Corruption,Cooperation and Endogenous Time Discount Rates

Virtually all uses of repeated games tostudy of cooperation assume that people'stime discount rates are exogenous andfixed. Here we offer an evolutionary gameembedded in a multi-period model ofinvestment and consumption in whichindividual time discounts are determined bytheir convergence to values determined byEvolutionary Stable Strategies. Oursubstantive motivation, though, iscorruption and its relationship to economicgrowth. To understand the observedrelationship between levels of corruptionand economic indicators of social welfare,we argue that corruption is a form ofcooperation that requires closeinterpersonal monitoring. If we assume,moreover, that when people discount thefuture greatly the only sustainable formsof cooperation are those that allow forclose monitoring, then our analysis can beinterpreted as a dynamic model of therelationship between corruption andinvestment.     

A Spatial Model of U.S. Senate Elections

The importance of primaryelections is considered within the contextof U.S. Senate elections where senatorsserve overlapping terms and voters areassumed to balance their two senatorsagainst each other. Voters behavestrategically in the primaries butconvergence to the median position is notachieved except as a knife-edge result.More generally, constraints in the partyspace prevent the party of the sittingsenator from obtaining the median'spreference allowing the opposition party tonominate a candidate further away from themedian while still capturing the medianvoter. Empirical evidence supports thenotion that senate divergence is a functionof the state primary system.     

Minority rights and the dialectics of the nation: Otto Bauer’s theory of the nation and its contributions to multicultural theory and globalization

Conclusion This article analyzed Otto’s Bauer idea of the nation and assessed its meaning and significance qua liberal nationalism and the expansion of national minority rights in Europe. It argued that Bauer's formulation of the same rights for all minorities exposed certain limitations of multicultural theory, namely the failure of liberal multicultural theorists to adequately address the consequences of special minority rights and the potentially transformative role of labor in liberal societies that necessarily seek to be inclusive. Further, Bauer's idea of cultural autonomy raised important and relevant implications for advancing national minority rights in Europe. In particular, his initiative exposed possible ways to promote the social of cultural rights of EU Charter on Fundamental Rights. Given this and the EU's commitment to labor rights, it is curious that Bauer’s theory has not received the attention it deserves. Indeed, even if Bauer's ideas prove somewhat non-conventional by liberal standards, it is still important that we see his ideas as serving some elemental purpose in linking the advancement of national values and sentiment with the EU goal of integration.     

Black Cities/White Cities: Evaluating the Police

It is well known that African Americans and whites hold different views of the police, but nearly all of the previous research has been conducted in majority white settings. This research examines the relationship between race and evaluations of the police in majority black versus majority white contexts. Social dominance theory and the research on racial threat predict that when the racial majority changes, the relationship between race and attitudes toward police will change. We find that, in majority black contexts, the traditional relationship between being black and having negative evaluations of the police disappears, and it disappears because whites' evaluations of the police become more negative. Black evaluations of the police are relatively consistent across racial contexts. Also, white racial attitudes affect police evaluations in majority black contexts, but not in white contexts, while African American racial attitudes are inconsequential in both contexts. Furthermore, if a white citizen is victimized by crime in a black city, it has greater ramifications for evaluations of the police than if the victimization had occurred in a white city. All of this suggests that whites' views of the police may be more racialized than the views of African Americans.     

Accountability and Coercion: Is Justice Blind when It Runs for Office?

Through their power to sentence, trial judges exercise enormous authority in the criminal justice system. In 39 American states, these judges stand periodically for reelection. Do elections degrade their impartiality? We develop a dynamic theory of sentencing and electoral control. Judges discount the future value of retaining office relative to implementing preferred sentences. Voters are largely uninformed about judicial behavior, so even the outcome of a single publicized case can be decisive in their evaluations. Further, voters are more likely to perceive instances of underpunishment than overpunishment. Our theory predicts that elected judges will consequently become more punitive as standing for reelection approaches. Using sentencing data from 22,095 Pennsylvania criminal cases in the 1990s, we find strong evidence for this effect. Additional tests confirm the validity of our theory over alternatives. For the cases we examine, we attribute at least 1,818 to 2,705 years of incarceration to the electoral dynamic.