blame game politics in a coalition government abstract delays in the adoption of reforms is an important question in political economics this paper explores this issue in the context of a representative democracy where the government is a coalition and citizens observe neither the decision making process nor politicians preferences for a reform we show that a coalition member who favors a reform may nonetheless choose to veto its adoption thus delaying it until after the next election and let his coalition partners share the blame for the non adoption we refer to this strategy as blame game politics we then identify three reasons for a politician to play the blame game one is to make an issue salient in the next election a second reason is to avoid a split in his electorate which is accomplished by hiding his stance on an issue a third reason is to enhance bargaining power during the formation of the next government

evolutionary theorizing in economics modern economic analysis oriented toward understanding the workings of economies that make extensive use of markets came into existence with three guiding questions all central in adam smith s 1776 1937 the wealth of nations one question concerned order without any central authority guiding and commanding action how is economic activity coordinated the second question was the challenge of explaining the prevailing constellation of prices inputs and outputs what explains the price of labor and the rent of land the third question addressed the processes of economic progress or development smith and other early economists clearly were impressed by the inventiveness the energy and the growing productivity generated by the evolving market economy how to understand its dynamics the first two questions have defined continuing central concerns of the discipline of economics since they first were posed over two centuries ago when not posed in the context of an economy that is understood as in the process of developing they seem to pull the focus of theorizing toward equilibrium conditions the third question concerned with the processes driving economic progress pulls the theorizing toward an evolutionary orientation the question of economic development has waxed and waned in centrality to the discipline as has the importance of evolutionary theorizing during the first several decades of the twentieth century evolutionary thinking and language was widespread in economics but as one contrasts the economic

rational choice and turnout turning out to vote is the most common and important act of political participation in any democracy voting is also less well understood and explained empirically than other political acts engaged in regularly by citizens turnout however presents a special problem for rational choice theories of politics for it is taken to be the paradigmatic example of the problem of collective action in which although all may benefit from voting it is rarely in the individual s self interest to vote this paper begins by examining the problem of explaining turnout a basic form of rational choice models of turnout is developed basic in the sense that it is common to all such models this basic model is shown to be incomplete and the two most important models the calculus of voting and the minimax regret model are illustrated as alternative ways to complete this basic model along with mention of game theoretic models their strengths and weaknesses are then assessed the remainder of the paper argues that rational choice accounts of turnout are possible the first step is to argue that turnout is not an especially problematic version of the collective action problem because it is for many a low cost low expected benefit decision a strategic politicians account of turnout and campaigns is examined next a reinterpretation of the intrinsic benefits of voting is then considered and is used to examine the most important substantive problem in the turnout literature its decline these steps i argue make theories of ordinary political decisions at once both more political and more integrated into the politics of the larger system

closeness expenditures and turnout in the 1982 u s house elections students of elections have repeatedly found that the closeness of an election is modestly correlated with turnout this may be due to a direct response of instrumentally motivated voters but recent theoretical work casts doubt on the adequacy of this explanation another possibility is that elite actors respond to closeness with greater effort at mobilization we explore the latter possibility by using fec and state data on campaign expenditures in house senate and gubernatorial races our results indicate that closeness has an effect at both the mass and elite levels we also provide quantitative estimates of the effect of senate and gubernatorial expenditure on house turnout

a model of political equilibrium in a representative democracy abstract this paper studies political equilibrium in a two party representative democracy in which the political parties are policy motivated and voters trade off their policy preferences against their party identity it is shown that the parties will in general adopt differing policy positions in equilibrium and that under certain qualifications the winning policy will lie between the more popular party s preferred policy and a certain utilitarian optimum the winning policy will be closer to this utilitarian optimum the less biased the electorate is in terms of party identification

the downsian model of electoral participation formal theory and empirical analysis of the constituency size effect this paper applies a game theoretic model of participation under uncertainty to investigate the negative relationship between constituency size and voter turnout rates theconstituency size effect we find that this theoretical model accounts for almost all of the variation in turnout due to size in cross sectional data from school budget referenda

analyzing the turnout competition link with aggregate cross sectional data numerous papers by public choice oriented scholars and others have sought to test the hypothesis inspired by downs 1957 that ceteris paribus turnout should be higher when elections are close most look in cross sectional terms at variations in turnout at the constituency level for elections of a given type by and large the results have been disappointing see e g foster 1984 we are skeptical of these weak findings and argue that a complete portrait of the turnout competition link requires us to examine that link for at least three different types of turnout turnout among potential eligibles turnout among registrants and turnout for a given office relative to other offices such as top of the ticket and to take into account longitudinal changes in turnout for recent off year elections to the u s senate and also for off year elections to the u s house of representatives in states where there was no gubernatorial or senatorial contest on the ballot we find strong evidence for higher turnout among eligibles in close contests for these elections to the u s senate we also find evidence for an ecological effect that leads to turnout being maximized at values of competition other than 50 50 moreover when we look at turnout for office relative to top of the ticket voting in the california assembly and the u s senate in presidential years we again find some evidence for an ecological effect in which turnout is maximized at a value of republican vote share above 50 percent and find further strong evidence for a clear link between competition and turnout for office among those at the polls

dynamic parties and social turnout an agent based model1 the authors develop an agent based model of dynamic parties with social turnout built upon developments in different fields within social science this model yields significant turnout divergent platforms and numerous results consistent with the rational calculus of voting model and the empirical literature on social turnout in a simplified version of the model the authors show how a local imitation structure inherently yields dynamics that encourage positive turnout the model also generates new hypotheses about the importance of social networks and citizen party interactions

collective effects in italian and mexican footwear industrial clusters the focus of this article is on the analysis of the collective economic effects deriving from the intense set of backward forward labor horizontal and institutional linkages existing within clusters of enterprises among the economic effects two main categories are distinguished external economies which are the spontaneous by product of economic activities undertaken within the clusters and cooperation effects which are the results of explicit and deliberate cooperative behaviors of the economic actors

turnout in gubernatorial and senatorial primary and general elections in the south 1922 90 a rational choice model of the effects of short run and long run electoral competition on relative turnout using data on non presidential year elections for governor and u s senators in eight southern states over the period 1922 1990 we provide a rational choice inspired model of the factors that should be expected to affect the relative levels of turnout in primaries as compared to general elections both v o key and anthony downs have argued that voters will be more likely to participate in the elections in which they can most expect to be decisive v o key 1949 proposed that when general elections are usually lop sided because of one party dominance of a state s politics the primary of the dominant party of the state should have a higher turnout than the general election downs argued that turnout should be higher in competitive elections our modelling combines these ideas we use as our dependent variable the ratio of primary to general election turnout in each year we posit that this ratio will increase 1 the greater the degree of within party competition in the primary especially that within the dominant party of a state if there is one and 2 the weaker the degree of between party competition in the general election in addition to election specific effects we also posit long run effects such that the ratio for the offices of governor and u s senator will be affected not merely by the degrees of competition within and between parties specific to any given election but also by the long run trends in party competition this hypothesis leads us to expect that 3 in the south with the rise of the republican party the ratio of primary to general election turnout should decline over time all of our expectations about the links between turnout and competition are strongly supported we argue that rational choice models of turnout perform quite well when we view them in a comparative statics perspective rather than using them to make predictions about who will and who will not vote in any given election

voter participation and strategic uncertainty the paradox of not voting is examined in a model where voters have uncertainty about the preferences and costs of other voters in game theoretic models of voter participation under complete information equilibrium outcomes can have substantial turnout even when voting costs are relatively high in contrast when uncertainty about preferences and costs is present only voters with negligible or negative net voting costs participate when the electorate is large

residential mobility and voter turnout we examine the characteristics of a largely ignored low turnout group people who have recently moved we find that neither demographic nor attitudinal attributes explain their lower turnout instead the requirement that citizens must register anew after each change in residence constitutes the key stumbling block in the trip to the polls since nearly one third of the nation moves every two years moving has a large impact on national turnout rates we offer a proposal to reduce the effect of residential mobility on turnout and estimate that turnout would increase by nine percentage points if the impact of moving could be removed the partisan consequences of such a change would be marginal

trust and inter firm relations in developing and transition economies the role of trust in facilitating economic growth has been highlighted in previous contributions to this journal in order to take this debate forward this article argues 1 that more attention needs to be given to the relationship between sanctions and trust and 2 that it is worth distinguishing between the minimal trust for making markets effective and the extended trust required for deeper kinds of inter firm co operation to work the article goes on to ask why minimal trust is lacking and so hard to construct in the republics of the former soviet union it then examines how extended trust grows or can be made to grow in industrial supply chains and clusters in developing countries

behind the market stage where real societies exist part i the role of public and private order institutions this two part article is an attempt to clarify the social conditions upon which the viability and efficiency of the market system rest it strives to show that the embeddedness thesis that is an explanation based upon the existence of long run personal ties involving the use of reputation mechanisms among transactors cannot fully elucidate the question as to how the problem of trust is solved in market societies as explained in part i there are difficulties of both theoretical and empirical historical kinds and these explain why the market order needs to be sustained by private and public order institutions in part ii the role of generalised morality in backing or supplementing such institutions is discussed in the light of game theory and particular emphasis is put on the ability of moral norms to sustain honest behaviour by generating the right kind of preferences and establishing trust the vexed problem of the dynamics of norm emergence and erosion is then addressed with a view to showing

contrasting rational and psychological analyses of political choice we contrast the rational theory of choice in the form of expected utility theory with descriptive psychological analysis in the form of prospect theory using problems involving the choice between political candidates and public referendum issues the results showed that the assumptions underlying the classical theory of risky choice are systematically violated in the manner predicted by prospect theory in particular our respondents exhibited risk aversion in the domain of gains risk seeking in the domain of losses and a greater sensitivity to losses than to gains this is consistent with the advantage of the incumbent under normal conditions and the potential advantage of the challenger in bad times the results further show how a shift in the reference point could lead to reversals of preferences in the evaluation of political and economic options contrary to the assumption of invariance finally we contrast the normative and descriptive analyses of uncertainty in choice and address the rationality of voting

trust networks and norms the creation of social capital in agricultural economies in ghana this paper contributes to the continuing debate over the multifaceted concept of trust and its ability to provide a richer explanation of processes of economic activity using case studies of agricultural production marketing and financing systems in brong ahafo region of ghana the analysis documents the means by which trust is created among farmers traders and agricultural input suppliers the mechanisms include formal and informal networks of working relations customer friendships pre existing networks and intermediaries the study shows that trust is necessary for the development of a vibrant private sector based on microenterprises in conditions where actors cannot rely on formal legal institutions at present

spatial models of political competition under plurality rule a survey of some explanations of the number of candidates and the positions they take this paper surveys work that uses spatial models of political competition to explain the number of candidates and the positions that they take in plurality rule elections

follow the leader theory and evidence on political participation using state by state voting data for u s presidential elections the authors observe that voter turnout is a positive function of predicted closeness to explain the strategic component of political participation they develop a follow the leader model political leaders expend effort according to their chance of being pivotal which depends on the expected closeness of the race at both state and national levels and how voters respond to their effort structural estimation supports this model for example a 1 percent increase in the predicted closeness at the state level stimulates leaders efforts which increases turnout by 0 34 percent

voting competitions with interested politicians platforms do not converge to the preferences of the median voter we examine equilibrium voting strategies for elections with interested politicians facing uncertainty about voter preferences if politicians utilities are defined over the set of strategies that voters select instead of being dependent only on the probability of winning an election equilibrium strategies will diverge instead of converging to the median voter s preferences as long as politicians have different preferences we present conditions i for political compromise and ii for politicians with different utility functions to merge into parties with complete strategic agreement

networks trust and innovation in tanzania s manufacturing sector abstract the social dimensions of innovation are examined for a group of manufacturers in mwanza tanzania social networks of businesspeople in mwanza are found to support innovation in manufacturing firms trust in these relations is especially important as it improves the quality of information exchanges and encourages the development of strong intracommunity ties and weak intercommunity relations a typology of manufacturers demonstrates how different social strategies relate to innovation the findings suggest that openness to social relations enhances innovation but that weak formal institutions discourage manufacturers from extending their social relations beyond core networks

from ascribed to earned trust in exporting clusters abstract this paper is concerned with the role of trust in export manufacturing it asks how trust has developed in two industrial clusters which are located in developing countries and export most of their output to north america and europe the main conclusion is that trust was based initially on socio cultural ties between clustered firms and later on conscious investments in inter firm relationships