Relinquishing power, exploitation and political unemployment in democratic organizations

We analyze the evolution of organizations which take decisions on whomto hire and how to share the output by plurality voting. Agents are grouped in threeclasses, high, medium and low productivity.We study the evolution of political powerand show that in some cases, rational agents who value the future may yield politicalpower to another class. This is what we call the relinquish effect. We show that high productivity agents may receive less than their individual output, i.e. exploitation is possible.We also showthat high productivity agents may be left out in the cold because their entrance in an organization may threaten the dominance of other classes.We call this political unemploymentThanks to the MOMA network under the Project ECO2014-57673-REDT for financial support. The first author acknowledges financial support from ECO2014 53051, SGR2014-515 and PROMETEO/2013/037. Luis Corchon and Antonio Romero-Medina acknowledge financial support from MEC under Project ECO2014_57442_P, and financial support from the Ministerio Economía y Competitividad (Spain), Grants MYGRANT and MDM 2014-0431

Meritocracy, efficiency, incentives and voting in cooperative production: a survey

This paper surveys selectively several contributions to the understanding of how cooperatives may cope with the interplay between meritocracy and efficiency when public decisions are taking by voting and the supply of labor is freely decided by each member. This outlines the main trade‐off faced by cooperatives. In particular, the degree of meritocracy is limited by three factors: (1) efficiency, because too much meritocracy encourages too much work from the socially optimal point of view; (2) meritocracy encourages sabotage; and (3) voting, because workers may prefer inefficient reward schemes as long as they are individually profitable.The first author acknowledges financial support from ECO2014 53051, SGR2014-515. The second author acknowledges financial support from ECO2014-57442-P, and financial support from the Ministerio Economía y Competitividad (Spain), grants S2015/HUM-3444 and MDM 2014-0431

Democracy Disenchanted and Autocracy Glamorized in Korea

Economic prosperity and equitable economic distribution under authoritarian political repression began to be upended in Korea in 1987: democratic freedom replaced autarchy with a gradual economic slowdown. The financial crisis in 1997 further increased poverty and job insecurity. Post-crisis government welfare reform policies were too cumbersome to prevent worsening poverty and polarization, and a growing share of the lower class was left unprotected and remained social outcasts. The inability of the democratic regime to deal with the economic recession and the financial crisis raised the level of public discontent with the democratic government’s performance, reducing public support for democracy. The dwindling legitimacy of democracy obviously imperiled its consolidation and sustainability. Though still devoted to democracy in principle, Koreans were deeply disillusioned with it in practice and worryingly attracted to a non-democratic mode of governance. Rising disgruntlement led to nostalgia for Park Chung Hee’s authoritarian leadership. The coexistence and parallel adoption of democratic principles and of attraction to authoritarian practice not only slowed democratic consolidation but also marred democratic legitimacy

Rationing Rules and Stable Coalition Structures

Documento de trabajoWe consider a coalition formation model in which agents have the possibility of forming part of several coalitions but are limited to participate in only one of them. Coalitions of agents produce outputs to be distributed among their members according to their aspirations and to a rationing rule prevailing in society. The outcome of such a process is a hedonic game. Using monotonicity and consistency we characterize the continuous rationing rules that induce core-stable hedonic games.acknowledge nancial support from the Spanish Government ECO2015-67519-P and from the Basque Government IT568-1

The Last will be First, and the First Last: Segregation in Societies with Relative Payoff Concerns (RM/18/027-revised-)

This paper studies coalition formation among individuals who differ in productivity. The output of a coalition is determined by the sum of the productivities and the size of the coalition. We consider egalitarian societies in which coalitions split their surplus equally and individualistic societies in which the surplus of a coalition is split according to productivity. Preferences of coalition members depend on their material payoffs, but are also influenced by relative payoff concerns, which relate their material payoffs to the average material payoff in the coalition. Our analysis uses two stability notions, the Core and the Myopic Stable Set. The stable partitions in both egalitarian and individualistic societies are segregated, i.e., individuals with adjacent productivities form coalitions. If some individuals are not part of a productive coalition, then these are the least productive ones for egalitarian societies and the most productive ones for individualistic societies. If all individuals have different productivity levels and there are sufficient complementarities in production, egalitarian societies induce more efficiency than individualistic societies

‘Sharing the Same Roof’?: A Consociational Approach to the Compatibility of Cultural Identity Schools with Liberal Democratic Values

This study critically examines the congruence of liberal democratic values with a conceptual framework for a national system of state-funded cultural identity schools. The study argues that the Modernist-Enlightenment response of difference-blind neutrality to the fact of social pluralism implicitly sanctions dominant socioeconomic structures. For this reason, the claim is made that the equal rights of citizenship justify cultural identity schools under a stance of difference-sensitivity. It is conceptualized that the existence of these schools benefit the liberal democratic state in two major ways. First, they incorporate non-Western immigrants into increasingly polyethnic societies as free and equal citizens. Second, in an era where deliberative democracy is threatened by global market forces, these schools serve as engines of healthy civil society by reinvigorating local voluntary associations. The study looks to the state educational system of the Netherlands to empirically ground theoretical formulations. For almost a century, the government there has funded and regulated a diverse array of schools with considerable autonomy in pedagogical content and practices. In terms of group rights, the educational structure reflects the historical experience of pillarization, a form of legal pluralism which proportionately distributed resources and political representation to national subgroups. The thesis proposes educational pillarization has utility to the current problem of disaffected immigrant groups in Western democratic states. Especially with regard to pleas for state-funded Islamic schooling, the study modifies consociational theory to reconcile imperatives for religo-cultural development and rights with those for liberal democratic principles. The study concludes that the consensus-making processes at the heart of legal pluralism encourage intercultural competence and reconfigure the meaning of citizenship to reflect the exigencies of the present day. Though many people see freedom from their childhood/received cultures as enriching, cultural attachments, provide the psychological terrain for evaluating the meaning of choice. However, a delicate balance exists. The study argues that cultural identity schools should not close students off from alternate life pathways since the right to exit or modify one’s culture is firmly embedded in liberalism

Show Me the Money: The Dominance of Wealth in Determining Rights Performance in Asia

In recent decades, Asia has emerged as one of the most contested sites for the increasingly powerful international human rights movement. Most notably, the heavily politicized Asian-values debate called into question the universal pretensions of the international human rights regime. More fundamentally, the experiences of Asian states over the last five decades challenged two widely held if somewhat inconsistent views: first, that democracy was the key to economic growth, or, reversing the causal direction, that economic growth would inevitably lead to political reforms, democratization and better protection of human rights. Many Asian states experienced their periods of rapid growth under authoritarian governments. Moreover, while some Asian states have made the transition to multiple-party, competitive-election democracy, others have not. Still others exist in a limbo state variously described as soft authoritarianism, semi-dictatorships, semi-democracy or nonliberal electoral democracy. Even those states that have most fully embraced democracy continue to interpret and implement human rights in ways that differ in important respects from some Western liberal democracies, thus calling into question the extent to which they should be described as liberal democracies.Past discussions about human rights and values in Asia have been hampered by the lack of reference to empirical studies to back up the strong theoretical, and in some cases polemical, claims being made on both sides about the differences or lack thereof in fundamental values. Numerous multiple-country quantitative studies have demonstrated significant regional effects with respect to democratization, labor rights, women’s rights, personal integrity rights, freedom from government intrusions, rule of law and good governance, and cultural values that in turn affect rights performance. Although invaluable in locating Asian countries within a larger comparative context, the studies generally define Asia very broadly and deal with rights in a very general way. They generally do not measure the degree of variance in rights performance within Asia, or attempt to explain the variation within Asia or why Asia as a region might differ from other regions.In Part I, I provide an empirical overview of the performance of twelve Asian countries with respect to physical integrity rights, civil and political rights, social and economic rights and other indicia of quality of life including poverty, infant mortality, life expectancy, primary school enrollment, government expenditures on education, health and military, quality of governance measured in terms of regulatory effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law and control of corruption, and law and order and social stability as reflected in crime rates and the number of drug users, suicides, divorces and young mothers. I also include several other countries from different parts of the world for comparison points. The empirical overview demonstrates a wide variation in Asia with respect to rights performance. At the same time, patterns emerge with respect to lower scores for civil and political freedoms among East Asian countries and higher scores for social and economic rights as well as good governance, law and order, and crime control and social stability. These patterns are consistent with aspects of the “Asian values” platform that emphasize the importance, if not the priority, of social and economic rights relative to civil and political rights. Similarly, the studies suggest that even in Asian democracies the liberal emphasis on the individual will often take a back seat to collective interests and social stability. However, the wide variation within Asia still requires an explanation.Accordingly, Part II examines several possible explanations for the wide variation among Asian countries. Clearly the story is complicated. A number of factors come into play, with some factors more important for different types of rights or playing a different role in different countries or at different times within a country. War, political regime type, the nature and level of development of legal institutions, population size, colonial history, religion and cultural factors all play a role. In several countries, ethnic diversity, religious tensions and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism or separatist movements have had a major impact on rights policies and performances. However, consistent with the empirical evidence globally, in the subtle and complex interplay of economics, politics, culture, law and institutions in determining rights performance, what matters most is wealth. While money may not be able to buy happiness, it does seem to buy a longer life, better education, more health care, and even civil and political rights.The implications are twofold. First, put bluntly if somewhat too simply, if you want better performance across a range of rights and indicators of human well-being, show me the money. Second, given the importance of wealth to rights performance, comparisons are best made between countries in the same income categories. Comparing a lower middle-income country like China to a rich country like the U.S. makes about as much sense as comparing a piano to a duck

Das Egalitarismus-Syndrom und die Frage der Gerechten Verteilung

Smatramo li pravednom isključivo jednaku raspodjelu dobara? Empirijski uvidi sugeriraju kako nejednaku raspodjelu većina ljudi smatra nepravednom samo ako je posljedica diskriminacije, zlouporabe moći ili besramnog egoizma. Nejednaka raspodjela, drugim riječima, može biti percipirana kao pravedna ukoliko se temelji na razlikama u zalaganju i sposobnostima. Takva meritokratska procjena u suprotnosti je sa skupom vrijednosti koji je Županov nazvao egalitarnim sindromom. Preciznije, teorija egalitarnog sindroma implicira averziju spram nejednake raspodjele, bez obzira na čemu se temeljila. S obzirom na činjenicu da ta pretpostavka – koja je ujedno i ključni element koncepcije egalitarnog sindroma – još nije empirijski testirana, u ovome radu ispitujemo vezu između prihvaćanja vrijednosti egalitarnog sindroma i percepcije pravedne raspodjele društvenih dobara. U analizama koristimo podatke 864 sudionika anketnog istraživanja provedenog putem Facebook društvene mreže u svibnju 2019. Nakon što je potvrđeno dobro pristajanje temeljenih latentnih konstrukata (5-dimenzionalni model egalitarnog sindroma, SEMA-5, i trodimenzionalni model percepcije pravedne raspodjele) podacima, testirana je njihova međusobna povezanost. Prihvaćanje vrijednosti egalitarnog sindroma pokazalo se snažno povezanim s egalitarnom percepcijom pravedne raspodjele, odnosno averzijom spram meritokratske raspodjele. Zanimljivo, indikatori percepcije pravednosti raspodjele u području socijalne i zdravstvene skrb bili su nepovezani ili tek marginalno povezani sa središnjim latentnim konstruktima, sugerirajući da averzija spram nejednake raspodjele nije puki odraz društvene solidarnosti. Zaključno, vrijednosti egalitarnog sindroma i averzija spram raspodjele koja ne podjeljuje svima jednako dio su zajedničkog skupa perzistirajućih neformalnih normi.Unequal distribution is not necessarily perceived as unjust. Most individuals seem to find it unfair only when caused by discrimination, abuse of power or greed. In other words, it is not distributive inequality per se, but unfair distributive inequality that people are bothered with. Such perception seems incompatible with the set of radically egalitarian values that in 1970 Josip Županov titled Egalitarian Syndrome (ES). His ES model implies a general aversion to unequal distribution – irrespective of its rationale. Considering that the assumed association between ES and specific views about distributive justice has never been empirically tested, the current study explored the link between the acceptance of ES and an aversion to unequal distribution. The study used data from 864 participants who were recruited through Facebook in May 2019. After confirmatory factor analysis resulted in a good fi t of two key latent constructs (5-dimensional ES and 3-dimensional perception of distributive justice), path analysis resulted in a strong and positive association between the acceptance of ES and the preference for egalitarian distribution. Interestingly, the indicators of distributive justice in the domains of social and health care were either unrelated or only marginally related to each of the two key constructs, suggesting that the aversion to unequal distribution is not a simple reflection of social solidarity. The current study’s findings corroborate the notion that ES and the perception that unequal distribution is never just are both parts of the same set of informal social norms.Sind wir der Meinung, dass ausschließlich eine gleiche Verteilung von Gütern gerecht ist? Empirische Einsichten suggerieren, dass die meisten Menschen eine ungleiche Verteilung nur dann ungerecht fi nden, wenn sie als Folge der Diskriminierung, des Machtmissbrauchs oder des schamlosen Egoismus entsteht. Die ungleiche Verteilung kann, anders gesagt, als gerecht wahrgenommen werden, wenn sie auf unterschiedlichen Einsätzen und Fähigkeiten beruht. Eine solche meritokratische Schätzung steht im Gegensatz zu der Wertmenge, die Županov das Egalitarismus-Syndrom genannt hat. Präziser gesagt impliziert die Th orie des Egalitarismus-Syndroms eine Abneigung gegen die ungleiche Verteilung, ungeachtet dessen, worauf sie beruht. Hinsichtlich der Tatsache, dass diese Voraussetzung – sie ist gleichzeitig das Schlüsselelement des Konzepts des Egalitarismus-Syndroms – noch nicht empirisch getestet wurde, untersuchen wir in dieser Arbeit die Verbindung zwischen der Akzeptanz der Werte des Egalitarismus-Syndroms und der Wahrnehmung der gerechten Verteilung sozialer Güter. In den Analysen bedienen wir uns der Angaben von 864 Befragten einer im Mai 2019 mithilfe des Sozialnetzes Facebook durchgeführten Umfrage. Nachdem festgestellt worden war, dass die latenten Konstrukte den Angaben gut entsprechen (ein 5 dimensionales Modell Egalitarismus-Syndrom, SEMA-5, und ein dreidimensionales Modell der Wahrnehmung der gerechten Verteilung), wurde deren Wechselwirkung getestet. Die Akzeptanz der Werte des Egalitarismus-Syndroms zeigte sich als eng verbunden mit der egalitären Wahrnehmung der gerechten Verteilung, bzw. der Abneigung gegen die meritokratische Verteilung. Interessanterweise waren die Indikatoren zur Wahrnehmung der Gerechtigkeit der Verteilung im Bereich der sozialen und Gesundheitsfürsorge nicht oder nur unwesentlich mit den zentralen latenten Konstrukten verbunden, was nahelegt, dass die Abneigung gegen die ungleiche Verteilung nicht nur ein Abbild der sozialen Solidarität ist. Zum Schluß, die Werte des Egalitarismus-Syndroms und die Abneigung gegen eine Verteilung, die nicht an alle gleich verteilt, sind ein Teil der gemeinsamen Menge von dauernden informellen Normen