Alternate Definitions of the Uncovered Set and Their Implications

Different definitions of the uncovered set are commonly, and often interchangeably, used in the literature. If we assume individual preferences are strict over all alternatives, these definitions are equivalent. However, if one or more voters are indifferent between alternatives these definitions may not yield the same uncovered set. This note examines how these definitions differ in a distributive setting, where each voter can be indifferent between any number of alternatives. I show that, defined one way, the uncovered set is equal to the set of Pareto allocations that give over half the voters a strictly positive payoff, while alternate definitions yield an uncovered set that is equal to the entire Pareto set. These results highlight a small error in Epstein (Soc Choice Welf 15, 81–93, 1998) in which the author characterizes the uncovered set for a different definition of covering than claimed.     

Uncovered sets

This paper covers the theory of the uncovered set used in the literatures on tournaments and spatial voting. I discern three main extant definitions, and I introduce two concepts that bound existing sets from above and below: the deep uncovered set and the shallow uncovered set. In a general topological setting, I provide relationships to other solutions and give results on existence and external stability for all of the covering concepts, and I establish continuity properties of the two new uncovered sets. Of note, I characterize each of the uncovered sets in terms of a decomposition into choices from externally stable sets, and I define the minimal generalized covering solution, a nonempty refinement of the deep uncovered set that employs both of the new relations.     

Uncovering some subtleties of the uncovered set: Social choice theory and distributive politics

 Although the uncovered set has occupied a prominent role in social choice theory, its exact shape has never been determined in a general setting. This paper calculates the uncovered set when actors have pork barrel, or purely distributive, preferences, and shows that in this setting nearly the entire Pareto set is uncovered. The result casts doubt on the usefulness of the uncovered set as a general solution concept and suggests that to predict the distribution of political benefits one must explicitly model the institutions that structure collective choice. Received: 29 April 1993/Accepted: 28 June 1996     

The core of social choice problems with monotone preferences and a feasibility constraint

We consider collective choice with agents possessing strictly monotone, strictly convex and continuous preferences over a compact and convex constraint set contained in ₊^k . If it is non-empty the core will lie on the efficient boundary of the constraint set and any policy not in the core is beaten by some policy on the efficient boundary. It is possible to translate the collective choice problem on this efficient boundary to another social choice problem on a compact and convex subset of ₊^c (c<k) with strictly convex and continuous preferences. In this setting the dimensionality results in Banks (1995) and Saari (1997) apply to the dimensionality of the boundary of the constraint set (which is lower than the dimensionality of the choice space by at least one). If the constraint set is not convex then the translated lower dimensional problem does not necessarily involve strict convexity of preferences but the dimensionality of the problem is still lower. Broadly, the results show that the homogeneity afforded by strict monotonicity of preferences and a compact constraint set makes generic core emptyness slightly less common. One example of the results is that if preferences are strictly monotone and convex on ² then choice on a compact and convex constraint exhibits a version of the median voter theorem.I thank Donald Saari for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

Cyclic tournaments and cooperative majority voting: A solution

A new solution concept is axiomatically characterized for tournaments that represent cooperative majority voting. The predicted set of outcomes lies inside the top-cycle set, the uncovered set, and the Banks set.This research was supported by NSF grants SES 8612120 and SES 8896228. I thank Georges Bordes, Gary Cox, Bhaskar Dutta, Richard McKelvey, Nicholas Miller, Emerson Niou, Peter Ordeshook, and Peyton Young for helpful comments. Niou is responsible for the example in Sect. 4. Presented at the Public Choice Society Meetings, Tucson, March 1987, and at the Jacob Marschak Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Mathematics in the Behaviorial Sciences, UCLA, October 1988.     

Choosing from a large tournament

A tournament can be viewed as a majority preference relation without ties on a set of alternatives. In this way, voting rules based on majority comparisons are equivalent to methods of choosing from a tournament. We consider the size of several of these tournament solutions in tournaments with a large but finite number of alternatives. Our main result is that with probability approaching one, the top cycle set, the uncovered set, and the Banks set are equal to the entire set of alternatives in a randomly chosen large tournament. That is to say, each of these tournament solutions almost never rules out any of the alternatives under consideration. We also discuss some implications and limitations of this result.     

In quest of the banks set in spatial voting games

The Banks set (1(4):295–306, 1985) is one of the more important concepts in voting theory since it tells us about the sophisticated outcomes of standard amendment voting procedures commonly in use throughout the English speaking world (and elsewhere as well). While the properties of the Banks set for finite voting games have been extensively studied, little is known about how to find members of this set for majority rule spatial voting games involving possibly infinite agendas. We look at this question for two-dimensional games where voters have Euclidean preferences, and offer a variety of new results that delimit areas of the space that can be shown to lie within the Banks set, such as the Schattschneider set, the tri-median set, and the Banks line set—geometric constructs which we show to be nested within one another.     

THE ROLE OF REGULATORY ARBITRAGE IN U.S. BANKS' INTERNATIONAL FLOWS: BANK‐LEVEL EVIDENCE

I study the prevalence and profitability of regulatory arbitrage in U.S. banks' foreign activities. I analyze a publicly available bank‐level data set on bilateral lending flows to 75 countries over 2003–2013. U.S. banks' affiliates lend less to borrowers in host countries with stricter bank capital regulations, and are less likely to maintain affiliates in such countries. Banks substitute from (host‐regulated) affiliate toward (U.S.‐regulated) cross‐border lending in hosts with strict bank capital rules. This is particularly so for low‐capitalized banks with lower foreign ownership shares. Banks that reduce their exposure to stricter host capital rules are more profitable in foreign activities. (JEL F3, F4, G2)     

Empirical and analytical subaltern space? Ashrams,brothels and trafficking in colonial Delhi

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I engage with Gayatri Spivak’s writings on the figure of the subaltern, focusing on a recurrent tension in her writings, and in readings of them. The tension is between two seemingly contradictory definitions of the subaltern. One, more empirical definition, has featured in Spivak’s writings for over 25 years and identifies the subaltern as the non-elite, the immobile or the figure beyond the reach of the state. Against this more empirical definition comes the famous analytical definition of the subaltern as he or she who ‘cannot speak’, being defined by their inaccessibility in the archive, as broadly conceived. This paper will argue that these two interconnected definitions have their respective forms of space, which demand different methodologies. I will suggest that an over-emphasis on the analytical definition has led to an over-cautious approach to subaltern spaces, neglecting the compulsion to attempt to find and say something about subaltern spaces, as Spivak insists. The paper demonstrates this approach through the examination of a report into the abuse of women in some of Delhi’s ashrams in the 1930s, so as to suggest how we can use studies of empirically archived subaltern space to think about the analytically subaltern spaces that must always be beyond exploration.     

A computational analysis of the tournament equilibrium set

A recurring theme in the mathematical social sciences is how to select the “most desirable” elements given a binary dominance relation on a set of alternatives. Schwartz’s tournament equilibrium set (TEQ) ranks among the most intriguing, but also among the most enigmatic, tournament solutions proposed so far. Due to its unwieldy recursive definition, little is known about TEQ. In particular, its monotonicity remains an open problem to date. Yet, if TEQ were to satisfy monotonicity, it would be a very attractive solution concept refining both the Banks set and Dutta’s minimal covering set. We show that the problem of deciding whether a given alternative is contained in TEQ is NP-hard, and thus does not admit a polynomial-time algorithm unless P equals NP. Furthermore, we propose a heuristic that significantly outperforms the naive algorithm for computing TEQ.     

Credible debate equilibria

Legislation is not an end in itself, but means to an end. Unfortunately, the technical relationship connecting any legislation to real consequences is rarely known for sure. In debate, legislators have an opportunity to persuade others of the relative value of particular bills, to influence the substance of the agenda, and to affect voting decisions. Since preferences over consequences are typically taken to be fixed, such persuasion etc. necessarily amounts to changing beliefs over the likely effects of various alternative bills. The extent to which debate can be effective in altering others' beliefs depends on how audiences interpret and assimilate any information speechmakers volunteer. This paper considers one plausible approach to credibility in debate. Debate is modeled as a cheap talk stage preceding an endogenous agenda setting game under incomplete information. In this framework, the issue can be formulated in terms of what constitutes an equilibrium. It is demonstrated that a fairly weak and intuitively plausible criterion of credibility effectively leads to there being little opportunity for credible transmission of information in debate.An earlier version of this paper was titled Credibility in Debate. I am extremely grateful to Jeffrey Banks, Randy Calvert and the anonymous referees for many valuable comments. The research was supported in part by the NSF under grant SES-8600468. I retain responsibility for any remaining errors and ambiguities in the paper.     

Sophisticated voting outcomes and agenda control

Necessary and sufficient conditions for an alternative to be a sophisticated voting outcome under an amendment procedure are derived. The uncovered set, as first defined by Miller (1980), is shown to be potentially reducible, and conditions are determined for which this reduction equals the set of sophisticated voting outcomes. In addition, simple methods are given for calculating both the uncovered set and its reduction.Presented at the 1984 Annual Meeting of the Public Choice Society, Phoenix AZ, March 1984. I would like to thank Gerald Kramer, Nicholas Miller, Norman Schofield, two anonymous referees, and especially Richard McKelvey for helpful suggestions and comments.     

Understanding Mexican NGOs: Goals,Strategies, and the Local Context

Research on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) largely focuses on the actions taken towards contributing to social change in communities and has characterized them into a typology of resisters or cooperators. Using extensive qualitative data, I use this case study to illustrate that NGOs use multiple repertoires of strategies that range from low to high risk. In this article, I show how and why NGO leaders in Monterrey, Mexico, choose their strategies based on their interpretation of the local sociopolitical environment and their assessment of how politically challenging a goal is within that context. By setting aside the dichotomy of NGOs as cooperators or resisters, I demonstrate the connection between strategies, goals, and the local sociopolitical context that is largely missing in our theorizing of NGOs (and other forms of collective action). These findings have implications for understanding how NGOs, as social actors, participate in an increasingly complex and interconnected global space.     

How Manual Object Exploration is Associated with 7‐ to 8‐Month‐Old Infants’ Visual Prediction Abilities in Spatial Object Processing

The present experiment examined whether infants’ visual prediction performance of the appearance of objects moving in space is related to their manual object exploration ability. Fifty‐five 7‐ to 8‐month‐old infants were tested. A visual object prediction paradigm was developed during which a three‐dimensional object was presented in a live eye‐tracking setting. During familiarization, the object rotated back and forth along the vertical axis. While the object was moving, two target parts of it were briefly occluded from view and uncovered again as the object changed its direction of motion. In the test phase, the entire object was rotated around 90° and now rotated along the horizontal axis. We recorded infants’ eye movements directed at the target locations and analyzed the prediction rates. All of the infants also participated in a manual object exploration task, in which they freely explored five toy blocks. Infants with a higher level of object exploration skill had higher prediction rates during test trials as compared to infants with less proficient object exploratory actions. The results support the interpretation that advanced manual object exploration experience is associated with infants’ advanced visual prediction ability of the appearance of objects moving in space.     

Choosing from a tournament

A tournament is any complete asymmetric relation over a finite set A of outcomes describing pairwise comparisons. A choice correspondence assigns to every tournament on A a subset of winners. Miller's uncovered set is an example for which we propose an axiomatic characterization. The set of Copeland winners (outcomes with maximal scores) is another example; it is a subset of the uncovered set: we note that it can be a dominated subset. A third example is derived from the sophisticated agenda algorithm; we argue that it is a better choice correspondence than the Copeland set.     

Extending and Broadening Blumer's Conceptualization of Fashion: Adding Notions of Generic Social Process and Semiotic Transformation

Abstract

Herbert Blumer's critics and followers have, for the most part, neglected the significance of his theory of fashion. In this paper I revisit Blumer's thesis on fashion by identifying the fashion process as an instance of the generic social process of semiotic transformation. The concept of semiotic transformation refers to the change in meanings of symbolic objects over time. By identifying six elements of the generic social process of semiotic transformation (systemic permeability, systemic freedom, logonomic fluidity, logonomic openness, indeterminacy, and logonomic hegemony) and by viewing semiotic transformation as a joint act grounded in emergence, I argue that the meaning of change over time is a process structuring both the definition of the situation and symbolic objects. I conclude the paper with a set of reflections on the significance of Blumer's work on fashion for the development of a research agenda of semiotic transformation and for the legacy and reception of Blumerian theory.     

Lagos in London: Finding the Space of Home

ABSTRACT

The term “home” is loaded with normative notions about insiderness, sociality, dwelling, spatiality, and tends generally to be associated with a particular architectural mode of dwelling, classically a house, and with a particular set of people related by blood and/or marriage. In keeping with the contemporary theoretical movements about what and where a home resides, this paper also questions the validity of limiting these modes of being and being among as the sole confine of the domestic sphere. It suggests that rather than searching for these only within the classic scenario, the elements of what constitutes a home can be found outside of that sphere, through particular social and spatial negotiations of public spaces. These practices and spatial negotiations in the public space can then be compared with similar ones in the domestic setting. Taken together they reveal much more about the process of home making than either one would individually. Thus what is proposed in this article is a definition of home that is seen less as a particular geographical and/or architectural entity, and more as a space where specific forms of sociality take place.     

Governmentality,subjectivity, and the neoliberal form of life

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that the appropriate answer to the question of the form contemporary neoliberalism gives our lives rests on Michel Foucault’s definition of neoliberalism as a particular art of governing human beings. I claim that Foucault’s definition consists in three components: neoliberalism as a set of technologies structuring the ‘milieu’ of individuals in order to obtain specific effects from their behavior; neoliberalism as a governmental rationality transforming individual freedom into the very instrument through which individuals are directed; and neoliberalism as a set of political strategies that constitute a specific, and eminently governable, form of subjectivity. I conclude by emphasising the importance that Foucault’s work on neoliberalism as well as the ancient ‘ethics of the care of the self’ still holds for us today.     

The Educational Soundscape: Participation and Perception in Japanese High School English Lessons

In this article I discuss the emergence of practices of hearing in the midst of English language learning activities. I focus on listening activities during oral English lessons at two public high schools in Tokyo, Japan. One setting is a liberal arts high school. The other is a technical high school where students are trained in specializations such as industrial chemistry and electrical engineering. The different organization of listening activities in each of the schools has consequences for the different shape, texture, and categorization of what is heard. I show how hearing, therefore, is an act not solely located the moment sound meets the ear of an individual. Rather, it is socially rationed, controlled, and imagined through the joint actions of participants before, during, and after such physiological hearing takes place. This constitutes hearing as a social act, cognitively distributed among participants and over space and time in the classroom.     

Banks winners in tournaments are difficult to recognize

Given a tournament T, a Banks winner of T is the top vertex of any maximal (with respect to inclusion) transitive subtournament of T. In this technical note, we show that the problem of deciding whether some fixed vertex v is a Banks winner for T is NP-complete. Received: 22 February 2002/Accepted: 20 June 2002 Supported by the START program Y43-MAT of the Austrian Ministry of Science. I would like to thank two thank the referees for a careful reading of the paper, for helpful remarks, and for many suggestions how to improve the presentation.