Journal of Theoretical Politics recent issues

Nominations for Sale

Console-Battilana, S., Shepsle, K. A. — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:19:40 PDT

Models of nomination politics in the USA often find ‘gridlock’ in equilibrium because of the supermajority requirement in the Senate for the confirmation of presidential nominees. A blocking coalition often prefers to defeat any nominee. Yet empirically nominations are successful. In the present article we explore the possibility that senators can be induced to vote contrary to their nominal (gridlock-producing) preferences through contributions from the president and/or lobbyists, thus breaking the gridlock and confirming the nominee. We model contributions by the president and lobbyists according to whether payment schedules are conditioned on the entire voting profile, the vote of a senator, or the outcome. We analyze several extensions to our baseline approach, including the possibility that lobbyists may find it more productive to offer inducements to the president in order to affect his proposal behavior, rather than trying to induce senators to vote for or against a given nominee.

The Puzzle of Weak Pocketbook Voting

Grafstein, R. — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:19:40 PDT

This article investigates why predominantly self-interested voters exhibit weak pocketbook voting. Focusing on the USA, it estimates partisan government’s impact on household income and, based on the Permanent Income Hypothesis, models the conversion of that income into consumption, the source of voters’ utility in the model. The analysis implies that pocketbook voting is weak because anticipated policy is already incorporated in household consumption plans. Sociotropic variables are more powerful because they determine the relative value of partisan policies in the longer term. Using PSID data, estimates of the US parties’ impact on income generate a measure of partisan utility differences. This measure enters into a probit analysis using 1952—2000 ANES presidential election data. The pocketbook measure performs as predicted both independently and in relation to sociotropic variables.

Trust in the Balance: Asymmetric Information, Commitment Problems and Balancing Behavior

Savic, I., Shirkey, Z. C. — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:19:40 PDT

Realists argue that balancing occurs in response to changes to the balance of power. Recent informational approaches have focused primarily on informational asymmetries or commitment problems. The article combines these two approaches and builds on them by incorporating characteristics of the revisionist state and the potential balancer, as well as the specific challenge to the balance of power. The model confirms that informational asymmetries often lead to commitment problems, which are a necessary condition for balancing. However, whether or not informational asymmetries create commitment problems depends on both the nature of the challenger’s move and the relative power of the challenger and respondent. The article shows under what conditions balancing is likely to occur and, counter-intuitively, that less revisionist challengers are often more willing to risk being balanced against than are more aggressive challengers.

Ballot Structure, Political Corruption, and the Performance of Proportional Representation

Gingerich, D. W. — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:19:40 PDT

What is the relationship between ballot structure (the manner in which citizens cast their votes) and corruption related to the financing of politics? The author develops a principal agent—model which considers how differences in ballot structure may facilitate or impede attempts by parties to utilize the public administration as a source of electoral resources. Electoral systems which concentrate political career control in the hands of party leaders, such as closed-list proportional representation (CLPR) facilitate the use of the bureaucracy in this manner, whereas electoral systems that undermine party leader control, such as preferential-list proportional representation (PLPR), make it more difficult. The difference in the two systems rests with the degree of leverage enjoyed by party leaders vis-à-vis politically oriented bureaucrats. The capacity for favoritism under CLPR permits party leaders to reward militants who have engaged in risky behavior for the party; PLPR undercuts similar attempts to reward risky behavior.

Estimating the Effect of Nonseparable Preferences in Eu Treaty Negotiations

Finke, D. — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:19:40 PDT

This article derives theoretical expectations about the importance of nonseparable preferences at EU treaty negotiations. It argues that member states’ positions on the degree of integration depend on the expected reform of the decision rule and vice versa. This nonseparability effect varies across member states. Wealthier member states (net payers) would prefer a more majoritarian and efficient decision rule when confronted with a higher level of vertical integration. The overall size of the nonseparability effect can be explained by the policy area-specific degree of preference asymmetry. In order to test these expectations the article advances existing statistical models of ideal point estimation and derives a model that allows for an explicit estimation of nonseparability effects. It applies this model to data on member states’ positions at the IGC 2003—4. The two-stage estimator presented in this article may be considered useful in other applications of ideal point estimators.

Matching Donors and Nonprofits: The Importance of Signaling in Funding Awards

Reinhardt, G. Y. — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 02:09:52 PDT

The topic of nonprofit reform has sparked a debate on the battle between efficiency and effectiveness. Why do ineffective nonprofits survive? Prospective donors favor applicants likely to fulfill donor priorities. Donors with limited time and energy look for signals that reveal recipients' true capabilities. Knowing this, recipients attempt to send the right signals to prospective donors. If the process of sending and reading signals is efficient, funding decisions will tend toward an optimal outcome in which only effective agencies survive. What signals do donors consider the most helpful? Are organizations that send such signals receiving the highest payoffs? What is the financial yield of each signal to recipients? This article uses a signaling game to sharpen our understanding of nonprofit fundraising and derive the conditions under which signals will be credible. Interview and survey evidence gathered in Brazil indicate that signals of accessibility, reliability, and credibility attract the highest payoffs.

Successful and Failed Screening Mechanisms in the Two Gulf Wars

Verdier, D. — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 02:09:52 PDT

The article addresses the question of how status-quo states can identify revisionist threats. After recasting the question within the collective security and social learning literatures, the article presents and models a new mechanism for the collective identification of threats — screening. It then identifies several conditions for the existence of screening mechanisms, among which states' mutual dependence on one another's support to enforce threats and promises, and restricted opportunities for moral hazard. The model's predictions are then tested on two most similar cases — the two Gulf wars — with collective learning taking place during the former but not the latter. The paired comparison suggests that rather than being misinformed or irrational, Saddam, in 2003, was not offered the kinds of incentives that would have led him to reveal the truth about the state of Iraq's nuclear weapons program.

From Many, One: State Representation and the Construction of an American Identity

Penn, E. M. — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 02:09:52 PDT

I present a formal model of the effect of political representation on the formation of group identities using the drafting of the United States Constitution as a case study. I first show the presence of `factions', or groups with competing interests, to be beneficial in forging a national identity. Next, I use this model to argue that the Great Compromise succeeded as more than a political maneuver to ensure ratification of the Constitution; it created a political environment in which an American national identity could emerge. I find that representation schemes that ignore group distinctions and use the individual as the basic unit of political representation may induce individuals to embrace a group-based notion of identity. Conversely, acknowledging group distinctions by using the group as a unit of political representation may induce individuals to embrace a more universalistic conception of identity, and thus may make group distinctions less salient.

Creation of Social Order in Ethnic Conflict

Nakao, K. — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 02:09:52 PDT

This article develops a model of random matching with costly monitoring to demonstrate that the threat of ethnic conflict can function to create an in-group policing mechanism which helps enforce inter-ethnic social order. Instead of regarding ethnic conflict as a form of collective penalty on an unidentified wrongdoer and his ethnic brethren (Fearon and Laitin, 1996), we argue that ethnic conflict is triggered by a wrongdoing because avengers seek to take advantage of in-group networks for detecting and punishing the culprit. Our theory predicts that the success of inter-ethnic cooperation hinges on the quality of in-group policing. As a consequence, a group with lower-quality policing tends to have more frequent and longer disputes with other groups.

Lotteries, Justice and Probability

Stone, P. — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 02:09:52 PDT

Intuition suggests that a fair lottery is the appropriate way to allocate a scarce good when two or more people have equally strong claims to it. This article lays out three conditions that any conception of justice compatible with this intuition must satisfy — efficiency of outcomes, fairness of outcomes, and fairness of treatment. The third, unlike the first two, manifests itself only in the intentions of the allocative agent, not in the final allocation itself. For this reason, while justice generally requires publicity — requires, that is, that the justice of public practices be as visible as possible — for fairness of treatment publicity is indispensable. This fact has implications for defining a fair lottery. On most accounts, fair lotteries must be equiprobable. But while some theories of probability facilitate the connection between the equiprobability of fair lotteries and the contribution they can make to justice, others do not.

The Structure of Heresthetical Power

Moser, S., Patty, J. W., Penn, E. M. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 07:56:06 PDT

This article considers manipulation of collective choice — in such environments, a potential alternative is powerful only to the degree that its introduction can affect the collective decision. Using the Banks set (Banks, 1985), we present and characterize alternatives that can, and those that can not, affect sophisticated collective decision-making. Along with offering two substantive findings about political manipulation and a link between our results and Riker's concept of heresthetic, we define a new tournament solution concept that refines the Banks set, which we refer to as the heresthetically stable set.

Multiple Principals and Oversight of Bureaucratic Policy-Making

Gailmard, S. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 07:56:06 PDT

I examine a model in which multiple legislative principals monitor a bureaucratic agent's implementation of a project. The principals can each perform oversight of the implementation to limit information asymmetries exploited by the agent. Oversight is costly to perform and due to information leakages between principals, oversight by one principal reveals information to all principals. Thus for some values of the audit costs, there is a collective action problem in monitoring among the principals: the multiplicity of principals can cause the level of this form of oversight to be underperformed relative to the principals' joint interests. Notably, the multiplicity of principals reduces their collective control over the agent even though they have common interests about the agent's actions, i.e. conflicting preference about agent actions are not necessary to attenuate accountability when there are multiple principals. Overall the results point out that the institutional structure of the overseeing body has an important effect on accountability, independent of the institutional structure of the overseen.

Exit, Voice, and Cooperation: Bargaining Power in International Organizations and Federal Systems

Slapin, J. B. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 07:56:06 PDT

Literature on international organizations points to several potential sources of bargaining power: voice, exit, and exclusion. In some circumstances, a member state may be able to effectively voice objections to a change to an organization's institutions. In others, it may threaten to leave the organization if its demands are not met. Finally, member states may be able to force a laggard member state to accept unwanted change by threatening to exclude the laggard from the organization. Under what circumstances do these strategies provide bargaining leverage? Are these options available simultaneously or if one is available does that mean that the others are not? What implications does this have for international cooperation, and more broadly, the possible creation of a federal state? This article seeks to answer these questions using a formal model to examine the interaction between voice, specifically veto rights, exit, and exclusion in international organizations and federal states. The model has implications for European integration and can also help explain the conditions under which independent states give up sovereignty to form a stable federal union. Implications of the model are tested through a case study of EU integration in the 1970s and 1980s.

Is the 50-State Strategy Optimal?

Kovenock, D., Roberson, B. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 07:56:06 PDT

In 2005, the Democratic National Committee adopted the 50-state strategy in lieu of the strategy of focusing solely on battleground states. The rationale given for this move is that campaign expenditures are durable outlays that impact both current and future campaigns. This article investigates the optimality of the 50-state strategy in a simple dynamic game of campaign resource allocation in which expenditures act as a form of investment. Neither the 50-state nor the battleground-states strategy is likely to arise in equilibrium. Instead, parties employ a hybrid strategy in which non-battleground states are stochastically targeted.

Information Acquisition, Ideology and Turnout: Theory and Evidence From Britain

Larcinese, V. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 07:56:06 PDT

The amount of political information that voters decide to acquire during an electoral campaign depends, among other things, on prior ideological beliefs about parties and/or candidates. Voters that are ex ante indifferent about the candidates attach little value to information because they perceive that voting itself will have little value. Voters that are ex ante very ideological also attach little value to information because they think that the news will hardly change their opinion. Thus, high incentives to be informed can be found at intermediate levels of partisanship. Moreover, the impact of increased political knowledge on turnout is asymmetric: new information increases the probability of voting of indifferent voters but decreases that of very ideological voters. These results are derived within a decision theoretical model of information acquisition and turnout that combines the Riker—Ordeshook (1968) approach to voting behaviour with the Becker (1965) approach to personal production functions. These predictions are then tested on survey data from the 1997 British Election Study (Heath et al., 1999). Our empirical findings are compatible with all the results of the theoretical exercise.

A Simple Model of Legislator and News Media Interaction

Fogarty, B. J. — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 06:52:16 PST

This article examines the effect of a strategic news media on legislators' interactions with their constituencies. Specifically, legislators can only be constrained by constituency preferences over policies when voters have the information to hold legislators accountable for their actions. A strategic news media can provide such information in a constant and continuous manner unlike, say, challengers. This article addresses this scenario with several models. First, a signaling model is introduced with constituency preferences and a journalist's investigating and reporting strategies serving as constraints on a legislator's voting preferences. Results of the baseline model include a pooling equilibrium where legislators vote with the district and are always re-elected. Second, a basic ultimatum bargaining model is introduced to allow for collusion between journalists and legislators in the output of the news product. This extension highlights a pure strategy-separating equilibrium where an out-of-step legislator is able to secure silence from the journalist and win re-election. Finally, the role of multiple journalists covering a legislator is considered. Results illustrate that as the number of media outlets increases within a district, the quality of representation also increases.

Constitutions and Policy Comparisons: Direct and Representative Democracy When States Learn From Their Neighbours

Hugh-Jones, D. — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 06:52:16 PST

Voters in democracies can learn from the experience of neighbouring states: about policy in a direct democracy (`policy experimentation'), about the quality of their politicians in a representative democracy (`yardstick competition'). Learning between states creates spillovers from policy choice, and also from constitutional choice. I model these spillovers in a simple principal-agent framework, and show that voter welfare may be maximized by a mixture of representative and direct democratic states. Because of this, empirical work examining voter welfare under direct democracy may need to be reinterpreted. Also, I show that the optimal mix of constitutions cannot always be achieved in a constitutional choice equilibrium involving many states.

Explaining the 1914 War in Europe: An Analytic Narrative

Zagare, F. C. — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 06:52:16 PST

This essay constructs a theoretically rigorous explanation of the 1914 European war that involved Austria—Hungary, Germany, Russia, and France. It also serves to confirm Trachtenberg's contention that `one does not have to take a particularly dark view of German intentions' to explain the onset of war in 1914 and `question the ``inadvertent war'' theory'. A number of related questions about the Great War are also addressed within the context of a generic game-theoretic escalation model with incomplete information. The analysis suggests that general war broke out in Europe in 1914 because both Austria— Hungary and Germany believed that, when push came to shove, Russia would stand aside if Austria moved aggressively against Serbia. There is a sense in which the war can be said to be unintended but there is no sense in which it should be understood as accidental.

Making Making Social Science Matter Matter To Us

Adcock, R. — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 06:52:16 PST

This article pursues two line of inquiry in response to Bent Flyvbjerg's advocacy of a phronetic social science in Making Social Science Matter (2001). First, I explore how Flyvbjerg's manifesto relates to the approach employed in his earlier empirical work, Rationality & Power (1998). There are, I argue, notable disjunctions between the practice of Rationality & Power and the preaching of Making Social Science Matter. Second, I explicate and rework Flyvbjerg's contrast between epistemic and phronetic social science with an eye to its reception by a specific disciplinary audience: American political scientists. In doing so, I build on several contributions to Sanford Schram and Brian Caterino's edited volume Making Political Science Matter (2006). My aspiration is, however, rather different from that of the volume: I strive to make epistemic and phronetic into accessible categories of reformist reflection, not provocative banners under which to marshal revolutionary opposition to our disciplinary mainstream(s).

The Leader Rule: A Model of Strategic Approval Voting in a Large Electorate

Laslier, J.-F. — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 06:52:16 PST

The article considers Approval Voting for a large population of voters. It is supposed that voters evaluate the relative likelihood of pairwise ties among candidates based on statistical information about candidate scores. This leads them to vote sincerely and according to a simple behavioral rule we call the `Leader Rule'. At equilibrium, if a Condorcet-winner exists, this candidate is elected.