Let’s Try Real Democracy

This chapter lays out a general theoretical case for democracy, specifically the kind of democracy that democratic theorists call “deliberative democracy,” which traces the legitimacy of laws and policies to the reasoned exchange of arguments among free and equal citizens. The chapter shows the benefits of distributing political decision-power in an inclusive and egalitarian manner, especially in the deliberative phase of the legislative process. The core idea is that many minds deliberating together are better than few when it comes to dealing with the uncertainty and complexity of the world and figuring out solutions that work for all within it.

Acceptability and Perceptions of Generic Drugs among Patients, Pharmacists, and Physicians

Background: Generic drugs are the painstaking solution to deal with out of pocket expenditure however, the impact has not yet been seen in India. Thus, to understand the facilitators and barriers, this study aimed to gather evidence on the perception of the acceptability of generic drugs among patients, pharmacists, and physicians. Methods: The key informant interviews (KII) were conducted during 2017-2018 in Gujarat, India. A total of 25 (9 patients, 8 pharmacists, 8 physicians) KIIs were included in the thematic analysis. Results: Most of the patients knew about cheaper drugs are available in the market, but they perceived that those meant for poor people. Pharmacists talked about the profit from branded drugs are higher than generics. Pharmacist and doctors expressed concern for the efficacy of generic drugs, as it requires more visits to hospitals. Patients usually report more side effects if using generic drugs, apart from that poor packaging and lack of trust on generic also remained an issue in terms of satisfaction. Pharmacist and patients are both expressed their reliance on doctors suggestion and prescription; however, doctors are really not in favour to prescribe generics. The ethical dilemma remained with the pharmacists in not suggesting generics as an alternative to the branded drugs. Conclusion: The study concludes that cost is the main perception of patients, pharmacists, and physicians, however; the decision power lies with the pharmacist and doctors, which is mainly not in favour to use or promote the generic drugs even if the cost is low because of efficacy and satisfaction issues.

Research on manufacturer encroachment with advertising and design of incentive advertising: A game-theoretic approach

This paper studies the advertising decision regarding a supply chain with manufacturer encroachment. It is assumed that the manufacturer and the retailer have different quantity decision power so as to explore how the first-mover advantage affect the advertising decision and the manufacturer encroachment. It is known that the manufacturer encroachment usually makes the retailer worse off. Our results show that (1) the retailer can benefit from encroachment when the manufacturer’s direct selling cost is high and the manufacturer does not have first-mover advantage of quantity decision; (2) the manufacturer can benefit from encroachment if his advertising effectiveness is high; (3) the encroachment may lead to a lose-lose result if the manufacturer has the first-mover advantage and his advertising effectiveness is not relative high; (4) the manufacturer may be worse off if his direct selling cost is intermediate no matter who has the first-mover advantage of quantity decision. Thus, the manufacturer should be more careful about the relationship between him and the retailer. Additionally, we consider two ways of advertising cooperation. Results shows that which type of cooperation is better depends on the relative advertising effectiveness. Furthermore, we propose an incentive cooperative advertising scheme which makes all players get higher profits.

Non-Decision Power and Political Opportunity: Exposing Structural Barriers to Mobilization in Louisiana’s Coastal Restoration Conflict

Louisiana’s Comprehensive Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast is the state of Louisiana’s ambitious response to its continuing land loss crisis. Coastal restoration enjoys universal approval as a political issue in the state; however, controversy exists over a specific project type that seeks to divert sediment from the Mississippi River into surrounding marsh. While the State argues that sediment diversions are critical for land building, widespread concerns persist that changes to the estuary will generate economic hardship for coastal communities. This study investigates the structural challenges that diversion opponents have faced in their effort to mount effective resistance to the State’s sediment diversion projects. The study uses Lukes’ radical perspective of power to explore the ways in which the institutional configuration in Louisiana’s coastal zone produces an insular bureaucratic coalition that limits political opportunity for excluded groups to affect the coastal planning process. This article argues that this coalition, and the State and the energy industry in particular, has been able to leverage non-decision power and ideology to inhibit mobilization against the diversion component of the coastal master plan.

Local Versus Global Decisions in Bayesian Automatic Adaptive Quadrature

The paper reports new significant enhancement of the robustness and effectiveness of the Bayesian automatic adaptive quadrature over macroscopic integration ranges. The implementation of a classical m-panel rule (CC-32, Clenshaw-Curtis quadrature of algebraic degree of precision m = 32) is thought again. It involves new global and local decisions blocks which, on the one side, provide sharp diagnostics redirecting the advancement to the solution and, on the other side, take advantage of the progress in the available hardware to accelerate and to increase the accuracy of the computations. Where the decision power of CC-32 is exhausted, identification and precise characterization of the features of the integrand profile which prevent quick convergence are obtained by means of three-point Simpson rules spanned at triplets of successive CC-32 knots. This local complementary investigation tool provides scale insensitive diagnostics concerning the occurrence of integrand irregularities and prevents the activation of inappropriate decision blocks which would result in fake outputs.

Exploring governance in a decentralized energy trading eco-system

Increasingly, large tech firms dominate eco-systems. From a societal perspective this is not always beneficial since these companies behave as value extractors; they charge an unreasonable high fee for their services and they can do so because they are monopolists. A possible solution to this substantial power concentration can be decentralized ecosystems, e.g., enabled by blockchain technology, in which decision power is distributed fairly. However, this comes also with the requirement that such eco-systems need a decentralized governance model. This paper explores if such a governance model can be represented by conceptual models, in particular, e3value. We answer this question by designing a decentralized eco-system in the field of electricity supply, which enables peer to peer energy trading, and checking if important governance decisions, motivated by a systematic literature review, can be represented.