Coalitions and Cliques in the School Choice Problem

The school choice mechanism design problem focuses on assignment mechanisms matching students to public schools in a given school district. The well-known Gale Shapley Student Optimal Stable Matching Mechanism (SOSM) is the most efficient stable mechanism proposed so far as a solution to this problem. However its inefficiency is well-documented, and recently the Efficiency Adjusted Deferred Acceptance Mechanism (EADAM) was proposed as a remedy for this weakness. In this note we describe two related adjustments to SOSM with the intention to address the same inefficiency issue. In one we create possibly artificial coalitions among students where some students modify their preference profiles in order to improve the outcome for some other students. Our second approach involves trading cliques among students where those involved improve their assignments by waiving some of their priorities. The coalition method yields the EADAM outcome among other Pareto dominations of the SOSM outcome, while the clique method yields all possible Pareto optimal Pareto dominations of SOSM. The clique method furthermore incorporates a natural solution to the problem of breaking possible ties within preference and priority profiles. We discuss the practical implications and limitations of our approach in the final section of the article

Information-Sharing and Privacy in Social Networks

We present a new model for reasoning about the way information is shared among friends in a social network, and the resulting ways in which it spreads. Our model formalizes the intuition that revealing personal information in social settings involves a trade-off between the benefits of sharing information with friends, and the risks that additional gossiping will propagate it to people with whom one is not on friendly terms. We study the behavior of rational agents in such a situation, and we characterize the existence and computability of stable information-sharing networks, in which agents do not have an incentive to change the partners with whom they share information. We analyze the implications of these stable networks for social welfare, and the resulting fragmentation of the social network

Informational Warfare

Recent empirical and theoretical work suggests that reputation was an important mediator of access to resources in ancestral human environments. Reputations were built and maintained by the collection, analysis, and dissemination of information about the actions and capabilities of group members-that is, by gossiping. Strategic gossiping would have been an excellent strategy for manipulating reputations and thereby competing effectively for resources and for cooperative relationships with group members who could best provide such resources. Coalitions (cliques) may have increased members' abilities to manipulate reputations by gossiping. Because, over evolutionary time, women may have experienced more within-group competition than men, and because female reputations may have been more vulnerable than male reputations to gossip, gossiping may have been a more important strategy for women than men. Consequently, women may have evolved specializations for gossiping alone and in coalitions. We develop and partially test this theory

Mapping the ideological networks of American climate politics

How do we understand national climate change politics in the United States? Using a methodological innovation in network analysis, this paper analyzes discussions about the issue within the US Congress. Through this analysis, the ideological relationships among speakers providing Congressional testimony on the issue of climate change are mapped. For the first time, issue stances of actors are systematically aggregated in order to measure coalitions and consensus among political actors in American climate politics in a relational way. Our findings show how consensus formed around the economic implications of regulating greenhouse gases and the policy instrument that should do the regulating. The paper is separated into three sections. First, we review the ways scholars have looked at climate change policymaking in the United States, paying particular attention to those who have looked at the issue within the US Congress. Next, we present analysis of statements made during Congressional hearings on climate change over a four-year period. Our analysis demonstrates how a polarized ideological actor space in the 109th Congress transforms into a more consensual actor landscape in the 110th Congress, which is significantly less guided by partisan differences. This paper concludes by discussing how these findings help us understand shifting positions within American climate politics and the implications of these findings

A Balanced Theory of Sourcing, Collaboration and Networks

In a synthesis of recent advances, this article gives a fresh, balanced theory of inter-organizational relations. It integrates competence and governance perspectives. It considers the choice between mergers/acquisitions and alliances. It offers a toolbox of instruments to govern relational risk, and the contingencies for their selection. Relationships can last too long. Therefore, the article also looks at how to end relationships. Beyond dyads of collaborating firms, it includes effects of network structure and position.corporate governance;inter-organizational relations;organizational behavior;inter-firm alliances;collaboration

Building cliques and alliances as practices to 'make things happen' in complex networks

The Roma population has become a policy issue highly debated in the European Union (EU). The EU acknowledges that this ethnic minority faces extreme poverty and complex social and economic problems. 52% of the Roma population live in extreme poverty, 75% in poverty (Soros Foundation, 2007, p. 8), with a life expectancy at birth of about ten years less than the majority population. As a result, Romania has received a great deal of policy attention and EU funding, being eligible for 19.7 billion Euros from the EU for 2007-2013. Yet progress is slow; it is debated whether Romania's government and companies were capable to use these funds (EurActiv.ro, 2012). Analysing three case studies, this research looks at policy implementation in relation to the role of Roma networks in different geographical regions of Romania. It gives insights about how to get things done in complex settings and it explains responses to the Roma problem as a „wicked‟ policy issue. This longitudinal research was conducted between 2008 and 2011, comprising 86 semi-structured interviews, 15 observations, and documentary sources and using a purposive sample focused on institutions responsible for implementing social policies for Roma: Public Health Departments, School Inspectorates, City Halls, Prefectures, and NGOs. Respondents included: governmental workers, academics, Roma school mediators, Roma health mediators, Roma experts, Roma Councillors, NGOs workers, and Roma service users. By triangulating the data collected with various methods and applied to various categories of respondents, a comprehensive and precise representation of Roma network practices was created. The provisions of the 2001 „Governmental Strategy to Improve the Situation of the Roma Population‟ facilitated forming a Roma network by introducing special jobs in local and central administration. In different counties, resources, people, their skills, and practices varied. As opposed to the communist period, a new Roma elite emerged: social entrepreneurs set the pace of change by creating either closed cliques or open alliances and by using more or less transparent practices. This research deploys the concept of social/institutional entrepreneurs to analyse how key actors influence clique and alliance formation and functioning. Significantly, by contrasting three case studies, it shows that both closed cliques and open alliances help to achieve public policy network objectives, but that closed cliques can also lead to failure to improve the health and education of Roma people in a certain region

Untangling Neoliberalism’s Gordian Knot: Cancer Prevention and Control Services for Rural Appalachian Populations

In eastern Kentucky, as in much of central Appalachia, current local storylines narrate the frictions and contradictions involved in the structural transition from a post-WWII Fordist industrial economy and a Keynesian welfare state to a Post-Fordist service economy and Neoliberal hollow state, starving for energy to sustain consumer indulgence (Jessop, 1993; Harvey, 2003; 2005). Neoliberalism is the ideological force redefining the “societal infrastructure of language” that legitimates this transition, in part by redefining the key terms of democracy and citizenship, as well as valorizing the market, the individual, and technocratic innovation (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999; Harvey, 2005). This project develops a perspective that understands cancer prevention and control in Appalachiaas part of the structural transition that is realigning community social ties in relation to ideological forces deployed as “commonsense” storylines that “lubricate” frictions that complicates the transition

Social Collective Decision Making among Adolescents:A Review and a Revamp

This article revamps the work of Ward and Reingen (1990) to examine adolescent normative behavior in a social collective decision-making group. This is of particular importance as it will enhance an understanding of the youth market both through the social context employed here as well as the social interaction that occurs when adolescent decisions are made. Employing a diachronic qualitative methodology, this research explores collective decisions made by adolescents on a high school prom organizing committee and reveals influencing strategies (e.g., coalition formation, bargaining) as well as approaches to managing conflict and conflict resolution. A model is proposed, which examines the role of both intra- and intercoalition formation and subsequent influence on decision making. Identification of conflict resolution strategies (e.g., yielding, dominating, and disassociation), employed at different stages of preparation for this event, are recognized as having both theoretical and practical marketing managerial implications