Suchergebnisse

"Hybrid democracy" and its consequences / Shaun Bowler and Amihai Glazer -- Was Rove right? Ohio's gay marriage ban and the 2004 presidential election / Daniel A. Smith -- Electoral supply and demand: direct democracy campaigns, political interest, and participation / Caroline Tolbert and Daniel Bowen -- Direct democracy and the public agenda: ballot initiatives and public beliefs about important problems / Stephen P. Nicholson -- Direct democracy's effects on political parties / Shaun Bowler and Todd Donovan -- The initiative process and interest group attention to legislative activity / Frederick J. Boehmke -- Direct democracy and the executive branch / John G. Matsusaka -- Direct democracy and the stability of state policy / Amihai Glazer and Anthony McGann -- Direct democracy and good governance: does it matter? / Russell J. Dalton

This book contains articles on the theory of conflict. Conflict appears in many forms, from a dictator terrorizing his country to organized crime demanding protection money. Among the questions addressed are the conditions which make conflict severe (for example, is class conflict worse than ethnic conflict?), whether voluntary agreements can avoid future conflict, how the outcome of one war will affect the incentives of countries to wage war in the future, how dictators hold power, and why revolutions appear. The book provides an overview of existing literature, applies the theory of conflict to new situations, and gives foundations for future work. It should interest both researchers and students studying political economy, public choice, international relations, and comparative politics

AbstractA principal aware that an agent exerts little effort will nevertheless fund the agent, because the principal values the output the agent produces. The agent in turn decides how hard to work by anticipating how his behavior affects the budget the principal will give him. Under some conditions, the principal gives the agent large budgets anticipating that the agent will not work hard. The corrupt environment aggravates the problem. An agent who can set the budget ameliorates the problem, though incompletely.

AbstractSome agents are more accurate than others in estimating the best policy. The more accurately an agent estimates a policy's effects, the more he will resist biases, such as bribes from a special interest. Thus, a special interest needs to pay a larger bribe to an accurate agent than to an inaccurate agent. The accurate agent who is biased will then more likely cause harm than does an inaccurate agent who favors the special interest. Therefore, the principal may gain more from controlling biases of an accurate agent than of an inaccurate one. Thus, high ability of public officials may be associated with little corruption.

An agent competing for resources from a principal may benefit from having the principal believe that the agent shares his preferences, whereas the principal may prefer that agents reveal their types, inducing a separating equilibrium. Such incentives are explored in a model with a principal who sets a budget in two separate periods, and two different agents allocate that budget among services. In the second period, the principal allocates a larger budget to the agent that he believes is more likely to share his preferences. In the first period, each agent may behave strategically, spending more on the service the principal prefers, thereby hiding the agent's type; this benefits the principal in the current period, but hurts him in the future because he does not know which agent would spend in the way he prefers. The principal may induce separation by giving the agents a large budget in the initial period, or by hiding his preferences from them.

This paper models a legislature in which the same agenda setter serves for two periods, showing how he can exploit a legislature (completely) in the first period by promising future benefits to legislators who support him. In equilibrium, a large majority of legislators vote for the first-period proposal because they thereby maintain the chance of belonging to the minimum winning coalition in the future. Legislators may therefore approve policies by large majorities, or even unanimously, that benefit few, or even none, of them. The results are robust. But institutional arrangements (such as entitlements) can reduce the agenda setter's power by reducing his discretion to reward and punish legislators, and rules (such as sequential voting) can increase a legislator's ability to resist exploitation.

This paper models a legislature in which the same agenda setter serves for two periods, showing how he can exploit a legislature (completely) in the first period by promising future benefits to legislators who support him. In equilibrium, a large majority of legislators vote for the first-period proposal because they thereby maintain the chance of belonging to the minimum winning coalition in the future. Legislators may therefore approve policies by large majorities, or even unanimously, that benefit few, or even none, of them. The results are robust; but institutional arrangements (such as entitlements) can reduce the agenda setter's power by reducing his discretion to reward and punish legislators, and rules (such as sequential voting) can increase a legislator's ability to resist exploitation.

Many mechanisms (such as auctions) efficiently allocate an asset to the firm which values it most highly. But sometimes the asset's owner may benefit from the transfer only if the asset is not too valuable to potential buyers. In this setting, we examine the efficiency of mechanisms when the potential buyers have private information about the asset's value. We show that rent seeking, and lobbying, rather than merely wasting resources, can lead to allocations which are close to efficient. Adapted from the source document.