Legislative Bargaining and Coalition Formation

The finite horizon version of D. P. Baron and J. Ferejohn's [1989, Amer. Polit. Sci. Rev.83, 1181-1206] legislative bargaining model is investigated. With three or more periods, a continuum of divisions is supportable as subgame perfect equilib- ria. There exist equilibria where coalitions larger than a minimal winning coalition receive strictly positive shares. With sufficiently patient players and a sufficiently long horizon, any interior distribution is supportable as an equilibrium. In contrast, a generic uniqueness result applies when introducing heterogenous time preferences. The unique backwards induction equilibrium in the perturbed game is nonstationary, and neither the original (symmetric) nor the perturbed game provides guidance for equilibrium selection in the infinite game. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C73, C78, D72, D78, H49.     

Flexible Integration? Mandatory and Minimum Participation Rules

For a club such as the European Union, an important question is whether a subset of the members should be allowed to form “inner clubs” and enhance cooperation. Flexible cooperation allows members to participate if and only if they benefit, but it leads to free‐riding when externalities are positive. I show that flexible cooperation is better if the heterogeneity is large and the externality small, but that rigid cooperation is the political equilibrium too often. Both regimes, however, are extreme variants of a more general system combining mandatory and minimum participation rules. For each rule, I characterize the optimum and the equilibrium.     

Beyond third party role: Disputes and managerial intervention

This article reviews the research findings on managerial third party intervention and the factors that affect role choice. It explores the implications of research findings and advocates using a political approach to investigate the ways that managers enter into disputes, both directly and indirectly, and through such roles as conflict orchestrators. It calls for reexamining the assumptions that underlie this research and for focusing on the process of defining conflicts, uncovering coalitions and networks of relationships, and linking third party intervention to the ideology that underlies organizational disputes.     

倾角12°及以下斜巷快速施工技术研究与应用

五矿己四采区暗斜井锚网喷施工中,引进了钻车打眼加皮带排矸机械化快速施工作业线,优化施工,采用"掘支喷"平行作业,大大提高了施工速度。2010年5月至12月连续8个月取得了月进尺超百米的好成绩,其中最高月进尺153米,实现了大断面斜巷快速施工。     

The politics of environmental market instruments: Coalition building and knowledge filtering in the regulation of forest certificates trading in Brazil

Market instruments for environmental governance have a foundation in an economic theorythat claims to be universal and atemporal, but their materialization in practice always takes place in specific socioeconomic and political contexts. The Brazilian trade in forest certificates (CRA) is a new market instrument that allows farmers that have deforested illegally prior to 2008 to become compliant by acquiring certificates from other farmers that conserve a forest area beyond legal requirements. Even though the CRA market has been praised as an innovative environmental policy, it is still unclear whether it will be implemented even after more than two decades of political debate, congressional approval of legislation and substantial investments in new supporting systems. This research paper aims to analyze the materialization of this market by reconstructing how policy participants form advocacy coalitions (i.e. environmental protection, market viability and agricultural consolidation) to advance their interests. Our results show that advocacy coalitions filter (i.e. absorb, reject or transform) new ideas, experiences and knowledge in order to influence the regulations for forest certificate trading. In doing so, they often combine positions, form new alliances and merge with other advocacy coalitions in accordance with the interests of their constituents. These fluid allegiances within and between coalitions explain why market materialization remains ambiguous and unlikely to become operational in the near future.     

Neither Lausanne nor Cambridge: Pantaleoni and the missing boundary between economics and sociology

Abstract

By the turn of the twentieth century, Lausanne and Cambridge were the centres of diffusion of two rival versions of marginalism. This paper focuses on the position of Maffeo Pantaleoni, a leading figure of the late nineteenth century ‘renaissance’ of Italian political economy, with respect to the eminent representatives of the two schools: Pareto and Marshall. Pantaleoni's position is examined with reference to the two main bones of contention between Pareto and Marshall, namely general as opposed to partial equilibrium, and pure as opposed to mixed economics.     

Excluded coalitions and the distribution of power in parliaments

In this article, we introduce a new value for cooperative games. This value is based on the Shapley (1953) value and takes into account that players exclude coalitions with other players. One example of such exclusions are the coalition statements of parliamentary parties. A case study demonstrates the application of the new value for these situations.     

Academics as policy-makers: (not) researching tourism and events policy formation from the inside

Prompted by a period of five years as a non-executive director of a British regional tourist board, this paper examines the constraints faced by academics seeking to engage in critical policy research. It identifies three overlapping influences that serve to circumscribe critical comment. The first is that as universities become increasingly commercial in their orientation, often competing with consultants, a culture of collaboration can develop which encourages shared practices and perspectives. The need for teamwork, shared vision and ‘not letting the side down’ serves to limit or suppress some observations. The second is that universities often have a perceived common interest with city or regional policy-makers in promoting positive images of their locale. As a consequence, senior university managers can become part of informal coalitions of interest who may not welcome narratives that undermine prevailing official discourses. Academics, as workers, may feel inhibited from offering alternative perspectives. Finally, funded research requires the acceptance of certain frames of reference which are set, or accepted, by those commissioning the work. This inevitably limits the conceptual and methodological choices open to academics. The paper concludes by calling for a wider debate about the role of academics and their articulation with the policy-making community.