Disputing through Agents: Cooperation and Conflict between Lawyers in Litigation

Do lawyers facilitate dispute resolution or do they instead exacerbate conflict and pose a barrier to the efficient resolution of disputes? A distinctive characteristic of our formal mechanisms of conflict resolution is that clients carry on their disputes through lawyers. Yet, at a time when the role of lawyers in dispute resolution has captured not only public but political attention, social scientists have remained largely uninterested in the influence of lawyers on the disputing process. This is not to say that academics have ignored the growth in civil litigation in the United States. Economists have developed an extensive literature that models one or another aspect of the litigation and settlement process. But the economic literature, with rare exceptions, shares a troublesome feature. Almost by convention, litigation is modeled as a two-person game between principals, thereby abstracting away the legal system's central institutional characteristic-litigation is carried out by agents

Influence of dimensional incentives on voters’ turnout in 2014 and 2015 gubernatorial elections in Southwestern, Nigeria

Incentives  in  exchange  for  votes  during  elections  have  become  a  culture  in  Nigeria.  Past  studies  emphasized  on  monetary incentives while no known studies have been carried out on the new dimension of incentives to influence  voters' turnout adopted in 2014 and 2015 gubernatorial elections in Nigeria. This paper attempts to uncover what is  behind  people’s  voting  behaviour  in  gubernatorial  elections  (2014  and  2015)  in  Southwestern,  Nigeria  using  questionnaire administered to 1266 respondents and 76 respondents were interviewed. Results showed that parties'  candidates distributed customized goods (69.3%), credit cards and branded goods collected in kangaroo ceremonies  and social media (58.2%) to entice voters. Financial aids were given to rural women prior and during elections by  traditional  institutions  and  security  agents.  The  paper  concludes  that  candidates  and  collaborators  who  used  any  forms of incentives to entice voters or influence the outcome of elections deserve prosecution.Key words: Incentives, Dimensional, Voters' turnout, Gubernatorial elections,  Southwester

The evolutionarily stable strategy, animal contests, parasitoids, pest control and sociality

The evolutionarily stable strategy, ESS, concept was first used in biology to understand sex ratio bias and, shortly afterwards, to explore the logic of contests over essential and indivisible resources. ESS models formed the basis of much subsequent research on animal behaviour and placed game-theoretic thinking firmly within the behavioural ecology approach. Among behavioural ecologists studying parasitoids, it was those asking questions about the evolution of sex ratios who first made extensive use of the game-theoretic approach. A later growth of interest in parasitoid host defence and fighting behaviour made use of these tractable study species to explore contests and their connections to further aspects of life-history evolution plus some pest control applications. Our aims are to (i) introduce the topic of contests, which are engaged in by a very wide array of animal taxa, and the importance, both historical and conceptual, of the game-theoretic approach to their study, and (ii) review recent studies of parasitoid contests, including those that have considered the context of social evolution and the performance of parasitoids as agents of biological control. We consider that game-theoretic models are eminently testable and applicable and will likely endure as valuable tools in studies of parasitoid biology.This article is part of the theme issue 'Half a century of evolutionary games: a synthesis of theory, application and future directions'.Peer reviewe

Game Theory as Another Philosophical Foundation of Political Marketing: Evidence from Nigeria's Electoral Process

A number of scholars in political marketing have noted that political marketing is a concept originating from a set of philosophical foundations. These foundations are marketing, political and stakeholder theories (Banes 1996, Lees-Marshment, 1999; Scammel, 2003; etc). But our present study captures ‘game theory’ as another critical foundation of political marketing practice. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling are used to clarify the relationship between game theory and political marketing. The research findings which is based on a survey of political marketers, suggest that game theory explains a significant proportion of the variance in the degree of political marketing programme implementation. The paper concludes with respect to the explanatory power of game theory in the context of political marketing strategy

The Local Impact Of The Koinon In Roman Coastal Paphlagonia

This dissertation studies the effects that a “koinon” in the Roman period could have on its constituent communities. The study traces the formation process of the koinon in Roman coastal Paphlagonia, called “the Koinon of the Cities in Pontus,” and its ability to affect local customs and norms through an assortment of epigraphic, literary, numismatic and archaeological sources. The results of the study include new readings of inscriptions, new proposals on the interpretation of the epigraphic record, and assessments on how they inform and change our opinion regarding the history and the regional significance of the coastal Paphlagonian koinon. This study finds that the Koinon of the Cities in Pontus in coastal Paphlagonia was a dynamic organisation whose membership and activities defined by the eparchic administrative boundary of the Augustan settlement and the juridical definition of the Pontic identity in the eparchic sense. The necessary process that forced the periodic selection of municipal peers to attain koinon leadership status not only created a socially distinct category of “koinon” elite but also elevated the koinon to extraordinary status based on consensus in the eparchia. The koinon, in turn, became a respected organisation and even a potentially useful political instrument for dictating honors and social standing, which could both prolong or accelerate individual and familial prominence at the eparchic or provincial level. As such, the coastal Paphlagonian koinon was a vital political instrument, with socio-political significance beyond the expression of loyalty to the imperial idea. It was an elite commission that determined local hierarchies and local standards based on collective consensus. The legitimacy of this elite commission emanated from the need to worship the emperor, but its power to influence or even control the behavior of individuals and cities originated from the socio-economic standing of the participating elites. In short, the founding of the koinon would have led to a redirection of local resources to the funding of koinon affairs and would have created regionally recognised norms derived from some of the established standards and behaviors among its constituent communities, while altering others

Current, October 04, 1990

https://irl.umsl.edu/current1990s/1023/thumbnail.jp

Mothers and Fathers of Invention: The Intellectual Founders of ADR

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio