Corruption Drives the Emergence of Civil Society

Peer punishment of free-riders (defectors) is a key mechanism for promoting cooperation in society. However, it is highly unstable since some cooperators may contribute to a common project but refuse to punish defectors. Centralized sanctioning institutions (for example, tax-funded police and criminal courts) can solve this problem by punishing both defectors and cooperators who refuse to punish. These institutions have been shown to emerge naturally through social learning and then displace all other forms of punishment, including peer punishment. However, this result provokes a number of questions. If centralized sanctioning is so successful, then why do many highly authoritarian states suffer from low levels of cooperation? Why do states with high levels of public good provision tend to rely more on citizen-driven peer punishment? And what happens if centralized institutions can be circumvented by individual acts of bribery? Here, we consider how corruption influences the evolution of cooperation and punishment. Our model shows that the effectiveness of centralized punishment in promoting cooperation breaks down when some actors in the model are allowed to bribe centralized authorities. Counterintuitively, increasing the sanctioning power of the central institution makes things even worse, since this prevents peer punishers from playing a role in maintaining cooperation. As a result, a weaker centralized authority is actually more effective because it allows peer punishment to restore cooperation in the presence of corruption. Our results provide an evolutionary rationale for why public goods provision rarely flourishes in polities that rely only on strong centralized institutions. Instead, cooperation requires both decentralized and centralized enforcement. These results help to explain why citizen participation is a fundamental necessity for policing the commons.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figures (Press embargo in place until publication

Making a hybrid out of a crisis: historical contingency and the institutional logics of London’s public transport monopoly

Purpose Literature seldom admits the importance of historical contingency and politics in the creation of hybrid organisations. Nevertheless, the circumstances of their creation play a pivotal role in the subsequent operation, priorities and success of these prolific organisations. Through a single case study, this paper aims to explore the connection between the multiple and concurrent crises that created London Transport and the subsequent balance of its institutional logics. Design/methodology/approach This case study uses in-depth data collection from multiple archival and public sources to offer quantitative and qualitative analysis of the priorities, logics and services offered by London Transport before and after its transition from a private to a hybrid organisation. Findings Providing London’s transport via a quasi-autonomous non-governmental monopoly was justified as being more efficient than competition. However, by applying accounting ratios to the archival records from London Transport, the authors find that there were few decisive efficiencies gained from amalgamation. Instead, the authors argue that the balance of institutional logics within the new, unified organisation showed a political response outwardly addressing market failure but primarily concerned with marginalising democratic control. This reality was obscured behind the rhetoric of rationality and efficiency as politically neutral justifications for creating a public service monopoly. Originality/value This paper challenges supposedly objective systems for judging the effectiveness of “hybrid” organisations and offers an alternative political and historical perspective of the reasons for their creation. The authors suggest that London Transport’s success in obscuring its enduring market-based institutional logics has wider resonance in the development of municipal capitalism

Making a Hybrid out of a Crisis : Historical Contingency and the Institutional Logics of London’s Public Transport Monopoly

This paper seeks to extend historical enquiry into hybridity and evaluate the reasons for creating a monopoly public service provider through a historical case study blending both economic and political sources of evidence

Blending Public and Private : British Municipal Trading c. 1889-1975

Municipal trading was the dominant delivery form for transport and utility services in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain and saw local authorities operate these services on a profit-making basis. This paper uses historical evidence and the ideas of contemporary theorists of municipal trading to demonstrate how these bodies formatively brought hybridity into the public sector, using blended public, corporate and market institutional orders. It demonstrates that in order to gain institutional legitimacy for municipal trading local authorities had to fall back on antecedents in the transport and infrastructure industries, notably in the turnpike trusts, canal and railway industries

Update to the Vitamin C, Thiamine and Steroids in Sepsis (VICTAS) protocol: statistical analysis plan for a prospective, multicenter, double-blind, adaptive sample size, randomized, placebo-controlled, clinical trial.

BACKGROUND: Observational research suggests that combined therapy with Vitamin C, thiamine and hydrocortisone may reduce mortality in patients with septic shock. METHODS AND DESIGN: The Vitamin C, Thiamine and Steroids in Sepsis (VICTAS) trial is a multicenter, double-blind, adaptive sample size, randomized, placebo-controlled trial designed to test the efficacy of combination therapy with vitamin C (1.5 g), thiamine (100 mg), and hydrocortisone (50 mg) given every 6 h for up to 16 doses in patients with respiratory or circulatory dysfunction (or both) resulting from sepsis. The primary outcome is ventilator- and vasopressor-free days with mortality as the key secondary outcome. Recruitment began in August 2018 and is ongoing; 501 participants have been enrolled to date, with a planned maximum sample size of 2000. The Data and Safety Monitoring Board reviewed interim results at N = 200, 300, 400 and 500, and has recommended continuing recruitment. The next interim analysis will occur when N = 1000. This update presents the statistical analysis plan. Specifically, we provide definitions for key treatment and outcome variables, and for intent-to-treat, per-protocol, and safety analysis datasets. We describe the planned descriptive analyses, the main analysis of the primary end point, our approach to secondary and exploratory analyses, and handling of missing data. Our goal is to provide enough detail that our approach could be replicated by an independent study group, thereby enhancing the transparency of the study. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03509350. Registered on 26 April 2018

Computational Social Science

A field is emerging that leverages the capacity to collect and analyze data at a scale that may reveal patterns of individual and group behaviors.Governmen

Exploiting social influence to magnify population-level behaviour change in maternal and child health: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial of network targeting algorithms in rural Honduras

Introduction: Despite global progress on many measures of child health, rates of neonatal mortality remain high in the developing world. Evidence suggests that substantial improvements can be achieved with simple, low-cost interventions within family and community settings, particularly those designed to change knowledge and behaviour at the community level. Using social network analysis to identify structurally influential community members and then targeting them for intervention shows promise for the implementation of sustainable community-wide behaviour change. Methods and analysis We will use a detailed understanding of social network structure and function to identify novel ways of targeting influential individuals to foster cascades of behavioural change at a population level. Our work will involve experimental and observational analyses. We will map face-to-face social networks of 30 000 people in 176 villages in Western Honduras, and then conduct a randomised controlled trial of a friendship-based network-targeting algorithm with a set of well-established care interventions. We will also test whether the proportion of the population targeted affects the degree to which the intervention spreads throughout the network. We will test scalable methods of network targeting that would not, in the future, require the actual mapping of social networks but would still offer the prospect of rapidly identifying influential targets for public health interventions. Ethics and dissemination The Yale IRB and the Honduran Ministry of Health approved all data collection procedures (Protocol number 1506016012) and all participants will provide informed consent before enrolment. We will publish our findings in peer-reviewed journals as well as engage non-governmental organisations and other actors through venues for exchanging practical methods for behavioural health interventions, such as global health conferences. We will also develop a ‘toolkit’ for practitioners to use in network-based intervention efforts, including public release of our network mapping software. Trial registration number NCT02694679; Pre-results

The Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment: Exploring Fundamental Symmetries of the Universe

The preponderance of matter over antimatter in the early Universe, the dynamics of the supernova bursts that produced the heavy elements necessary for life and whether protons eventually decay --- these mysteries at the forefront of particle physics and astrophysics are key to understanding the early evolution of our Universe, its current state and its eventual fate. The Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE) represents an extensively developed plan for a world-class experiment dedicated to addressing these questions. LBNE is conceived around three central components: (1) a new, high-intensity neutrino source generated from a megawatt-class proton accelerator at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, (2) a near neutrino detector just downstream of the source, and (3) a massive liquid argon time-projection chamber deployed as a far detector deep underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility. This facility, located at the site of the former Homestake Mine in Lead, South Dakota, is approximately 1,300 km from the neutrino source at Fermilab -- a distance (baseline) that delivers optimal sensitivity to neutrino charge-parity symmetry violation and mass ordering effects. This ambitious yet cost-effective design incorporates scalability and flexibility and can accommodate a variety of upgrades and contributions. With its exceptional combination of experimental configuration, technical capabilities, and potential for transformative discoveries, LBNE promises to be a vital facility for the field of particle physics worldwide, providing physicists from around the globe with opportunities to collaborate in a twenty to thirty year program of exciting science. In this document we provide a comprehensive overview of LBNE's scientific objectives, its place in the landscape of neutrino physics worldwide, the technologies it will incorporate and the capabilities it will possess.Comment: Major update of previous version. This is the reference document for LBNE science program and current status. Chapters 1, 3, and 9 provide a comprehensive overview of LBNE's scientific objectives, its place in the landscape of neutrino physics worldwide, the technologies it will incorporate and the capabilities it will possess. 288 pages, 116 figure

Corrigendum to "Overview: oxidant and particle photochemical processes above a south-east Asian tropical rainforest (the OP3 project): introduction, rationale, location characteristics and tools" published in Atmos. Chem. Phys., 10, 169–199, 2010

Author(s): Hewitt, CN; Lee, JD; MacKenzie, AR; Barkley, MP; Carslaw, N; Carver, GD; Chappell, NA; Coe, H; Collier, C; Commane, R; Davies, F; Davison, B; DiCarlo, P; Di Marco, CF; Dorsey, JR; Edwards, PM; Evans, MJ; Fowler, D; Furneaux, KL; Gallagher, M; Guenther, A; Heard, DE; Helfter, C; Hopkins, J; Ingham, T; Irwin, M; Jones, C; Karunaharan, A; Langford, B; Lewis, AC; Lim, SF; MacDonald, SM; Mahajan, AS; Malpass, S; McFiggans, G; Mills, G; Misztal, P; Moller, S; Monks, PS; Nemitz, E; Nicolas-Perea, V; Oetjen, H; Oram, DE; Palmer, PI; Phillips, GJ; Pike, R; Plane, JMC; Pugh, T; Pyle, JA; Reeves, CE; Robinson, NH; Stewart, D; Stone, D; Whalley, LK; Yang,