Download or read book A Logic of Expressive Choice written by Alexander A. Schuessler and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2000-10-29 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alexander Schuessler has done what many deemed impossible: he has wedded rational choice theory and the concerns of social theory and anthropology to explain why people vote. The "paradox of participation"--why individuals cast ballots when they have virtually no effect on electoral outcomes--has long puzzled social scientists. And it has particularly troubled rational choice theorists, who like to describe political activity in terms of incentives. Schuessler's ingenious solution is a "logic of expressive choice." He argues in incentive-based (or "economic") terms that individuals vote not because of how they believe their vote matters in the final tally but rather to express their preferences, allegiances, and thus themselves. Through a comparative history of marketing and campaigning, Schuessler generates a "jukebox model" of participation and shows that expressive choice has become a target for those eliciting mass participation and public support. Political advisers, for example, have learned to target voters' desire to express--to themselves and to others--who they are. Candidates, using tactics such as claiming popularity, invoking lifestyle, using ambiguous campaign themes, and shielding supporters from one another can get out their vote even when it is clear that an election is already lost or won. This important work, the first of its kind, will appeal to anyone seeking to decipher voter choice and turnout, social movements, political identification, collective action, and consumer behavior, including scholars, graduate students, and upper-level undergraduates in political science, economics, sociology, anthropology, and marketing. It will contribute greatly to our understanding and prediction of democratic participation patterns and their consequences.

Download or read book A Logic of Expressive Choice written by Alexander A. Schuessler and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-08 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alexander Schuessler has done what many deemed impossible: he has wedded rational choice theory and the concerns of social theory and anthropology to explain why people vote. The "paradox of participation"--why individuals cast ballots when they have virtually no effect on electoral outcomes--has long puzzled social scientists. And it has particularly troubled rational choice theorists, who like to describe political activity in terms of incentives. Schuessler's ingenious solution is a "logic of expressive choice." He argues in incentive-based (or "economic") terms that individuals vote not because of how they believe their vote matters in the final tally but rather to express their preferences, allegiances, and thus themselves. Through a comparative history of marketing and campaigning, Schuessler generates a "jukebox model" of participation and shows that expressive choice has become a target for those eliciting mass participation and public support. Political advisers, for example, have learned to target voters' desire to express--to themselves and to others--who they are. Candidates, using tactics such as claiming popularity, invoking lifestyle, using ambiguous campaign themes, and shielding supporters from one another can get out their vote even when it is clear that an election is already lost or won. This important work, the first of its kind, will appeal to anyone seeking to decipher voter choice and turnout, social movements, political identification, collective action, and consumer behavior, including scholars, graduate students, and upper-level undergraduates in political science, economics, sociology, anthropology, and marketing. It will contribute greatly to our understanding and prediction of democratic participation patterns and their consequences.

Download or read book Expressive Rationality and Choice written by Diego Lanzi and published by Eliva Press. This book was released on 2022-03-03 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays collected in this book cover a wide array of issues connected with the idea of expressive rationality. Roughly, expressive choices imply a certain level of moral, psychological and emotional involvement, a sort of expressive attachment to the situation. An expressively rational individual wants to express, exactly in that situation, what kind of a person he is, and what he values highly in life. His rationality is emergent and agency-driven, not purposive and goal-driven like in the case of instrumental rationality. In these papers, we shall investigate how emotions, values, frames or virtues can embed choice behavior. The embeddedness of choice behavior requires not only to analyze external structures of constraints, or social roles, that can shape choice problems and their resolution, but also internal ones which are elicited by emotions, inner aspirations, personal vices and personality traits. In this way, choice theory can dialogue not only with sociology and social theory, but also with psychology, virtue ethics and moral philosophy. The approach of the book is to extend Rational Choice Theory by using some concepts of category theory. Category theory focuses on the relations among objects and takes functions by themselves as the elements of interest. More precisely, any category is described by the morphisms between its objects. The term morphism comes from the ancient Greek's word morphè, i.e., form or shape, and it expresses the state of having a specified shape. The concept is widely used in several branches of scientific inquiry from biology to semiotics, linguistics or computer science. In this volume, morphisms are applied to choice theory.

Download or read book Democracy and Decision written by Geoffrey Brennan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-03-13 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The significance of this account should be clear. If, as economists frequently assert, proper diagnosis of the disease is a crucial prerequisite to treatment, then the design of appropriate democratic institutions depends critically on a coherent analysis of the way the electoral process works and the perversities to which it is prone. The claim is that the interest-based account incorrectly diagnoses the disease. Accordingly, this book ends with an account of the institutional protections that go with expressive voting."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Logical Options written by John L. Bell and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 2001-03-30 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Logical Options introduces the extensions and alternatives to classical logic which are most discussed in the philosophical literature: many-sorted logic, second-order logic, modal logics, intuitionistic logic, three-valued logic, fuzzy logic, and free logic. Each logic is introduced with a brief description of some aspect of its philosophical significance, and wherever possible semantic and proof methods are employed to facilitate comparison of the various systems. The book is designed to be useful for philosophy students and professional philosophers who have learned some classical first-order logic and would like to learn about other logics important to their philosophical work.

Download or read book Rationality Democracy and Justice written by Claudio López-Guerra and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume advances the research agenda of one of the most remarkable political thinkers of our time: Jon Elster. With an impressive list of contributors, it features studies in five topics in political and social theory: rationality and collective action, political and social norms, democracy and constitution making, transitional justice, and the explanation of social behavior. Additionally, this volume includes chapters on the development of Elster's thinking over the past decades. Like Elster's own writings, the essays in this collection are problem-driven, nonideal inquiries of practical relevance. This volume closes with lucid comments by Jon Elster.

Download or read book Public Choice Past and Present written by Dwight R. Lee and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-09 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1962, economists James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock published The Calculus of Consent, in which they developed the principles of public choice theory. In the fifty years since its publication, the book has defined the field and set the standard for research and analysis. To celebrate a half-century of scholarship in public choice, Dwight Lee has assembled distinguished academics from around the world to reflect on the influence of this monumental publication, and, more broadly, the legacy of its legendary authors. Their essays cover a broad spectrum of topics and approaches, from the impact of public choice theory on foreign policy analysis to personal remembrances of learning from and collaborating with Buchanan and Tullock. The result is a unique collection of insights that celebrate public choice and its visionary proponents, while considering its future directions. ​

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Public Choice written by Roger D. Congleton and published by Oxford Handbooks. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 985 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This two-volume collection provides a comprehensive overview of the past seventy years of public choice research, written by experts in the fields surveyed. The individual chapters are more than simple surveys, but provide readers with both a sense of the progress made and puzzles that remain. Most are written with upper level undergraduate and graduate students in economics and political science in mind, but many are completely accessible to non-expert readers who are interested in Public Choice research. The two-volume set will be of broad interest to social scientists, policy analysts, and historians"--

Download or read book Emotional Choices written by Robin Markwica and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-09 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do states often refuse to yield to military threats from a more powerful actor, such as the United States? Why do they frequently prefer war to compliance? International Relations scholars generally employ the rational choice logic of consequences or the constructivist logic of appropriateness to explain this puzzling behavior. Max Weber, however, suggested a third logic of choice in his magnum opus Economy and Society: human decision making can also be motivated by emotions. Drawing on Weber and more recent scholarship in sociology and psychology, Robin Markwica introduces the logic of affect, or emotional choice theory, into the field of International Relations. The logic of affect posits that actors' behavior is shaped by the dynamic interplay among their norms, identities, and five key emotions: fear, anger, hope, pride, and humiliation. Markwica puts forward a series of propositions that specify the affective conditions under which leaders are likely to accept or reject a coercer's demands. To infer emotions and to examine their influence on decision making, he develops a methodological strategy combining sentiment analysis and an interpretive form of process tracing. He then applies the logic of affect to Nikita Khrushchev's behavior during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 and Saddam Hussein's decision making in the Gulf conflict in 1990-1 offering a novel explanation for why U.S. coercive diplomacy succeeded in one case but not in the other.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy written by Barry R. Weingast and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-06-20 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over its long lifetime, "political economy" has had many different meanings: the science of managing the resources of a nation so as to provide wealth to its inhabitants for Adam Smith; the study of how the ownership of the means of production influenced historical processes for Marx; the study of the inter-relationship between economics and politics for some twentieth-century commentators; and for others, a methodology emphasizing individual rationality (the economic or "public choice" approach) or institutional adaptation (the sociological version). This Handbook views political economy as a grand (if imperfect) synthesis of these various strands, treating political economy as the methodology of economics applied to the analysis of political behavior and institutions. This Handbook surveys the field of political economy, with 58 chapters ranging from micro to macro, national to international, institutional to behavioral, methodological to substantive. Chapters on social choice, constitutional theory, and public economics are set alongside ones on voters, parties and pressure groups, macroeconomics and politics, capitalism and democracy, and international political economy and international conflict.

Download or read book Meaning and Argument written by Ernest Lepore and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-09-14 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meaning and Argument is a popular introduction to philosophy of logic and philosophy of language. Offers a distinctive philosophical, rather than mathematical, approach to logic Concentrates on symbolization and works out all the technical logic with truth tables instead of derivations Incorporates the insights of half a century's work in philosophy and linguistics on anaphora by Peter Geach, Gareth Evans, Hans Kamp, and Irene Heim among others Contains numerous exercises and a corresponding answer key An extensive appendix allows readers to explore subjects that go beyond what is usually covered in an introductory logic course Updated edition includes over a dozen new problem sets and revisions throughout Features an accompanying website at http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/~logic/MeaningArgument.html

Download or read book All About Maude A High Performance Logical Framework written by Manuel Clavel and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-07-19 with total page 802 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maude is a language and system based on rewriting logic. In this comprehensive account, you’ll discover how Maude and its formal tool environment can be used in three mutually reinforcing ways: as a declarative programming language, as an executable formal specification language, and as a formal verification system. Examples used throughout the book illustrate key concepts, features, and the many practical uses of Maude.

Download or read book The Myth of the Rational Voter written by Bryan Caplan and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-15 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan's sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening book. Caplan argues that voters continually elect politicians who either share their biases or else pretend to, resulting in bad policies winning again and again by popular demand. Boldly calling into question our most basic assumptions about American politics, Caplan contends that democracy fails precisely because it does what voters want. Through an analysis of Americans' voting behavior and opinions on a range of economic issues, he makes the convincing case that noneconomists suffer from four prevailing biases: they underestimate the wisdom of the market mechanism, distrust foreigners, undervalue the benefits of conserving labor, and pessimistically believe the economy is going from bad to worse. Caplan lays out several bold ways to make democratic government work better--for example, urging economic educators to focus on correcting popular misconceptions and recommending that democracies do less and let markets take up the slack. The Myth of the Rational Voter takes an unflinching look at how people who vote under the influence of false beliefs ultimately end up with government that delivers lousy results. With the upcoming presidential election season drawing nearer, this thought-provoking book is sure to spark a long-overdue reappraisal of our elective system.

Download or read book Voter Turnout written by Meredith Rolfe and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-02-13 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book develops and empirically tests a social theory of political participation. It overturns prior understandings of why some people (such as college-degree holders, churchgoers and citizens in national rather than local elections) vote more often than others. The book shows that the standard demographic variables are not proxies for variation in the individual costs and benefits of participation, but for systematic variation in the patterns of social ties between potential voters. Potential voters who move in larger social circles, particularly those including politicians and other mobilizing actors, have more access to the flurry of electoral activity prodding citizens to vote and increasing political discussion. Treating voting as a socially defined practice instead of as an individual choice over personal payoffs, a social theory of participation is derived from a mathematical model with behavioral foundations that is empirically calibrated and tested using multiple methods and data sources.

Download or read book Organizing for Policy Influence written by Benjamin Farrer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-09 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Benjamin Farrer explains how activists can influence the policies they care about, even when they are outnumbered and their issues are ignored. The solution lies in a surprising place: organizational choice. Different types of organizations will be more influential under particular democratic institutions. If they choose the optimal type of organization - given their institutional context - then even minority groups can be influential. Environmentalists are a key example of how small groups can sometimes punch above their weight. Environmentalists in different countries have made different organizational choices. These choices explain whether or not they succeeded in influencing policy. In the empirical chapters that follow, Farrer shows that environmentalists can sometimes be more influential if they form interest groups, but under other institutions, political parties are the optimal organizational choice. Although interest groups are often easier to create, national institutions can sometimes insulate mainstream politicians from niche interest groups. When institutions deny access to interest groups, activists are forced to send the stronger signal of party entry. Using a variety of methods, including a formal model, an experiment, and a wealth of empirical data from a variety of settings, Farrer proves that this theory of organizational choice adds to our understanding of several crucial phenomena. First, it helps explain patterns of political participation, by showing the importance of instrumental, rather than purely expressive, motivations for activism. Second, it provides an important modification to Duverger’s (1954) law, by showing that new party entry is a function not only of electoral rules but also of the rules that govern interest groups. Third, it extends research on the role of institutions in determining policy outputs, by showing that policy outcomes are a function of the interaction between organizational choices and institutional context.

Download or read book The SAGE Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society written by Robert W. Kolb and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2018-03-27 with total page 7348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thoroughly revised, updated, and expanded, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society, Second Edition explores current topics, such as mass social media, cookies, and cyber-attacks, as well as traditional issues including accounting, discrimination, environmental concerns, and management. The new edition also includes an in-depth examination of current and recent ethical affairs, such as the dangerous work environments of off-shore factories for Western retailers, the negligence resulting in the 2010 BP oil spill, the gender wage gap, the minimum wage debate and increasing income disparity, and the unparalleled level of debt in the U.S. and other countries with the challenges it presents to many societies and the considerable impact on the ethics of intergenerational wealth transfers. Key Features Include: Seven volumes, available in both electronic and print formats, contain more than 1,200 signed entries by significant figures in the field Cross-references and suggestions for further readings to guide students to in-depth resources Thematic Reader′s Guide groups related entries by general topics Index allows for thorough browse-and-search capabilities in the electronic edition

Download or read book Public Service Motivation written by Chris O'Leary and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2022-05-27 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chris O’Leary looks afresh at the reasons for prosocial work choices in the first substantive critique of Public Service Motivation (PSM). With critical analysis of theoretical and empirical research to date, this book explores the pros and cons of PSM and interrogates the reasons why people choose to work in the public and third sectors. It proposes an alternative theory for the pursuit of service, rooted in rational choice theory, that shows public servants are expressly motivated to confirm their values and identity through their work. For those involved in public policy, administration and management, this is a constructive and stimulating review of an important but often neglected aspect of the sector.