulation and practice. Results enjoin public service providers to protect the identities of citizens by default or upon request.     

Learning to Love Democracy: Electoral Accountability and the Success of Democracy

This article explains why dissatisfaction with the performance of individual politicians in new democracies often turns into disillusionment with democracy as a political system. The demands on elections as an instrument of political accountability are much greater in new than established democracies: politicians have yet to form reputations, a condition that facilitates the entry into politics of undesirable candidates who view this period as their “one‐time opportunity to get rich.” After a repeatedly disappointing government performance, voters may rationally conclude that “all politicians are crooks” and stop discriminating among them, to which all politicians rationally respond by “acting like crooks,” even if most may be willing to perform well in office if given appropriate incentives. Such an expectation‐driven failure of accountability, which I call the “trap of pessimistic expectations,” may precipitate the breakdown of democracy. Once politicians establish reputations for good performance, however, these act as barriers to the entry into politics of low‐quality politicians. The resulting improvement in government performance reinforces voters’ belief that democracy can deliver accountability, a process that I associate with democratic consolidation. These arguments provide theoretical microfoundations for several prominent empirical associations between the economic performance of new democracies, public attitudes toward democracy, and democratic stability.     

Extending environmental justice research to religious minorities

For more than 30 years, significant research in the United States has found that racial and ethnic minorities suffer disproportionately from nearness to environmental disamenities compared with white non-Hispanics and that these results persist even controlling for poverty and “which came first,” the minorities or the disamenities. The engrained discriminatory findings of this environmental justice (EJ) research have led some to argue that we observe “systemic racism,” built into our social systems in ways that may be difficult to perceive. Yet, within the history of the United States, racial and ethnic minorities are not the only groups that have been systematically discriminated against; various religious groups also have histories of discrimination. Here we consider whether, holding constant race and ethnicity, some religious groups may also suffer from “EJ syndrome.” Since the US Census does not collect data on religion, to measure the presence of some religious groups that may be discriminated against, we use an original dataset on the presence of Jewish, Muslim, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS, aka Mormon), and Roman Catholic houses of worship within California's Census tracts. Our results indicate that even controlling for race/ethnicity and income, the presence of Jewish or Muslim houses of worship in a California Census tract increases the likelihood of environmental burden as measured by the CalEnviroScreen 3.0 index of pollution and community vulnerability.     

Integration to What? Marginalization from What?: Keynote Address at 19th Nordiske Sociologkongres, 13–15 June 1997, Copenhagen: “Integration and Marginalization.”

The modern world-system has created considerable confusion about what we can mean by integration and marginalization into our societies/states. One of the principles of most sovereign states in the last two centuries is that they are composed of “citizens.” Once there were citizens, there were non-citizens as well. Citizenship became something very valuable, and consequently not something one was very willing to share with others. Despite the fact that citizenship is a cherished good, which gives rise to “protectionist” sentiment, migration is a constantly recurring phenomenon in the modern world, which leads to the issue of national integration. The world revolution of 1968 put into question, for the first time since the French Revolution, the concept of citizenship. What was different about me world revolution of 1968 was that it was an expression of disillusionment in the possibilities of state-level reformism. The post-1968 movements added something new. They insisted that racism and sexism were not merely matters of individual prejudice and discrimination but that they took on “institutional” forms as well. What these movements seemed to be talking about was not overt juridical discrimination but the covert forms that were hidden within the concept of “citizen” The concept of citizenship is, in its essence, always simultaneously inclusionary and exclusionary. We should begin to conceive whether we can go beyond or dispense with the concept of citizen, and if so, to replace it with what?     

The politics of middle ageism

Abstract

Ageism directed at those in their middle years—middle ageism—is being given teeth by midlife downsizing, drops in real income and workforce participation, substandard employment, hiring discrimination, and court decisions that weaken age anti‐discrimination laws. This essay explores the high costs of this trend—not only for individuals currently at midlife, but for their families, the next cohorts aging into the middle years, the value of seniority, the power of employers over workers in the global workforce, and the meaning of the life course. In Europe premature superannuation became a problem decades ago. Middle ageism is becoming a problem in the US, ironically, at the same time that social justice movements have produced increases in peak wages and expectations of “seniority,” broadly defined, for women and African‐Americans. The market's attempt to drive wages to the bottom thus clashes with expanding cultural visions of age‐graded progress. This essay speculates that middle ageism may have negative effects on the age‐wage curve. Ending with a call to institute “full‐employment‐plus” (a set of programs that take life‐course issues into full consideration), the essay argues that academics and the public need to become more alert to the social construction of the midlife and the life course and the manipulation of age as a powerful category of difference.