Reason Divorced from Reality: Thomas Schelling and Strategic Bargaining

2006 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Ned Lebow
Keyword(s):  
Strategic Bargaining ◽  
Thomas Schelling

Thomas Schelling, Robert Aumann and Interactive Decision Theory (2005 Nobel Prize in Economics)

2006 ◽  
pp. 4-21
Author(s):  
A. Belyanin
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Nobel Prize ◽  
Rational Behavior ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
The Game Theory ◽  
Applied Industrial Organization ◽  
Nobel Prize Laureates ◽  
Thomas Schelling ◽  
Human Rationality

The paper describes the contributions of T. Schelling and R. J. Aumann, the Nobel Prize laureates of 2005 in economics, to modern economics and social sciences. Their key contributions were in the field of the game theory - a major tool to study human interactions and rational behavior in a wide variety of contexts, from applied industrial organization to labor economics, public policy, international relations and political science. Works by Aumann and Schelling were pathbreaking in this respect, and have paved the way to many modern developments that enhance our understanding of human rationality.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas I. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Moral Reason ◽  
Strategic Bargaining ◽  
Canadian Army ◽  
Actual Conflict

Montaigne offers what is perhaps the first historical instance of the now-ubiquitous phrase “public reason.” Whereas contemporary use of this phrase refers to activities of moral reason-giving, Montaigne uses it to refer to the health of public institutions, conventions, and activities that allow parties in potential and actual conflict to negotiate civil peace and other public goods, whether through moral reasoning, strategic bargaining, or other forms of interaction. This chapter engages with two recent instances of Montaignian public reason in action: the local negotiation of “civil alliance” between Jews and Arabs in the lands of the Palestinian Mandate in 1947–1948 and the negotiation of conflict resolution during an armed standoff between the Canadian army and Mohawk warriors outside Montréal, Quebec in the summer of 1990.

Colonial Education, Political Elites, and Regional Political Inequality in Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 001041402199717
Author(s):  
Joan Ricart-Huguet
Keyword(s):  
Political Elites ◽  
Colonial Education ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Political Inequality ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Strategic Bargaining ◽  
Recruitment Practices ◽  
Colonial Legacies ◽  
Home Region

Political elites tend to favor their home region when distributing resources. But what explains how political power is distributed across a country’s regions to begin with? Explanations of cabinet formation focus on short-term strategic bargaining and some emphasize that ministries are allocated equitably to minimize conflict. Using new data on the cabinet members (1960–2010) of 16 former British and French African colonies, I find that some regions have been systematically much more represented than others. Combining novel historical and geospatial records, I show that this regional political inequality derives not from colonial-era development in general but from colonial-era education in particular. I argue that post-colonial ministers are partly a byproduct of civil service recruitment practices among European administrators that focused on levels of literacy. Regional political inequality is an understudied pathway through which colonial legacies impact distributive politics and unequal development in Africa today. JEL: F54, I26, N37, N47

SOCIAL NORMS OF COORDINATION AND COOPERATION

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerry Mackie
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Social Norm ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Social Approval ◽  
Social Convention ◽  
Social Conventions ◽  
Sharp Distinction ◽  
Relevant Group ◽  
Scholarly Discourse ◽  
Thomas Schelling

Abstract:The scholarly discourse on social norms in the tradition of Thomas Schelling (1960) often makes a sharp distinction between social norms and social conventions. In attempting to apply that distinction to actual practices and to teach it to practitioners and students I encountered frequent difficulties and confusions, and finally concluded that it is untenable. I recommend a return to some version of Ullman-Margalit’s (1977) distinction between social norms of cooperation and social norms of coordination. Social norms, I say, are distinguished by beliefs in a relevant group that the rule is typical among them and approved of among them. I describe four ways that social norms of coordination, including conventions of social meaning, are influenced by social approval and disapproval. I contend that the effort by Southwood and Eriksson (2011) to show that social conventions and social norms are essentially different breaks down because their conception of social norms is overly moralized. I present a more social conception of social norms that does without the regnant distinction between “social norm” and “social convention” and instead allows for social norms of cooperation, social norms of coordination, and other kinds of social norms.

The Scientific Strategists Follow the Economists to an Intellectual Dead End

2019 ◽  
pp. 145-175
Author(s):  
Michael C. Desch
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
National Security ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
Dead End ◽  
Road Maps ◽  
Policy Problems ◽  
Thomas Schelling ◽  
Academic Social Science

This chapter assesses whether academic social science had any influence on nuclear strategy. Social science did have important effects on strategy. At times this was direct. More often it was indirect, working not through the formulation of doctrine or the drafting of operational plans, but rather by providing the intellectual frameworks and mental road maps that shaped senior policymakers' and presidents' thinking about the utility of nuclear weapons during confrontations with other nuclear states. Academic strategists such as Thomas Schelling reputedly exercised such influence that the period between 1945 and 1961 is regarded as the “golden age” of academic national security studies. However, scientific strategists reached a dead end by privileging internal disciplinary concerns like logical rigor and the use of sophisticated methods over addressing concrete policy problems.

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