Norms have never been absent from the study of international politics, but the sweeping “ideational turn” in the 1980s and 1990s brought them back as a central theoretical concern in the field. Much theorizing about norms has focused on how they create social structure, standards of appropriateness, and stability in international politics. Recent empirical research on norms, in contrast, has examined their role in creating political change, but change processes have been less well-theorized. We induce from this research a variety of theoretical arguments and testable hypotheses about the role of norms in political change. We argue that norms evolve in a three-stage “life cycle” of emergence, “norm cascades,” and internalization, and that each stage is governed by different motives, mechanisms, and behavioral logics. We also highlight the rational and strategic nature of many social construction processes and argue that theoretical progress will only be made by placing attention on the connections between norms and rationality rather than by opposing the two.

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International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

We develop a theory of prosocial behavior that combines heterogeneity in individual altruism and greed with concerns for social reputation or self-respect. Rewards or punishments (whether material or imagerelated) create doubt about the true motive for which good deeds are performed and this “overjustification effect” can induce a partial or even net crowding out of prosocial behavior by extrinsic incentives. We also identify the settings that are conducive to multiple social norms and more generally those that make individual actions complements or substitutes, which we show depends on whether stigma or honor is (endogenously) the dominant reputational concern. Finally, we analyze the socially optimal level of incentives and how monopolistic or competitive sponsors depart from it. Sponsor competition is shown to potentially reduce social welfare.

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Incentives and Prosocial Behavior

The history of international political orders is written in terms of continuity and change in domestic and international political relations. As a step toward understanding such continuity and change, we explore some ideas drawn from an institutional perspective. An institutional perspective is characterized in terms of two grand issues that divide students of international relations and other organized systems. The first issue concerns the basic logic of action by which human behavior is shaped. On the one side are those who see action as driven by a logic of anticipated consequences and prior preferences. On the other side are those who see action as driven by a logic of appropriateness and a sense of identity. The second issue concerns the efficiency of history. On the one side are those who see history as efficient in the sense that it follows a course leading to a unique equilibrium dictated by exogenously determined interests, identities, and resources. On the other side are those who see history as inefficient in the sense that it follows a meandering, path-dependent course distinguished by multiple equilibria and endogenous transformations of interests, identities, and resources. We argue that the tendency of students of international political order to emphasize efficient histories and consequential bases for action leads them to underestimate the significance of rule- and identity-based action and inefficient histories. We illustrate such an institutional perspective by considering some features of the coevolution of politics and institutions, particularly the ways in which engagement in political activities affects the definition and elaboration of political identities and the development of competence in politics and the capabilities of political institutions.

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The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders

The idea of America as politically polarized--that there is an unbridgeable divide between right and left, red and blue states--has become a cliche. What commentators miss, however, is that increasing polarization in recent decades has been closely accompanied by fundamental social and economic changes--most notably, a parallel rise in income inequality. In Polarized America, Nolan McCarty, Keith Poole, and Howard Rosenthal examine the relationships of polarization, wealth disparity, immigration, and other forces, characterizing it as a dance of give and take and back and forth causality.Using NOMINATE (a quantitative procedure that, like interest group ratings, scores politicians on the basis of their roll call voting records) to measure polarization in Congress and public opinion, census data and Federal Election Commission finance records to measure polarization among the public, the authors find that polarization and income inequality fell in tandem from 1913 to 1957 and rose together dramatically from 1977 on; they trace a parallel rise in immigration beginning in the 1970s. They show that Republicans have moved right, away from redistributive policies that would reduce income inequality. Immigration, meanwhile, has facilitated the move to the right: non-citizens, a larger share of the population and disproportionately poor, cannot vote; thus there is less political pressure from the bottom for redistribution than there is from the top against it. In "the choreography of American politics" inequality feeds directly into political polarization, and polarization in turn creates policies that further increase inequality.

/pdf/polarized-america-the-dance-of-ideology-and-unequal-riches-15461pw1nr.pdf

Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches

We build a theory of prosocial behavior that combines heterogeneity in individual altruism and greed with concerns for social reputation or self-respect. The presence of rewards or punishments creates doubt as to the true motive for which good deeds are performed, and this "overjustification effect" can result in a net crowding out of prosocial behavior by extrinsic incentives. The model also allows us to identify settings that are conducive to multiple social norms of behavior, and those where disclosing one's generosity may backfire. Finally, we analyze the equilibrium contracts offered by sponsors, including the level and confidentiality or publicity of incentives. Sponsor competition may cause rewards to bid down rather than up, and can even reduce social welfare by requiring agents to engage in inefficient sacrifices.

/pdf/incentives-and-prosocial-behavior-1fmfrk0247.pdf

The paper develops an integrated political economy model in which individuals are distinguished by earning ability and an ascriptive characteristic, race. The policy space is a transfer payment to low-income workers nanced by a at tax on wages and an a¢ rmative action constraint on rmshiring decisions. The distribution of income and the policy are endogenous, with the latter being the outcome of a legislative bargaining game between three legislative blocs. The model provides support for the common claim that racial divisions reduce support for welfare expenditures, even when voters have color-blind preferences. We show that relatively advantaged members of both the majority and minority group benet from the introduction of a second dimension of redistribution, while the less advantaged members of the majority are the principal losers.

/pdf/redistribution-and-a-rmative-action-1-3uug9plwms.pdf

Redistribution and A¢ rmative Action 1

This paper develops a theoretical framework for analyzing public funding for arts markets in which both a national-level arts council and local governments are potential donors. While the arts council is assumed to allocate grants to maximize the expected number of theatres achieving an ‘acceptable’ level of output, the local government is only concerned to maximize its total budget from local tax revenues. Despite this objective, a rationale for local governments to give grants is derived. The total grant allocation to any institution arises as an equilibrium outcome to a game played between the arts council and the relevant local government. Theatre managements take account of this allocation process in making their output decisions. Several empirical propositions are derived.

Subsidies to the Arts with Multiple Public Donors

The preceding chapter by Schofield develops the concept of the heart for general committee games when preferences are Euclidean Among other things, he uses it to analyse parliamentary bargaining in multiparty polities The formal defintion of the heart, H D , provided in Schofield (1993, 1995) for general preferences and a given voting rule, D,are reviewed in Section 92, and the application of the heart as a general solution concept are considered in Section 93 Two refinements (or subsets) of the heart called S D and I S D are proposed in Section 94 Section 95 concludes the chapter

Refinements of the Heart

The canonic Downsian model of spatial electoral competition involves two independent candidates competing for a single district. Most western democratic systems, however, are multi-district polities. The national electorate is partitioned into several geographically distinct constituencies, each of which periodically electing at least one representative to a legislature. Final policy outcomes then depend on the decisions of the de facto winning candidates comprising the legislature. This paper examines the robustness of the Downsian framework to introducing this institutional variation within a single-member district, simple plurality system.

Parties, districts and the spatial theory of elections

Why do shareholders vote for anti-takeover devices that apparently lower the value of their firm? The authors address this question by constructing an agenda-setting model in which rational, informed and value-maximizing shareholders vote on requests for such devices made by a self-interested management with employment opportunities outside the firm. They find sufficient conditions for the value of the firm to decline as a result of a request, although it is approved by shareholders. In their model, the apparently paradoxical voting behavior occurs because the expected takeover premium would be reduced more by rejection of the request than by approval, so shareholders rationally choose approval. Copyright 1992 by The London School of Economics and Political Science.

David Austen-Smith

Papers

Redistribution and A¢ rmative Action 1

Subsidies to the Arts with Multiple Public Donors

Refinements of the Heart

Parties, districts and the spatial theory of elections

Takeover defenses and shareholder voting