Does trading votes in national elections change election outcomes?

Although forbidden in democratic states a market for votes could improve efficiency. This paper examines the way trading votes will change the outcome of an election. A two-party model with two phases is presented. In the pre-trading phase the two parties set their agendas consisting of a direct subsidy and an income tax. In the trading phase voters buy and sell votes. On the basis of rational voter behavior and a given income distribution, it is shown that the outcome of the election depends mainly on how the selling voters are distributed among the voters.     

The Management of Power in Municipalities: Psychoanalytically Informed Negotiation

The paper takes the view that the psychoanalytic process is a form of negotiation or mutually constructed reality and applies these clinical insights to dispute resolution between two municipal entities: a fire department and a city government. The success of the mediation process is described as depending on the disputants' developing awareness of the impact of power struggles on their own thinking and functioning, and how group dynamics shape perceptions. Operating as a change agent, the mediator needs to be aware of three commonly recurring issues that interfere with the negotiation process: transference/counter-transference enactments, enactment by fundamental attribution error, self-serving enactments, and self fulfilling enactments. Vignettes are given to illustrate these conceptual issues.     

The Governorship-Senate Connection: A Step in the Structure of Opportunities Grows Weaker

Ambition theory posits a relationship between the office goalsof politicians and their political behavior. The goals are assumedto be structured by a hierarchy of offices. Any change in therelationships among offices would affect our expectations ofthe behavior of those in the offices. This article reports onone such change. The linkage between the governorships and seatsin the U.S. Senate is apparently growing weaker. A theory ofprogressive ambition is used to specify a set of variables thataffect governors' decisions to run for the Senate. The changein the governors' tenure potential—namely, the increasein the length of their terms and the number of terms the governorsare allowed to serve—is shown to be the variable thathas affected governors' decisions to run for the Senate.