Rights, Harms, and Duties: A Response to \u3ci\u3eJustice for Hedgehogs\u3c/i\u3e

The author responds to the three jurisprudential positions that Ronald Dworkin discusses in his book--albeit briefly--so as to integrate them into his hedgehoggian program. The first is that we should think of rights as political trumps, such that the individual liberty protected by the right, and hence the behavior protected by the right, trumps in importance and in effect, both in law and in popular imaginings, the various collective goals with which the right might be in conflict. Second, we should think about our collective life, and the principles that should guide it, through the lens of the rights of individuals understood capaciously. Rights may be positive or negative, legal, constitutional, political, institutional, or moral, and might have either libertarian and regressive or egalitarian and redistributive consequences. Regardless, we should think about our collective life through the lens of individual rights rather than through the lens of the moral duty of legislators, state actors, lawmakers, or, simply, sovereigns, to make good law in the interest of the governed: the duty of lawmakers to exercise their lawmaking power in morally responsible or virtuous ways. Rights of citizens, not the moral duties of lawmakers, should guide our thinking in both politics and law. Third, the political principles that should inform our law are those which require us collectively to respect the rights of individuals to decide for themselves on the content of a good life, and do not permit or require us to collectively make those decisions and impose them on individuals through law. To live well, we must each decide for ourselves what it is to live a good life. Government must protect the individual latitude we need to live well, and that includes refraining from dictating or legislating on the basis of any state-generated understanding of the content of the good life

Collective decision making by rational agents with differing preferences

Collective decisions can emerge from individual-level interactions between members of a group. These interactions are often seen as social feedback rules, whereby individuals copy the decisions they observe others making, creating a coherent group decision. The benefit of these behavioral rules to the individual agent can be understood as a transfer of information, whereby a focal individual learns about the world by gaining access to the information possessed by others. Previous studies have analyzed this exchange of information by assuming that all agents share common goals. While differences in information and differences in preferences have often been conflated, little is known about how differences between agents’ underlying preferences affect the use and efficacy of social information. In this paper, I develop a model of social information use by rational agents with differing preferences, and demonstrate that the resulting collective behavior is strongly dependent on the structure of preference sharing within the group, as well as the quality of information in the environment. In particular, I show that strong social responses are expected by individuals that are habituated to noisy, uncertain environments where private information about the world is relatively weak. Furthermore, by investigating heterogeneous group structures, I demonstrate a potential influence of cryptic minority subgroups that may illuminate the empirical link between personality and leadership

ForestSim model of impacts of smallholder dynamics: forested landscapes of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan

Many forested landscapes in the United States contain a large number of small private landowners (smallholders). The individual decisions of these smallholders can collectively have a large impact on the structure, composition, and connectivity of forests. While models have been developed to try to understand this large-scale collective impact, few models have incorporated extensive information from individual decision-making. Here we introduce an agent-based model, infused with sociological data from smallholders, overlaid on a GIS layer to represent individual smallholders, and used to simulate the impact of thousands of harvesting decisions. Our preliminary results suggest that certain smallholder characteristics (such as relative smallholder age and education level as well as whether a smallholder is resident or absentee) and information flow among owners can radically impact forests at the landscape scale. While still in its preliminary stages, this modeling approach is likely to demonstrate in detail the consequences of decision-making due to changing smallholder demographics or new policies and programs. This approach can help estimate the effectiveness of programs based on landscape-scale programmatic goals and the impact of new policy initiatives

Factors affecting strategic marketing decisions in agriculture : a study of fruit farmers in Thailand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Agribusiness at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

The transformation of agri-food marketing systems worldwide has implications for small-scale fruit farmers in Thailand. Effective strategic marketing decisions (SMDs) of farmers are essential elements in response to market transformation. Based on the theory of strategic decision making, SMDs are made in regards to the availability of internal resources, the dynamics of the external environment and the goals that need to be accomplished. Previous literature mostly explains the SMDs of individual farmers in developed countries. Research work in developing countries generally concentrates on SMDs, in order to link small-scale farmers to markets. Characterised by small-scale operations farmers in Thailand were not considered as being leading actors in agri-food value chains. As a result, available research on SMDs, which reflect farmers' strategic capability, was scarce within a Thailand context. This study employed a quantitative survey-based approach to determine key factors that affect the SMDs of fruit farmers in Chanthaburi province of Thailand. Qualitative data was also collected in a pilot study, in order to develop the conceptual model and the foundation of the questionnaire. The survey data was collected from 216 fruit farmers, through the use of face-to-face interviews with structured questionnaires. Descriptive statistics and chi-square tests were employed to describe and compare the fruit farmers who used traditional marketing channels (TM users) with those who used high-value marketing channels (HM users). Furthermore, factor analysis was employed to identify factors included in the conceptual model, and logistic regression was employed to test the hypotheses. This study found that SMDs towards high-value market participation were positively related to business size, experience in fruit farming, perceived importance of market requirements, and farmers' goals in regards to effectiveness. The results suggest that small business sized farms need to improve their productivity and increase their business capacity, via collective actions that would allow them to benefit from collective learning with experienced farmers, which could lead to updated market information. It was also noted that some farmers aimed to achieve their production goals by focusing on efficiency, while others desired a simple lifestyle by focusing their lives on self-sufficiency. This implied that different types of farmers needed to be encouraged in different ways, in order to develop their strategic capabilities as important stakeholders in the fruit industry of Thailand

Managing Water Scarcity at a River Basin Scale with Economic Instruments

This paper presents a conceptual framework for both assessing the role of economic instruments, and reshaping them in order to enhance their contribution to the goals of managing water scarcity. Water management problems stem from the mismatch between a multitude of individual decisions, on the one hand, and the current and projected status of water resources on the other. Economics can provide valuable incentives that drive individual decisions, and can design efficient instruments to address water governance problems in a context of conflicting interests and relevant transaction costs. Yet, instruments such as water pricing or trading are mostly based on general principles of welfare economics that are not readily applicable to assets as complex as water. A flaw in welfare economic approaches lies in the presumption that economic instruments may be good or bad on their own (e.g., finding the “right” price). This vision changes radically when we focus on the problem, instead of the instrument. In this paper, we examine how economic instruments to achieve welfare-enhancing water resource outcomes can realize their full potential in basin-scale management contexts. We follow a political economy perspective that views conflicts between public and private interest as the main instrumental challenge of water management. Our analysis allows us to better understand the critical importance of economic instruments for reconciling individual actions towards collective ambitions of water efficiency, equity and sustainability with lessons for later-adopting jurisdictions. Rather than providing panaceas, the successful design and implementation of economic instruments as key river basin management arrangements involves high transaction costs, wide institutional changes and collective action at different levels. </jats:p

Managing water scarcity at a river basin scale with economic instruments

This paper presents a conceptual framework for both assessing the role of economic instruments, and reshaping them in order to enhance their contribution to the goals of managing water scarcity. Water management problems stem from the mismatch between a multitude of individual decisions, on the one hand, and the current and projected status of water resources on the other. Economics can provide valuable incentives that drive individual decisions, and can design efficient instruments to address water governance problems in a context of conflicting interests and relevant transaction costs. Yet, instruments such as water pricing or trading are mostly based on general principles of welfare economics that are not readily applicable to assets as complex as water. A flaw in welfare economic approaches lies in the presumption that economic instruments may be good orbad on their own (e.g., finding the "right" price). This vision changes radically when we focus on the problem, instead of the instrument. In this paper, we examine how economic instruments to achieve welfare-enhancing water resource outcomes can realize their full potential in basin-scale management contexts. We follow a political economy perspective that views conflicts between public and private interest as the main instrumental challenge of water management. Our analysis allows us to better understand the critical importance of economic instruments for reconciling individual actions towards collective ambitions of water efficiency, equity and sustainability with lessons for later-adopting jurisdictions. Rather than providing panaceas, the successful design and implementation of economic instruments as key river basin management arrangements involves high transaction costs, wide institutional changes and collective action at different levels

Value-Based Ideas or Material Interests? An Explanation of Polish Governmental Preference Formation towards Eurozone Accession

Why did Poland not join the Eurozone despite being integrated economically and dependent on investments and trade with existing Eurozone countries? The reluctance of its government seems puzzling taking into consideration Polish economic exposure to Eurozone countries as well as its commitment to switch to the euro stemming from EU treaties. The Polish governmental position on Eurozone accession demonstrates that monetary integration is not only an economic and legal issue, but it also results from political decisions of individual governments. This paper argues that a complementary understanding of the position of the Polish government on Eurozone accession is possible by looking at domestic ideas and interests. For this aim, the societal approach to governmental preference formation is employed. It focuses on the influence of domestic ideas (value-based collective expectations of voters) and interests (cost-benefit calculations of lobby groups) on governmental positions. In applying the societal approach, this paper has two goals: first, to show that the Polish governments’ reluctance to join the Eurozone stems from domestic societal pressures (value-based ideas and material interests) and, second, to specify the conditions for either ideas’ or interests’ individual bearing on the government’s preference

Investor protection through model case procedures – implementing collective goals and individual rights under the 2012 Amendment of the German Capital Markets Model Case Act (KapMuG)

The German Capital Markets Model Case Act (KapMuG) and its amendment of 2012 highlight some fundamentals of collective redress in civil law countries at the example of model case procedures in the field of investor protection. That is why a survey of the ongoing activities of the European Union in the area of collective redress and of its repercussions on the member state level forms a suitable basis for the following analysis of the 2012 amendment of the KapMuG. It clearly brings into focus a shift from sector-specific regulation with an emphasis on the cross-border aspect of protecting consumers towards a “coherent approach” strengthening the enforcement of EU law. As a result, regulatory policy and collective redress are two sides of the same coin today. With respect to the KapMuG such a development brings about some tension between its aim to aggregate small individual claims as efficiently as possible and the dominant role of individual procedural rights in German civil procedure. This conflict can be illustrated by some specific rules of the KapMuG: its scope of application, the three-tier procedure of a model case procedure, the newly introduced notification of claims and the new opt-out settlement under the amended §§ 17-19

Social Influence and Decision-Making: Evaluating Agent Networks in Village Responses to Change in Freshwater

This paper presents a model, using concepts from artificial neural networks, that explains how small rural communities make decisions that affect access to potable freshwater. Field observations indicate that social relationships as well as individual goals and perceptions of decision makers have a strong influence on decisions that are made by community councils. Our work identifies three types of agents, which we designate as alpha, beta, and gamma agents. We address how gamma agents affect decisions made by community councils in passing resolutions that benefit a village\'s collective access to clean freshwater. The model, which we call the Agent Types Model (ATM), demonstrates the effects of social interactions, corporate influence, and agent-specific factors that determine choices for agents. Data from two different villages in rural Alaska and several parameter sensitivity tests are applied to the model. Results demonstrate that minimizing the social significance and agent-specific factors affecting gamma agents\' negative compliance increases the likelihood that communities adopt measures promoting potable freshwater access. The significance of this work demonstrates which types of communities are potentially more socially vulnerable or resilient to social-ecological change affecting water supplies.Agent-Based Modeling, Artificial Neural Network, Social Network, Social Influence, Resilience, Freshwater