Institutional theory and legislatures

Institutionalism has become one of the dominant strands of theory within contemporary political science. Beginning with the challenge to behavioral and rational choice theory issued by March and Olsen, institutional analysis has developed into an important alternative to more individualistic approaches to theory and analysis. This body of theory has developed in a number of ways, and perhaps the most commonly applied version in political science is historical institutionalism that stresses the importance of path dependency in shaping institutional behaviour. The fundamental question addressed in this book is whether institutionalism is useful for the various sub-disciplines within political science to which it has been applied, and to what extent the assumptions inherent to institutional analysis can be useful for understanding the range of behavior of individuals and structures in the public sector. The volume will also examine the relative utility of different forms of institutionalism within the various sub-disciplines. The book consists of a set of strong essays by noted international scholars from a range of sub-disciplines within the field of political science, each analyzing their area of research from an institutionalist perspective and assessing what contributions this form of theorizing has made, and can make, to that research. The result is a balanced and nuanced account of the role of institutions in contemporary political science, and a set of suggestions for the further development of institutional theory

Bir agregasyon yöntemi olarak toplumsal kimlik belirleme

60 pagesToplumsal Kimlik Fonksiyonu (TKF), her bireyin belirli bir kimliğe ait olup olmadığıhakkındaki kişisel görüşlerini toplumsal bir görüşe dönüştüren bir kuraldır. Kazanankoalisyonlar cinsinden ifade edilebilen TKF'ler "temel" olarak nitelendirilmiştir. TemelTKF'ler bağımsızlık (independence) aksiyomu ile karakterize edilebilirler. Daha sonra yeniaksiyomların eklenmesinin kazanan koalisyonların yapıları üzerine etkisi incelenmiştir. Aynızamanda "sade" TKF'ler grubu bağımsızlık, monotonluk ve kendiliğinden ikilik (self-duality)axiomlarıyla karakterize edilmiştir. Ayrıca, oy verenler veya oy verilenler olarak bireylerineşit muamele görmelerini temin eden şartların eklenmesinin etkileri incelenmiştir.Liberalizmin sade TKF'ler içerisinde toplumsal kimlik belirleme bağlamında çok doğal olanaksiyonları sağlayan tek kural olduğu gösterilmiştir.Anahtar Kelimeler: Toplumsal kimlik fonksiyonu, Kazanan koalisyonlar,Liberalizm.Collective Identity Function (CIF) is a rule which aggregates personal opinions onwhether an individual belongs to a certain identity into a social decision. A CIF is qualified as"elementary" whenever it can be expressed in terms of winning coalitions. Elementary CIFscan be characterized with independence axiom. We then investigate the effect of imposingnew axioms on the structure of winning coalitions. We further characterize the class of simpleCIFs in terms of three axioms, namely independence, monotonicity and self-duality. We alsoexplore the effect of imposing conditions that ensure the equal treatment of individuals asvoters or as outcomes. We show that liberalism arises as the unique simple CIF that satisfiesaxioms which are very natural in the collective identity determination context.Keywords: Collective identity function, Winnign coalitions, Liberalism

Critical Legal Theory and The Politics of Pragmatism

In this century mainstream legal scholarship in the United States has been subjected to various crises of confidence over the nature of the adjudication process. One of the key features of more traditional legal scholarship has been a belief in legal texts such as the constitution, statutes and precedents which are said to possess discrete and objective meaning capable of being discovered by objective detached observers. This belief in the authority of the text has been most clearly expressed in American constitutional law scholarship which has been dominated until recently by the quest to reveal the public moral values that are said to inhere in the body of the constitutional document itself. With the insights of the Legal Realists into the subjective preferences of legal actors, the foundations of this belief were severely shaken. Much of the last fifty years has been spent trying to shore up the belief in the objective meaning of social norms derived from legal texts

Rationality Concepts in Environmental Valuation

Survey based valuation techniques like the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) rely particularly on the premise of respondents’ rationality when answering willingness to pay (WTP) questions. Results of CVM surveys have repeatedly put this fundamental assumption into question. This study adopts a more realistic view of rationality accounting for respondents’ limited capacities to process information. Based on cognitive psychology a technique to detect and analyze the bounds of rationality inherent in WTP statements is developed. Using an empirical example, the influence of bounded rationality on the validity of CVM results is analyzed. It is shown that individual differences in information processing play a major role. From these results recommendations for future survey design are developed

Fairness Versus Welfare: Notes on the Pareto Principle, Preferences, and Distributive Justice

In Fairness versus Welfare, we advance the thesis that social policies should be assessed based entirely on their effects on individuals' well-being. This thesis implies that no independent weight should be accorded to notions of fairness (other than many purely distributive notions). We support our thesis in three ways: by demonstrating how notions of fairness perversely reduce welfare, indeed, sometimes everyone's well-being; by revealing numerous other deficiencies in the notions, including their lack of sound rationales; and by providing an account of notions of fairness that explains their intuitive appeal in a manner that reinforces the conclusion that they should not be treated as independent principles in policy assessment. In this essay, we discuss these three themes and comment on issues raised by Richard Craswell, Lewis Kornhauser, and Jeremy Waldron.

The value of precedent : appellate briefs and judicial opinions in the U.S. courts of appeals.

This study of appellate advocacy examines factors that affect judicial treatment of precedents identified in litigant briefs. Although we find some attorney and party characteristics influence whether a court addresses precedent cited by a party, legal resources are not as influential in determining whether the court adopts a party’s use of a precedent. At times, ideological congruence between the circuit panel and the litigant can increase the likelihood that the court’s opinion will use a precedent in the same way as presented by the litigants. There is also some support for the importance of attorney experience. Even when their clients ultimately win the case, attorneys with no experience before the circuit are less likely to see the court use litigant-cited precedents in a similar way to the party brief. Even when their clients lose, there is some support to show that attorneys with more experience are more likely to see the court’s opinion address the precedents the attorneys have raised positively. This suggests that attorney experience has some influence in shaping legal policy, regardless of whether the litigant wins or loses

Beyond State Intervention in the Family: For Baby Jane Doe

Newspapers and broadcasters gave major billing to the story. Headlines announced: The Life or Death Question of Baby Doe; and Baby Doe\u27s Parents Call U.S. Action Intimidating. The medical care decisions about this infant born with spina bifida, microcephaly, and other severe disabilities, not only attracted mass media attention, but also led to both state and federal court proceedings. Legislative hearings raised the issue of her care. Many commentators debated what should happen to this infant of Long Island parents. This article instead will ask: what was all the attention about?; why are cases like this so riveting?; and might the reasons for public fascination and anguish illuminate alternative legal responses

Contingent Valuation of Mining Land Reclamation in East Germany

Large parts of East German landscapes are formed by lignite mining activities. The mining pits destroy vast areas of the existing cultural landscapes. These areas have to be made re-accessible to society through extensive reclamation projects after mining has been finished. For an appraisal of the social benefits that need to be compared to the costs of these projects the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) is the method of choice. The CVM measures the willingness to pay of households for such a project. This paper reports the findings of a Con-tingent Valuation study assessing the social utility created by a reclamation project north of the city of Cottbus in Brandenburg, Germany. The goal of the study is threefold. Firstly, the affected population's aggregate willingness to pay for the planned reclamation project is cal-culated; it amounts to 2.7 mil. Euro per year. Secondly, the determinants of this willingness to pay are analyzed. Apart from the expected positive impact of income on willingness to pay we find that it is also influenced by people's recreational activities, their general attitudes to-wards public spending and by their concerns about the economic situation. Thirdly, the study explores methodological specifics of an application of the CVM to Germany, especially in East Germany, by focusing on the appropriate design of the willingness to pay question which is an important feature still controversially discussed in the literature.contingent valuation;

HEALTH LITERACY IN TREATMENT ASSIGNMENT AND MEDICATION ADHERENCE: APPLICATION TO STABLE ANGINA PECTORIS

Health literacy is a major determinant of health outcomes, spending, and hospital admissions. However, gaps in the literature remain on the relationship between health literacy and health behaviors. The objective of this dissertation was to assess the relationship between health literacy and key health behaviors for patients with stable angina pectoris. The dissertation had three aims: 1) evaluate the relationship between health literacy and treatment assignment: medication only, percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), or coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery; 2) assess patient and clinician behavior during treatment planning conversations; and 3) evaluate the relationship between health literacy and adherence to anti-anginal medications for stable angina. We used a 20 percent Medicare claims sample from 2007-2013 to evaluate the first and third aims. Health literacy was assessed using an area-based measure. Multinomial logistic regression was used to evaluate the relationship between health literacy and treatment assignment. Probit regression, inverse probability of treatment weighting, and two-stage residual inclusion were used to assess the relationship between health literacy and medication adherence. For the second aim, we used recorded patient-clinician encounters and questionnaire data from the PCI Choice Trial. In this data source, health literacy was assessed using a validated screening question. Patients living in low health literacy areas had significantly higher utilization of medication only (3.3 percentage points) and lower utilization of CABG (-3.0 percentage points) compared to patients in high health literacy areas. This finding may be related to health literacy being a predictor of worse access to care. Low literacy was associated with greater decisional conflict among patients and may be a barrier in communication. The clinician and the setting in which the conversation took place may also be important determinants of communication quality. Low health literacy may act as barrier to patient-clinician communication. Living in low health literacy areas was also associated with significantly lower medication adherence when using the quartile specification of health literacy (-2.8 percentage points), but not the dichotomous specification. There was also strong evidence for selection into treatment assignment. The small magnitude of these findings do not support the use of health literacy to inform interventions to improve medication adherence.Doctor of Philosoph