Journal of Theoretical Politics最新文献

{"title":"The efficacy of cheap talk in collective action problems","authors":"Brenton Kenkel","doi":"10.1177/0951629819850625","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0951629819850625","url":null,"abstract":"Incomplete information exacerbates the problems inherent in collective action. Participants cannot efficiently coordinate their actions if they do not know each other’s preferences. I investigate when ordinary communication, or cheap talk, may resolve mutual uncertainty in collective action problems. I find that the efficacy of communication depends critically on the relationship between contributions and the value of the joint project. The incentive barriers to honesty are highest when every contribution increases the project’s value. Participants then have a strict incentive to say whatever would induce others to contribute the most, so cheap talk lacks credibility. By contrast, when contributions may be marginally worthless, such as when the project has no value unless contributions hit a certain threshold, communication may help participants avoid wasted effort. Using these findings, I identify which collective action problems in politics might benefit from communication and which require more expensive solutions to overcome uncertainty.","PeriodicalId":51606,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Theoretical Politics","volume":"31 1","pages":"370 - 402"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0951629819850625","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44675445","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A theory of policy sabotage","authors":"Alexander V. Hirsch, Jonathan P. Kastellec","doi":"10.1177/09516298221085974","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09516298221085974","url":null,"abstract":"We develop a theory of policymaking that examines when policy sabotage—the deliberate choice by an opposition party to interfere with the implementation of a policy—can be an effective electoral strategy, even if rational voters can observe that it is happening. In our model, a potential saboteur chooses whether to sabotage an incumbent’s policy by blocking its successful implementation. A voter then decides whether to retain the incumbent, who is of unknown ability, or to select a challenger. We find that the incentives for sabotage are broadly shaped by the underlying popularity of the incumbent—it is most attractive when an incumbent is somewhat unpopular. If so, sabotage may decrease the probability the incumbent is reelected, even though sabotage is observable to the voter. This is because while the saboteur knows that sabotage will improve the incumbent’s reputation, he fears that absent sabotage a policy success will improve that reputation even more.","PeriodicalId":51606,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Theoretical Politics","volume":"34 1","pages":"191 - 218"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42369984","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Competing signals in the judicial hierarchy","authors":"Joshua A Strayhorn","doi":"10.1177/0951629819850626","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0951629819850626","url":null,"abstract":"Political principals often face information deficits. This is especially true of the US judicial hierarchy; extant theories of ideological monitoring in this setting have therefore explored informational cues such as lower court ideology or dissent. Canonical models of this setting, however, have omitted litigants, implicity assuming they are not an important source of information. This paper develops a formal model that considers whether litigants can credibly signal information about noncompliance, and how litigants’ signals interact with the cues of ideology and dissent. The model shows that litigant signals can be highly informative about doctrinal compliance, sometimes even crowding out the need for other signals. By contrast, litigants face difficulty communicating information about case importance; dissent, however, can be highly informative on this dimension. Accordingly, some informational cues may only influence limited aspects of the high court’s case selection process.","PeriodicalId":51606,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Theoretical Politics","volume":"31 1","pages":"308 - 329"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0951629819850626","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45838072","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The stability of multi-level governments","authors":"Enriqueta Aragonès, C. Ponsati","doi":"10.1177/0951629820984852","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0951629820984852","url":null,"abstract":"This paper studies the stability of a multi-level government. We analyze an extensive form game played between two politicians leading two levels of government. We characterize the conditions that render such government structures stable. We also show that if leaders care about electoral rents and the preferences of the constituencies at different levels are misaligned, then the decentralized government structure may be unsustainable. This result is puzzling because, from a normative perspective, the optimality of decentralized decisions via a multi-level government structure is relevant precisely when different territorial constituencies exhibit preference heterogeneity.","PeriodicalId":51606,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Theoretical Politics","volume":"33 1","pages":"140 - 166"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0951629820984852","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44104418","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Editors’ Introduction to JTP issue 31.2","authors":"Torun Dewan, John W. Patty","doi":"10.1177/0951629819843372","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0951629819843372","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51606,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Theoretical Politics","volume":"31 1","pages":"129 - 131"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0951629819843372","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48228184","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A dynamic model of party membership and ideologies","authors":"Bilge Ozturk Goktuna","doi":"10.1177/0951629819833185","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0951629819833185","url":null,"abstract":"We analyze the one-dimensional electoral competition between two parties when the ideology of each party is endogenously determined. The parties are composed of two factions: the ‘opportunists’ and the ‘militants’. The ideology of each party is determined by the preferences of the median citizen supporting the party. Under the proportional system, where parties are represented proportionally to the share of their votes, we first study the short-term political equilibria. We then introduce a dynamic setup that endogenizes the composition of the parties, in order to analyze the stability of these equilibria. We make explicit the stability conditions for the two equilibria where all the opportunists belong to the same party and for the unique equilibrium where they are distributed between both parties. The conditions involve the rates of party switching and of ideological adjustment. This coupled adjustment process makes it possible for party competition to sustain proportional representation, fluctuation in party positioning, and some degree of policy divergence.","PeriodicalId":51606,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Theoretical Politics","volume":"31 1","pages":"209 - 243"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0951629819833185","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47940302","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A spatial valence model of political participation in China","authors":"Jason Y. Wu","doi":"10.1177/0951629819833190","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0951629819833190","url":null,"abstract":"In spatial models of political competition in democracies, citizens vote for the party or candidate that is the closest to their own ideological position, while in valence models, voters decide on the basis of non-policy factors, such as competence. What remains unclear, however, is whether citizens in authoritarian regimes use spatial or valence considerations to guide their decisions to participate in politics. This study uses data from the 2015 Chinese Urban Governance Survey to measure the ideology of Chinese citizens, and estimates an empirical stochastic model to explore how Chinese citizens use ideological distance and valence to determine how they want to participate in politics. The results show that valence issues, such as perceived government competence, play a larger role in political participation than ideology.","PeriodicalId":51606,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Theoretical Politics","volume":"31 1","pages":"244 - 259"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0951629819833190","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46344189","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Neurocognition and Subjective Experience Following Acute Doses of the Synthetic Cannabinoid JWH-018: Responders Versus Nonresponders.","authors":"Eef L Theunissen, Nadia R P W Hutten, Natasha L Mason, Stefan W Toennes, Kim P C Kuypers, Johannes G Ramaekers","doi":"10.1089/can.2018.0047","DOIUrl":"10.1089/can.2018.0047","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p><b>Introduction:</b> Synthetic cannabinoid mixtures have been easily accessible for years, leading to the belief that these products were natural and harmless, which contributed to their popularity. Nevertheless, there are many reports of users ending up in hospital due to severe side effects such as tachycardia, aggression, and psychosis. Controlled studies on the effects of synthetic cannabinoids on human performance are lacking. In the present study, we assessed the safety pharmacology of the synthetic cannabinoid JWH-018 after acute administration. <b>Methods:</b> Seventeen healthy cannabis-experienced participants took part in this placebo-controlled, crossover study. Participants inhaled the vapor of JWH-018 (doses ranged between 2 and 6.2 mg) and were subsequently monitored for 12 h, during which vital signs, cognitive performance, and subjective experience were measured. Subjective high scores showed that there is a large variability in the subjective experience of participants. Therefore, a mixed analysis of variance, with \"Responder\" (i.e., subjective high score >2) as a between-subjects factor and \"Drug\" as a within-subjects factor (placebo and JWH-018), was used. <b>Results:</b> Serum concentrations of JWH-018 were significantly higher in the responders. Overall, JWH-018 increased heart rate within the first hour and significantly impaired critical tracking and memory performance. Responders to JWH-018 performed more poorly in tests measuring reaction time and showed increased levels of confusion, amnesia, dissociation, derealization, and depersonalization and increased drug liking after JWH-018. <b>Conclusion:</b> JWH-018 administration produced large variability in drug concentrations and subjective experience. Fluctuations in drug delivery probably contributed to the variation in response. JWH-018's impairing effects on cognition and subjective measures were mainly demonstrated in participants who experienced a subjective intoxication of the drug. Lack of control over drug delivery may increase the risk of overdosing in synthetic cannabinoid users.</p>","PeriodicalId":51606,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Theoretical Politics","volume":"8 1","pages":"51-61"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2019-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6661919/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87761416","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Organizing evaluation: Assessing combat leadership quality","authors":"William A. Wagstaff","doi":"10.1177/0951629819833177","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0951629819833177","url":null,"abstract":"What determines military effectiveness? Previous literature has examined factors such as military doctrine, culture, and capabilities, as well as regime type and civil–military relations, but has largely ignored military leadership quality. Competent military leaders positively influence battle outcomes by ensuring proper implementation of battleplans and quick reaction to an increasingly dynamic battlefield. This paper formally models the relationship between high-ranking military commanders and their immediate subordinates to examine the commander’s ability to evaluate her personnel. I vary the ability of the subordinates to signal their commander to determine how different signaling structures influence what commanders may learn. This analysis reveals that commanders opt for less informative signals from subordinates as the military professionalizes, potentially impeding their ability to identify and remove incompetent subordinates. Leaving incompetent subordinates in command reduces the ability of the military to improve. Evidence from the US Army’s leadership decisions after the Battle of Kasserine Pass and Operation Avalanche illustrates these results.","PeriodicalId":51606,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Theoretical Politics","volume":"31 1","pages":"132 - 155"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0951629819833177","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46855124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"What is opposition good for?","authors":"B. Demirkaya","doi":"10.1177/0951629819833192","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0951629819833192","url":null,"abstract":"Governments in representative democracies may have incentives to pursue policies that do not align with voters’ preferences. When voters lack information about the policy bias of the government and the consequences of policy alternatives, they will have difficulty holding the government accountable. I propose a formal model that explores whether an opposition party can help solve this problem by providing information about policy alternatives. The model acknowledges that opposition parties may have incentives to mislead voters because of their own policy biases or election concerns. Despite this challenge, the model shows that the presence of an opposition party may induce a biased government to adjust its policies. For this disciplining equilibrium to work, the reputations of the opposition and the government should be close to each other, or the voter should believe that one policy alternative is much more likely to be good for her than another alternative. In addition, the government should be sufficiently concerned about winning the elections, and the opposition should be sufficiently concerned about policy. Under the same conditions, however, misleading information on the opposition may cause an unbiased government to implement policies that are detrimental to voter welfare.","PeriodicalId":51606,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Theoretical Politics","volume":"31 1","pages":"260 - 280"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0951629819833192","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48360616","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}