Ordinal Preference Games: An Analysis of Legislative Coalition Formation Without Transferable Utility

1983 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 750-763 ◽  
Author(s):  
David H. Koehler
Keyword(s):  
Coalition Formation ◽  
Winning Coalition ◽  
Cardinal Utility ◽  
Size Principle ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Ordinal Preferences ◽  
Ordinal Preference ◽  
Person Game ◽  
Voting Strategy

Two important findings from n-person game theory are that coalition formation is superadditive if and only if a game possesses an empty core, and Riker's size principle. Up to the present, both theorems have been proved and critiqued under the assumption of transferable cardinal utility.This analysis eliminates the cardinal utility assumption on the grounds that it is generally inconsistent with the conditions that characterize collective choice on political issues. Instead, a model of collective decision making is set forth in terms of ordinal preferences, and the two theorems are reconsidered. The superadditivity theorem survives intact, whereas the size principle is weakened. Circumstances are identified in which there is no incentive to reduce an oversized winning coalition; however, under no condition is there an incentive to increase the size of a winning coalition. A number of coalition-size hypotheses are tested using roll-call data from the U.S. Senate. The results raise new questions about the role of coalition formation in legislative voting strategy.

A Research Note on the Size of Winning Coalitions

1971 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 741-745 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Lyle Butterworth
Keyword(s):  
Coalition Formation ◽  
Theoretical Foundation ◽  
Winning Coalition ◽  
Research Note ◽  
Size Principle ◽  
Zero Sum Games ◽  
Upper Limit ◽  
Individual Player ◽  
Zero Sum ◽  
Rational Players

This paper is concerned with the problem of relating aggregate coalition payoffs to the winnings of an individual player, so that some theoretical foundation might be developed for dealing with problems of coalition formation. Professor William H. Riker was concerned with this problem in his Theory of Political Coalitions; in that book he developed a formulation holding that in several common political situations players would strive to form only minimum winning coalitions. Riker based that formulation on his derivation in game theory of “the size principle,” which held that in zero-sum games among rational players with perfect information, only minimum winning coalitions would occur. The first part of this research note shows that there is a difficulty in Riker's derivation of the “size principle,” presents counter-examples to that principle, and shows that it is unsound in general. The second part of this note develops the maximum number of positive gainers principle, which shows that in the kind of games being examined there is a maximum upper limit to the number of players who will positively gain; but this does not insure that the winning coalition will be minimal.

Inside the Enemy's Computer

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clement Guitton
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Technical Problem ◽  
Technical Information ◽  
Cyber Attack ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Private Companies ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Current Thinking ◽  
Standards Of Evidence

Attribution — tracing those responsible for a cyber attack — is of primary importance when classifying it as a criminal act, an act of war, or an act of terrorism. Three assumptions dominate current thinking: attribution is a technical problem; it is unsolvable; and it is unique. Approaching attribution as a problem forces us to consider it either as solved or unsolved. Yet attribution is far more nuanced, and is best approached as a process in constant flux, driven by judicial and political pressures. In the criminal context, courts must assess the guilt of criminals, mainly based on technical evidence. In the national security context, decision-makers must analyze unreliable and mainly non-technical information in order to identify an enemy of the state. Attribution in both contexts is political: in criminal cases, laws reflect society’s prevailing norms and powers; in national security cases, attribution reflects a state’s will to maintain, increase or assert its power. However, both processes differ on many levels. The constraints, which reflect common aspects of many other political issues, constitute the structure of the book: the need for judgment calls, the role of private companies, the standards of evidence, the role of time, and the plausible deniability of attacks.

scholarly journals Actors, Partisan Inclination, and Emotions: An Analysis of Government Shutdown News Stories Shared on Twitter

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512110088
Author(s):  
Colin Agur ◽  
Lanhuizi Gan
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Responses ◽  
The United States ◽  
Online Information ◽  
News Frames ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
News Stories ◽  
News Sharing ◽  
Government Shutdown

Scholars have recognized emotion as an increasingly important element in the reception and retransmission of online information. In the United States, because of existing differences in ideology, among both audiences and producers of news stories, political issues are prone to spark considerable emotional responses online. While much research has explored emotional responses during election campaigns, this study focuses on the role of online emotion in social media posts related to day-to-day governance in between election periods. Specifically, this study takes the 2018–2019 government shutdown as its subject of investigation. The data set shows the prominence of journalistic and political figures in leading the discussion of news stories, the nuance of emotions employed in the news frames, and the choice of pro-attitudinal news sharing.

scholarly journals The role of race, religion, and partisanship in misperceptions about COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 638-657
Author(s):  
James N. Druckman ◽  
Katherine Ognyanova ◽  
Matthew A. Baum ◽  
David Lazer ◽  
Roy H. Perlis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Media Exposure ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Usage ◽  
Targeted Interventions ◽  
Large Survey ◽  
Racial Ethnic

Concerns about misperceptions among the public are rampant. Yet, little work explores the correlates of misperceptions in varying contexts – that is, how do factors such as group affiliations, media exposure, and lived experiences correlate with the number of misperceptions people hold? We address these questions by investigating misperceptions about COVID-19, focusing on the role of racial/ethnic, religious, and partisan groups. Using a large survey, we find the number of correct beliefs held by individuals far dwarfs the number of misperceptions. When it comes to misperceptions, we find that minorities, those with high levels of religiosity, and those with strong partisan identities – across parties – hold a substantially greater number of misperceptions than those with contrasting group affiliations. Moreover, we show other variables (e.g., social media usage, number of COVID-19 cases in one’s county) do not have such strong relationships with misperceptions, and the group-level results do not reflect acquiescence to believing any information regardless of its truth value. Our results accentuate the importance of studying group-level misperceptions on other scientific and political issues and developing targeted interventions for these groups.

scholarly journals Bloody Women: How Female Authors Have Transformed the Scottish Contemporary Crime Fiction Genre

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-71
Author(s):  
Lorna Hill
Keyword(s):  
Social Issues ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Past ◽  
Female Authors ◽  
Crime Novel ◽  
Practice Based Research ◽  
Changing Attitudes

Abstract This study will explore the role of female authors in contemporary Scottish crime fiction. Over the past thirty years, women writers have overhauled the traditionally male dominated genre of crime fiction by writing about strong female characters who drive the plot and solve the crimes. Authors including Val McDermid, Denise Mina and Lin Anderson are just a few of the women who have challenged the expectation of gender and genre. By setting their novels in contemporary society they reflect a range of social and political issues through the lens of a female protagonist. By closely examining the female characters, both journalists, in Val McDermid’s Lindsay Gordon series and Denise Mina’s Paddy Meehan series, I wish to explore the issue of gender through these writers’ perspectives. This essay documents the influence of these writers on my own practice-based research which involves writing a crime novel set in a post referendum Scotland. I examine a progressive and contemporary Scottish society, where women hold many senior positions in public life, and investigate whether this has an effect on the outcome of crimes. Through this narrative, my main character will focus on the current and largely hidden crimes of human trafficking and domestic abuse. By doing this I examine the ways in which the modern crime novel has evolved to cross genre boundaries. In addition to focusing on a crime, the victims and witnesses, today’s crime novels are tackling social issues to reflect society’s changing attitudes and values.

Coalition Formation and Selectorate Theory: An Experiment

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-275
Author(s):  
Andrew W. Bausch
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Laboratory Experiment ◽  
Coalition Formation ◽  
Winning Coalition ◽  
Private Goods ◽  
Target Individual ◽  
Selectorate Theory ◽  
Over Time

This paper uses a laboratory experiment to examine how different rules for re-selecting the leader of a group affects how that leader builds a winning coalition. Leaders play an inter-group game and then distribute winnings from that game within their group before standing for re-selection. The results of the experiment show that leaders of groups with large winning coalition systems rely heavily on distributing winnings through public goods, while leaders of groups with small winning coalition systems are more likely to target specific citizens with private goods. Furthermore, the experiment shows that supporters of small coalition leaders benefit from that support in future rounds by receiving more private goods than citizens that did not support the leader. Meanwhile, citizens that support a large coalition leader do not benefit from this support in future rounds. Therefore, small coalition leaders target individual citizens to maintain a coalition over time in a way not possible in a group with a large winning coalition. Finally, in the experiment, small coalition leaders increased their payoffs over time, suggesting that once power has been consolidated, small coalition leaders narrow their coalition.

scholarly journals The Universal Factory

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 18-31
Author(s):  
Kevin Rogan
Keyword(s):  
Urban Design ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Data Networks ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Critical Data ◽  
The Third ◽  
Material Reality ◽  
Vast Network

Critical data studies have made great strides in bringing together data analysts and urban design, providing an extensible concept which is useful in visualizing the role of local and planetary data networks. But in the light of the experience of Sidewalk Labs, critical data studies need a further push. As smart cities, algorithmic urbanisms, and sensorial regimes inch closer and closer to reality, critical data studies remain woefully blind to economic and political issues. Data remains undertheorized for its economic content as a commodity, and the political ramifications of the data assemblages remain locked in a proto-political schema of good and bad uses of this vast network of data collection, analysis, research, and organization. This paper attempts to subject critical data studies to a rigorous critique by deepening its relationship to the history thus far of Sidewalk Labs’ project in Quayside, Toronto. It is broken into sections. The first section discusses the material reality of Kitchin and Lauriault’s (2014) data assemblages and data landscapes. The second section investigates data itself and what its ‘inherent’ value means in an economic sense. The third section looks at the way the understanding of data promoted by the data assemblage effects smart city design. The fourth section examines the role of the designer in shepherding this vision, and moreover the data assemblage, into existence.

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