51,208 research outputs found
When Europe encounters urban governance: Policy Types, Actor Games and Mechanisms of cites Europeanization
This paper examines European Union (EU) causal mechanisms and policy instruments affecting the urban domain throughout the lenses of the Europeanization approach. Instead of looking at EU instruments that are formally/legally consecrated to cities, we use theoretical public policy analysis to explore the arenas and the causal mechanisms that structure the encounters between the EU and urban systems of governance. Policy instruments are related to policy arenas and in turn to different mechanisms of transmission thus originating a typology of European Policy Modes. The paper focuses on four different EU instruments in the in the macro-area of sustainable development and proposes potential game-theoretical models for each of them.
In the conclusions we highlight the differences between this approach and the traditional analysis of EU urban policy, and suggest avenues for future empirical research based on typologies of policy instruments and modes of Europeanization
Disentangling urban sustainability: the Flemish City Monitor acknowledges complexity
Nowadays, cities have to deal with complexity. In this article we argue that the City Monitor for Sustainable Urban Development in the Flanders (Belgium) acknowledges complexity. This set of almost 200 SDIs (Sustainable Development Indicators) contains actor-exceeding and policy-exogenous information. On that account this learning instrument is relevant for all actors involved in the urban (sustainable) development of their city and is able to enhance and to sharpen the quality of strategic urban debates and complex decision-making processes. Our intensive co-design approach of the City Monitor also succeeds to deal adequate with the tensions of complex catch-all terms such as (urban) sustainability
Public Opinion behind the Deterrence: An Evolutionary Game Theoretic Study of the Israeli Policy towards Lebanon
Israelâs policies regarding Lebanon have been dependent on public opinion, which is very volatile. The citizens of Israel did not favor the occupation of the security zone in South Lebanon because of the Four Mothers movement, and it influenced the government to withdraw military forces unilaterally in May 2000. When Hizbollah attacked the Israel Defense Force (IDF) patrol and abducted two soldiers on the northern border, the Israeli citizens supported the governmentâs decision of waging a war in retaliation. This study aims to shed light on the causal mechanism of the influence of public opinion on the defense policy in the rational framework of deterrence strategy. I chose the evolutionary game theory approach as my research method. My study yielded the following result: the deterrence is not stable when the aggression level of the defenders is less than the level of the critical condition. The Israeli government made a decision to conduct unilateral withdrawal under the pressure of passive defenders among the people. However, the IDF could begin the operation in Lebanon because of a substantial number of supporters who hoped to restore the deterrence. This study concludes that the Israelis exhibited strong intension and an aggressive attitude toward the deterrence.Deterrence, Evolutionary Game Theory, Second Lebanon War, Israel, Hizbollah
De facto capital mobility, equality, and tax policy in open economies
This paper attempts at giving theoretical and empirical answers to the remaining puzzles in
the literature on tax competition: the persistently high tax rates on mobile capital and the large
variation in domestic tax systems. I argue that governments face a political trilemma, in which
they cannot maintain the politically optimal level of public good provision, reduce capital
taxes to competitive levels and implement a political support-maximizing mix of tax rates on
capital and labour simultaneously. In particular, while legal restriction on capital flows have
been eliminated by virtually all OECD countries, de facto capital mobility falls short of being
perfect. Limits to full capital mobility result from ownership structures: the higher the
concentration of capital, the higher the de facto mobility of capital and the lower the
equilibrium tax rate. Second, the demand for the provision of public goods further constraints
governmentsâ choices of the capital tax rate. If revenue from taxation of mobile factors
declines, politicians cannot necessarily cut back spending without losing political support.
Policy makers, accordingly, do not face a simple optimization problem when deciding on
capital taxation. Rather, they have to choose a tax system which allows them to supply an
appropriate level of public goods. Policy makers finally face a trade-off resulting from the
redistributive conflict between capital-owners and workers. This conflict does not resemble a
mere zero-sum game, because lower levels of capital taxation are likely to improve aggregate
welfare, but the decision on capital taxation also cannot be analyzed in isolation from the
distributive effects of reducing taxes on mobile factors. This political logic of tax competition
generates important predictions which are tested empirically for 23 OECD countries over 30
years within a spatial econometrics framework
The Historical Turn in Democratization Studies: A New Research Agenda for Europe and Beyond. CES Working Paper Series No. 177, 2010
The paper lays the theoretical and methodological foundations of a new historically-minded approach to the comparative study of democratization, centered on the analysis of the creation, development and interaction of democratic institutions. Historically, democracy did not emerge as a singular coherent whole but rather as a set of different institutions, which resulted from conflicts across multiple lines of social and political cleavage that took place at different moments in time. The theoretical advantage of this approach is illustrated by highlighting the range of new variables that come into focus in explaining democracy's emergence. Rather than class being the single variable that explains how and why democracy came about, we can see how religious conflict, ethnic cleavages, and the diffusion of ideas played a much greater role in Europe's democratization than has typically been appreciated. Above all, we argue that political parties were decisive players in how and why democracy emerged in Europe and should be at the center of future analyses
Talking about routines in the field: the emergence of organizational capabilities in a new cellular phone network company
No abstract availabl
Good standing and cooperation
Indirect reciprocity is generally considered one of the leading mechanisms to explain how cooperation may emerge by natural selection. The basic intuition is that establishing a reputation of being a helpful individual increases the probability of being in turn helped. Two models have been proposed to describe how indirect reciprocity may work: the standing model (Sugden, 1986/2004) and the image-scoring model (Nowak and Sigmund, 1998a,b). Although there is evidence that the former model would perform better under a wide set of circumstances, it is often maintained that it requires individuals with an implausibly large capacity of processing recursive information. In this paper I argue that this is not actually the case. I then suggest that the information needed by the image-scoring model, under reasonable assumptions, may be sufficient for the standing model to work. Finally I emphasize that even if the hypothesis of indirect reciprocity is unable to give a fair account of the ecological bases of cooperation, it has inspired a deal of research precious to social sciences.Cooperation, Indirect reciprocity, Good standing, Image-Scoring.
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