The Building and Breaking of Peace

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Molly M. Melin
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Culture ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Bargaining Process ◽  
Peace And Conflict ◽  
Government Capacity ◽  
And Shifts ◽  
Corporate Actions ◽  
The Cost

The Building and Breaking of Peace considers the role of corporate firms in building peaceful societies. Examining the corporate motives for peacebuilding and then the implications of these activities for preventing violence and conflict resolution creates a holistic picture of the peace and conflict process. The book examines variation in corporate engagement as a product of corporate culture and shifts in government capacity, as well as threats to the ability to conduct business. Corporations engage in peacebuilding when there is a gap in the state’s capacity to enforce laws creating the demand for engagement but when there is stability that enables firms to supply peacebuilding. The book then considers the implications of corporate engagement for preventing and ending violence. Building on the rational choice theory of civil war and drawing from business research, The Building and Breaking of Peace examines the role of corporate firms in building peaceful societies. While firms are uniquely situated in their ability to raise the cost of violence, an active private sector acts as an additional veto player in the bargaining process, making it significantly harder to reach an agreement. The findings suggest that corporations help to prevent violence but not resolve it. These arguments are tested on original cross-national data of peacebuilding efforts by firms in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa from 2000 to 2018 and in-depth case analyses of corporate actions and outcomes in Colombia, Northern Ireland, and Tunisia.

The Building and Breaking of Peace

2021 ◽  
pp. 81-104
Author(s):  
Molly M. Melin
Keyword(s):  
Private Sector ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Complete Picture ◽  
Private Firms ◽  
Bargaining Process ◽  
Veto Player ◽  
The Cost

This chapter explores the role businesses play in creating peaceful societies. It builds on the rational choice theory of civil war onset and termination and draws from business research to understand the role private firms play in preventing civil wars. Firms are uniquely situated in their ability to raise the cost of violence, and proactive firms can significantly increase a country’s peace years. At the same time, an active private sector can make it significantly harder to reach an agreement for states with active conflict, as they act as an additional veto player in the bargaining process. This chapter tests these arguments on original cross-national data. The findings emphasize the need for political scientists to examine further the role of the private sector in many of the topics they study and generate a more complete picture of conflict and its resolution.

Turnout

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Bendor ◽  
Daniel Diermeier ◽  
David A. Siegel ◽  
Michael M. Ting
Keyword(s):  
Population Size ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Comparative Statics ◽  
Electoral Participation ◽  
Basic Model ◽  
Empirically Supported ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Cost Of Voting

This chapter focuses on voter participation, perhaps the most well-known anomaly for rational choice theory. The problem goes like this: in large electorates, the chance that any single voter will be pivotal is very small. Consequently, the cost of voting will outweigh the expected gains from turning out and few citizens will vote. This prediction is not consistent with some of the most easily observed facts about elections. The chapter introduces a basic model of electoral participation that focuses on voters’ turnout decisions under fixed candidate platforms. Contrary to the “paradox of turnout” raised by game-theoretic models of turnout, the model consistently generates realistically high levels of turnout. It also produces comparative statics, including those for voting cost, population size, and faction size, that are intuitive and empirically supported.

Comparative Administrative Law and Economics

2020 ◽  
pp. 216-231
Author(s):  
Nuno Garoupa ◽  
Sofia Amaral-Garcia
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Law And Economics ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
Governance Indicators ◽  
Specialized Courts ◽  
Normative Dimension ◽  
State Liability

This chapter provides a rational choice theory to explain why features of administrative law vary across jurisdictions. It relates these varying features of administrative law to economic performance (as measured by macroeconomic variables or more specific variables such as rule of law, judicial effectiveness, governance indicators, or quality of legal institutions). The chapter also reveals a normative dimension related to the inevitable question of which arrangements or institutions produce better results. To that end, it reviews the current economic models of administrative adjudication. The chapter next takes a look at some more specific topics: specialized agencies, specialized courts, and state liability. Finally, it looks at the role of the interaction between administrative and constitutional law as well as rule-making and other types of executive policy-making.

Emotions

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Elster
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Science Inquiry ◽  
Information Gathering ◽  
Belief Formation ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Actor Model ◽  
Rational Actor ◽  
The Impact

This article explores the role of emotions in the explanation of behavior. It first provides an overview of complexities associated with the term ‘emotion’ before discussing the link between emotions and rationality. In particular, it considers the rational choice theory of action and the notion of emotional choice, along with the impact of emotion on substantive preferences, formal preferences, beliefs and belief formation, and information-gathering. The article argues that emotions governing action should not be deemed inaccessible to analytic social-science inquiry. Even if emotions trigger actions and reactions discontinuous with prior action streams, emotions do not make the rational-actor model fail. Emotions can determine belief and urgency-based emotions can determine outcomes.

scholarly journals The Link Between Economic Growth, Crime and Deterrence Measures in Nigeria

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 24-40
Author(s):  
Adenuga Fabian Adekoya ◽  
Nor Azam Abdul Razak
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Distributed Lag ◽  
Distributed Lag Model ◽  
Autoregressive Distributed Lag ◽  
Cost Of Crime ◽  
Lag Model ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Cost

Abstract The level of crime in Nigeria has become devastating and in order to put more sanity into the economy and the country at large, the Government has embarked on different deterrence measures in curbing crime. Thus, this study examined the interaction of deterrence measures with crime in order to see how economic growth was affected when they were used in curbing crime at different instances. That is, the interaction of deterrence measures with crime informed us how they have helped in lowering crime in Nigeria for a better economic growth to subsist. The deterrence measures considered in this work are in line with the rational choice theory being the cost of crime imposed on the society. Furthermore, this study considered data from 1975 to 2013 with the use of autoregressive distributed lag model. Moreover, the results showed that crime dependency on deterrence measures asymmetrically constituted means of lowering economic growth in the country. Hence, this study suggested that prosecution should be well funded and in order to curb crime and improve economic growth in Nigeria. That is, this would afford the country to reduce the congestion of prison inmates and thus, it would discourage long waiting trials.

The Decision to Vote or to Abstain

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Gidengil
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Model ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Civic Duty ◽  
Parsimonious Model

Why voters turn out on Election Day has eluded a straightforward explanation. Rational choice theorists have proposed a parsimonious model, but its logical implication is that hardly anyone would vote since their one vote is unlikely to determine the election outcome. Attempts to save the rational choice model incorporate factors like the expressive benefits of voting, yet these modifications seem to be at odds with core assumptions of rational choice theory. Still, some people do weigh the expected costs and benefits of voting and take account of the closeness of the election when deciding whether or not to vote. Many more, though, vote out of a sense of civic duty. In contrast to the calculus of voting model, the civic voluntarism model focuses on the role of resources, political engagement, and to a lesser extent, recruitment in encouraging people to vote. It pays particular attention to the sources of these factors and traces complex paths among them. There are many other theories of why people vote in elections. Intergenerational transmission and education play central roles in the civic voluntarism models. Studies that link official voting records with census data provide persuasive evidence of the influence of parental turnout. Education is one of the best individual-level predictors of voter turnout, but critics charge that it is simply a proxy for pre-adult experiences within the home. Studies using equally sophisticated designs that mimic the logic of controlled experiments have reached contradictory conclusions about the association between education and turnout. Some of the most innovative work on voter turnout is exploring the role of genetic influences and personality traits, both of which have an element of heritability. This work is in its infancy, but it is likely that many genes shape the predisposition to vote and that they interact in complex ways with environmental influences. Few clear patterns have emerged in the association between personality and turnout. Finally, scholars are beginning to recognize the importance of exploring the connection between health and turnout.

Complexity, Bounded Rationality and Heuristic Search

2002 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Bentley MacLeod
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Heuristic Search ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Heuristic Function ◽  
Heuristic Search Algorithms ◽  
Human Decision

Abstract This paper explores the use of heuristic search algorithms for modeling human decision making. It is shown that this algorithm is consistent with many observed behavioral regularities, and may help explain deviations from rational choice. The main insight is that the heuristic function can be viewed as formal implementation of one aspect of emotion as discussed in Descarte's Error by Antonio Damasio. Consistent with Damasio's observations, it is shown that the quality of decision making is very sensitive to the nature of the heuristic ("emotion"), and hence this may help us better understand the role of emotion in rational choice theory.

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