1,721,104 research outputs found
Group formation and competition: instrumental and expressive approaches
No full textWe construct models of group formation designed to capture some of the key features of political and social competition. The models draw on the ‘citizen candidate’ approach and allow competition to be modelled as either compromise - where all groups influence outcomes; or conflict - where one group wins the right to dictate. We also consider both instrumental and expressive approaches to understanding group formation, first separately and then in a setting which encompasses both approaches
Economizing on virtue
No full textOur central aim is to explore the ideas involved in the claim that certain institutional structures economize on virtue and, in particular, to explore the widely held idea that reliance on institutions that economize on virtue may undermine virtue itself. We explore these ideas both by discussing alternative conceptions of virtue and economizing, and by constructing a simple model of the relationship between a specific institutional structure that may be said to economize on virtue and the emergence of virtue."There exists in every human breast an inevitable state of tension between the aggressive and acquisitive instincts and the instincts of benevolence and self-sacrifice. It is for the preacher, lay or clerical, to inculcate the duty of subordinating the former to the latter. It is the humbler, and often invidious, role of the economist to help, so far as he can, in reducing the preacher's task to manageable dimensions. It is his function to emit a warning bark if he sees courses of action being advocated or pursued which will increase unnecessarily the inevitable tension between self-interest and public duty; and to wag his tail in approval of courses of action which will tend to keep the tension low and tolerable.... What does the economist economize? Tis love, tis love... that scarce resource, love—which we know, just as well as anybody else, to be the most precious thing in the world" (Robertson 1956: 148–54)
Analytic Conservatism
No full textWe propose an analytic account of dispositional conservatism that attempts to uncover a foundation of what is often taken to be an anti-foundationalist position. We identify a bias in favour of the status quo as a key component of the conservative disposition and address the question of the justification of such a conservative disposition, and the circumstances in which the widespread adoption of such a disposition might be normatively desirable. Our analysis builds on a structural link between the economist’s traditional emphasis on questions of feasibility and the conservative’s attachment to the status quo
Proportional representation with citizen candidates
No full textWe construct a simple model incorporating both citizen-candidates and proportional representation and investigate its properties in a basic case with a uniform distribution of citizen ideal points and pure policy motivations, and in further cases which allow of office rents and other distributions of preferences. The idea of citizen-candidates, developed by Osborne and Slivinski (1996), Besley and Coate (1997), endogenises the decision to stand as a candidate and allows explicit study of the number and type of candidates as an equilibrium phenomenon. The idea of proportional representation allows a more flexible relationship between the pattern of votes cast and the final policy outcome, and also provides a richer model of political representation. Our discussion points to the widespread possibility of equilibria involving non-median policy outcomes; provides insights into the relationship between proportional representation and the equilibrium number of candidates; and also provides an explicit account of the trade-off between candidate benefits distributed on a winner-take-all basis and those that are mediated through proportional representatio
Bicameralism and majoritarian equilibrium
No full textRecent papers have established that bicameralism can support a non-empty core in majority voting games in two dimensional policy spaces. We generalise this result to the n-dimensional case, and provide a discussion of multi-cameralism. Bicameralism generates a core of potentially stable equilibria by institutionalising opposition between mutually oriented median voters, this provides a clear link with the standard median voter model and with more traditional analyses of bicameralism.An earlier version of this paper (Brennan and Hamlin, 1990), written in ignorance of the work of Hammond and Miller (1987, 1990), benefited from comments at the Public Choice Society meetings, Tucson; the European Public Choice Society meetings, Meersburg; the Center for Study of Public Choice, and the Universities of Chicago and Oxford. Hamlin is grateful for the support of visiting fellowships at ANU and All Souls College, Oxford
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