Preferences,the Agenda Setter,and the Distribution of Power in the EU

In this paper, we present a generalization of power indices which includes the preferences of the voters. Using a Multilinear Extension perspective (Owen in Manage Sci 18:p64–p72, 1972a) we measure the probability of the players’ voting “yes” for a particular political issue. Further, we randomize the issues and show the influence that the Agenda Setter can have on a player’s power. We demonstrate these results using data from the European Union to show how the power distribution may shift after enlargement and under the new Constitutional Treaty.     

Charles Tilly,German Historicism,and the Critical Realist Philosophy of Science

This paper examines Charles Tilly’s relationship to the schools of thought known as historicism and critical realism. Tilly was committed to a social epistemology that was inherently historicist, and he increasingly called himself a “historicist.” The “search for grand laws in human affairs comparable to the laws of Newtonian mechanics,” he argued, was a “waste of time” and had “utterly failed.” Tilly’s approach was strongly reminiscent of the arguments developed in the first half of the 20th century by Rickert, Weber, Troeltsch, and Meinecke for a synthesis of particularization and generalization and for a focus on “historical individuals” rather than abstract universals. Nonetheless, Tilly never openly engaged with this earlier wave of historicist sociology, despite its fruitfulness for and similarity to his own project. The paper explores some of the possible reasons for this missed encounter. The paper argues further that Tilly’s program of “relational realism” resembled critical realism, but with main two differences: Tilly did not fully embrace critical realism’s argument that social mechanisms are always co-constituted by social meaning or its normative program of explanatory critique. In order to continue developing Tilly’s ideas it is crucial to connect them to the epistemological ideas that governed the first wave of historicist sociology in Weimar Germany and to a version of philosophical realism that is interpretivist and critical.     

Computational application of the mathematical theory of democracy to Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem (how dictatorial are Arrow’s dictators?)

The article is based on three findings. The first one is the interrelation between Arrow’s (Social choice and individual values, Wiley, New York, 1951) social choice model and the mathematical theory of democracy discussed by Tangian (Aggregation and representation of preferences, Springer, Berlin, 1991; Soc Choice Welf 11(1):1–82, 1994), with the conclusion that Arrow’s dictators are less harmful than commonly supposed. The second finding is Quesada’s (Public Choice 130:395–400, 2007) estimate of their power as that of two voters, implying that Arrow’s dictators are not more powerful than a chairperson with an additional vote. The third is the model of Athenian democracy (Tangian, Soc Choice Welf 31:537–572, 2008), where indicators of popularity and universality are applied to representatives and representative bodies. In this article, these indicators are used to computationally evaluate the representativeness/non-representativeness of Arrow’s dictators. In particular, it is shown that there always exist Arrow’s dictators who on the average share opinions of a majority, being rather representatives. The same holds for dictators selected by lot, which conforms to the practice of selecting magistrates and presidents by lot in ancient democracies and medieval Italian republics. Computational formulas are derived for finding the optimal “dictator–representatives”.     

Identifying X-Consumers Using Causal Recipes: “Whales” and “Jumbo Shrimps” Casino Gamblers

X-consumers are the extremely frequent (top 2–3%) users who typically consume 25% of a product category. This article shows how to use fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to provide “causal recipes” sufficient for profiling X-consumers accurately. The study extends Dik Twedt’s “heavy-half” product users for building theory and strategies to nurture or control X-behavior. The study here applies QCA to offer configurations that are sufficient in identifying “whales” and “jumbo shrimps” among X-casino gamblers. The findings support the principle that not all X-consumers are alike. The theory and method are applicable for identifying the degree of consistency and coverage of alternative X-consumers among users of all product-service category and brands.     

‘One and a Half Dimensional’ Preferences and Majority Rule

I examine a model of majority rule in which alternatives are described by two characteristics: (1) their position in a standard, left-right dimension, and (2) their position in a good-bad dimension, over which voters have identical preferences. I show that when voters’ preferences are single-peaked and concave over the first dimension, majority rule is transitive, and the majority’s preferences are identical to the median voter’s. Thus, Black’s (The theory of committees and elections, 1958) theorem extends to such a “one and a half” dimensional framework. Meanwhile, another well-known result of majority rule, Downs’ (An economic theory of democracy, 1957) electoral competition model, does not extend to the framework. The condition that preferences can be represented in a one-and-a-half-dimensional framework is strictly weaker than the condition that preferences be single-peaked and symmetric. The condition is strictly stronger than the condition that preferences be order-restricted, as defined by Rothstein (Soc Choice Welf 7:331–342;1990).     

Inequality comparisons when the populations differ in size

This paper considers the problem of comparing two income distributions with different numbers of income recipients. The approach eschews the “replication of populations” of Dalton’s Population Principle which has been a fixture of the literature on income inequality since its inception. We start from a preorder which is a generalization of majorization, construct the “better-than” set and characterize the order-preserving welfare functions in a unified framework. The fixed population case falls off as a particular case.     

Consumer Culture Theory,Nonverbal Communication,and Contemporary Politics: Considering Context and Embracing Complexity

This commentary addresses Olivola and Todorov’s “Elected in 100 ms: Appearance-Based Trait Inferences and Voting” and considers its valuable contribution to the field of nonverbal communication. This work suggests that contemporary politics and voting behavior are so complex that they can be better understood outside of laboratory settings where the vital elements on culture and context come into play. By using consumer culture theory and other cultural theories of branding, this commentary evaluates elements of Barack Obama’s presidential run, and considers why his campaign resonated so well with voters in contemporary United States culture.     

Top-Pair and Top-Triple Monotonicity

We say that a social choice function (SCF) satisfies Top-k Monotonicity if the following holds. Suppose the outcome of the SCF at a preference profile is one of the top k-ranked alternatives for voter i. Let the set of these k alternatives be denoted by B. Suppose that i’s preference ordering changes in such a way that the set of first k-ranked alternatives remains the set B. Then the outcome at the new profile must belong to B. This definition of monotonicity arises naturally from considerations of set “improvements” and is weaker than the axioms of strong positive association and Maskin Monotonicity. Our main results are that if there are two voters then a SCF satisfies unanimity and Top-2 or Top-pair Monotonicity if and only if it is dictatorial. If there are more than two voters, then Top-pair Monotonicity must be replaced by Top-3 Monotonicity (or Top-triple Monotonicity) for the analogous result. Our results demonstrate that connection between dictatorship and “improvement” axioms is stronger than that suggested by the Muller–Satterthwaite result (Muller and Satterthwaite in J Econ Theory 14:412–418, 1977) and the Gibbard–Sattherthwaite theorem.     

A Social Choice Lemma on Voting Over Lotteries with Applications to a Class of Dynamic Games

We prove a lemma characterizing majority preferences over lotteries on a subset of Euclidean space. Assuming voters have quadratic von Neumann–Morgenstern utility representations, and assuming existence of a majority undominated (or “core”) point, the core voter is decisive: one lottery is majority-preferred to another if and only if this is the preference of the core voter. Several applications of this result to dynamic voting games are discussed.This paper was completed after Jeff Banks’s death. John Duggan is deeply indebted to him for his friendship and his collaboration on this and many other projects.     

Much ado about Goffman

“The claim that all the world’s a stage is sufficiently commonplace for readers to be familiar with its limitations and tolerant of its presentation.” (Goffman 1959, 72, 254) “Given that the logic of privatization....now odiously shapes archetypes of citizenship, [and] manages our perceptions of what constitute the ‘good society’....it stands to reason that new ethnographic research approaches must take global capitalism not as an end point of analysis, but as a starting point.” (Kincheloe and McLaren 2000, 304) “My abhorrence of neoliberalism helps to explain my legitimate anger when I speak of the injustices to which the ragpickers among humanity are condemned. It also explains my total lack of interest in any pretension of impartiality, I am not impartial, or objective...[this] does not prevent me from holding always a rigorously ethical position.” (Freire 1998, 22)     

Toward a reflexive sociology

Gouldner’s call for a “reflexive sociology” in 1970 remains a largely unexamined idea, yet with the breakdown of functionalism’s begemony and the present ferment in theory its time may finally have come. In attempting to clarify and reconstruct Gouldner’s idea, I begin with his concepts “background assumptions” and “domain assumptions,” linking them with Kubn’s ideas. Employing levels of abstraction to approach Gouldner’s material systematically, I proceed to develop and illustrate two contrasting background assumptions or world hypotheses: “stratification” and “interaction.” Finally, I examine some methodological implications of these world views, centering on defining problems, ratio scales and images of measurement, sampling and multivariate-analysis procedures. Introduced to sociology by C. Wright Mills, Bernard Phillips studied with Robin N. Williams, Jr. and taught at the University of North Carolina and the University of Illinois (where he overlapped with Alvin W. Gouldner for a year) before coming to Boston University. A cofounder of the ASA section, Sociological Practice, Phillips’ interests are in Societal Change, Theory and Methods.     

Sophisticated voting and equilibrium refinements under plurality rule

In this paper we show in the context of voting games with plurality rule that the “perfect” equilibrium concept does not appear restrictive enough, since, independently of preferences, it can exclude at most the election of only one candidate. Furthermore, some examples show that there are “perfect” equilibria that are not “proper”. However, also some “proper” outcome is eliminated by sophisticated voting, while Mertens' stable set fully satisfies such criterium, for generic plurality games. Moreover, we highlight a weakness of the simple sophisticated voting principle. Finally, we find that, for some games, sophisticated voting (and strategic stability) does not elect the Condorcet winner, neither it respects Duverger's law, even with a large number of voters. Received: 16 March 1999/Accepted: 25 September 1999     

An extension of Bowen’s dynamic voting rule to many dimensions

 We ask in this paper about the effect on social decisions of limiting the size of changes that voters may propose each time in an otherwise standard dynamic social choice model. The voting rule we study can be seen as an extension of Bowen’s dynamic “majority voting” rule, and is closely related to the dynamic procedures for public good allocation in the literature (Drèze and de la Vallée Poussin 1971; Malinvaud 1971; Laffont and Maskin 1983; Chander 1993). Under general assumptions we prove existence and Pareto efficiency of equilibrium, and show that our rule motivates voters not to misrepresent preferences (more precisely, the rule is Strongly Locally Individually Incentive Compatible). Under Euclidean preferences we find that electoral cycles do not arise (i.e., the rule is convergent), that there is a unique equilibrium, and that the equilibrium coincides with the solution to an old problem of geometry, first addressed by Fermat, Torricelli, and Cavallieri. Received: 20 September 1994/Accepted: 6 August 1996     

Outranking methods for multicriterion decision making: Arrow’s and Raynaud’s conjecture

 Outranking methods constitute a class of ordinal ranking algorithms for multicriterion decision making. This paper is concerned with four such methods: K?hler’s primal and dual algorithms, and Arrow–Raynaud’s primal and dual algorithms. Arrow and Raynaud made the conjecture that these four methods yield the totality of “prudent orders” whenever the outranking matrix has the “constant sum” property. This paper shows that their conjecture is not valid. Received: May 29, 1995/Accepted: November 13, 1995     

Philosophy on the Ground: An Appreciation of a “Spirit Master”

This essay is an appreciation of Melvin Pollner’s distinctive sociological approach to topics that are usually associated with philosophy. Pollner’s dissertation and early writings took up the theme of “mundane reason,” which he defined as an incorrigible presumption of a real world that is implicit in everyday conduct. Pollner addressed mundane reason, and the reciprocal idea of “reality disjunctures”—momentary divergences between perceptual accounts of the “same” mundane reality—by describing routine exchanges in traffic court and confrontations between doctors and patients in psychiatric settings. Pollner’s work anticipated current enthusiasms for developing novel “ontologies” in social and cultural studies of science, medicine, and other subjects. Although he did attempt to locate metaphysics in the midst of everyday experience, this essay suggests that his “philosophy on the ground” radically transformed philosophical ontology into an original and imaginative way to investigate constitutive activities.     

Objective measures of well-being and the cooperative production problem

 The concern for measuring well-being objectively (as opposed to subjectively, that is, relying only on preferences) is found in modern political philosophy, especially in J. Rawls’s, A. Sen’s and G. Cohen’s writings. This paper explains the implications of using an objective well-being index as equalisandum or, close to the so-called “safety net preoccupation”, to guarantee a well-being lower bound. In the simple production model studied here, five characterization results and two related theorems prove the convergence of both approaches. We come to the conclusion that the Proportional Solution is the dominant solution according to “objectivist” axioms. Received: 5 September 1994/Accepted: 29 June 1996     

Robert K. Merton as postwar prophet

Within the context of a discussion of Robert K. Merton’s ideas on leadership in postwar America, the article examines the nature and impact of Merton’s “sociological parables.” This term refers to short tales from social life from which sociological lessons with moral implications can be drawn. These parables, such as the bank insolvency story told in “The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy,” illustrate the manner in which Merton merged moral and sociological messages in his writings. Suggestions are made along the lines that these parables, or at least the moral messages they contain, contributed to Merton’s postwar fame. His most recent publications are “Simmel’s Contribution to Parsons’ Action Theory and Its Fate,” in Michael Kaern, ed.Georg Simmel and Contempory Sociology (Kluwer, 1990); and “Robert K. Merton’s Extension of Simmel’sUbersehbar” inSociological Theory, Spring 1990.     

Disunity within the house of labor: Change to win or to stay the course?

In September 2005, six unions representing 5.4 million workers held their founding convention as a new federation independent of the AFL-CIO. Infelicitously named “Change to Win Federation” (CTWF), the new alliance has called for a rededication of union resources and energies towards organizing the unorganized. Although CTWF has occasioned considerable interest and speculation among labor supporters and observers, it is difficult to determine why the break occurred, other than, perhaps, the personal agenda of some of its leaders. An unstated, significant reason may be a desire on the rebels’ part to operate relatively free of “noraiding” strictures of the AFL-CIO, even though the group disclaims any interest in challenging existing bargaining relationships and has penned “solidarity pacts” with some of its principal AFL-CIO competitors and with state and local units of the federation. Competitive forces are missing in the market for workplace representation services. The new group may reignite the rival unionism that spurred organized labor’s marked growth from 1935–1954, but early returns suggest an emphasis on militant posturing and on trendy, implausible themes such as “global unionism” and “subcontracting out strikes.”     

Some chance for consensus: voting methods for which consensus is an equilibrium

We introduce the following basic voting method: voters submit both a “consensus” and a “fall-back” ballot. If all “consensus” ballots name the same option, it wins; otherwise, a randomly drawn “fall-back” ballot decides. If there is one potential consensus option that everyone prefers to the benchmark lottery which picks the favorite of a randomly drawn voter, then naming that option on all “consensus” ballots builds a very strong form of correlated equilibrium. Unlike common consensus procedures, ours is not biased toward the status quo and removes incentives to block consensus. Variants of the method allow for large groups, partial consensus, and choosing from several potential consensus options.     

Beyond the antinomies of structure: Levi-Strauss,Giddens, Bourdieu,and Sewell

In this article, I attempt to address some enduring problems in formulation and practical use of the notion of structure in contemporary social science. I begin by revisiting the question of the fidelity of Anthony Giddens’ appropriation of the idea of structure with respect to Levi-Strauss. This requires a reconsideration of Levi-Strauss’ original conceptualization of “social structure” which I argue is a sort of “methodological structuralism” that stands sharply opposed to Giddens’ ontological reconceptualization of the notion. I go on to show that Bourdieu’s contemporaneous critique of Levi-Strauss is best understood as an attempt to recover rather than reject the central implication of Levi-Strauss’ methodological structuralism, which puts Bourdieu and Giddens on clearly distinct camps in terms of their approach toward the idea of structure. To demonstrate the—insurmountable—conceptual difficulties inherent in the ontological approach, I proceed by critically examining what I consider to be the most influential attempt to resolve the ambiguities in Giddens structuration theory: Sewell’s argument for the “duality of structure.” I show that by retaining Giddens’ ontological focus, Sewell ends up with a notion of structure that is at its very core “anti-structuralist” or only structuralist in a weak sense. I close by considering the implications of the analysis for the possibility of developing the rather neglected “methodological structuralist” legacy in contemporary social analysis.