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Olga Shvetsova

Bio: Olga Shvetsova is an academic researcher from Binghamton University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Federalism & Democracy. The author has an hindex of 18, co-authored 57 publications receiving 2307 citations. Previous affiliations of Olga Shvetsova include Washington University in St. Louis & California Institute of Technology.


Papers
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper showed that district magnitude is not merely an important determinant of the number of parties that compete in a political system, but that it can offset the tendency of parties to multiply in heterogeneous societies.
Abstract: Recent events leading to the importation of democratic ideas and ideals by previously totalitarian states increase our interest in the ways in which electoral institutions influence party systems. However, even if we restrict our attention to Eastern Europe or the successor states of the Soviet empire, we encounter a range of social diversity – ethnic heterogeneity - that is as great as those in the set of countries examined in earlier studies that seek to identify the influence of electoral laws (c.f., Rae, Lijphart, and Taagepera and Shugart). Curiously, though, these earlier studies fail to ascertain whether and to what extent electoral laws mediate the influence of this heterogeneity. Hence, to develop a more pragmatic understanding of electoral institutions, we adopt the view of electoral laws as intervening structures and, using the data of these earlier analyses, we reconsider the role of one institutional parameter - district magnitude - that some researchers regard as the most important characteristic of an electoral system. Aside from the usual caveats about the limitations of our data, our primary conclusion is that district magnitude is not merely an important determinant of the number of parties that compete in a political system, but that it can offset the tendency of parties to multiply in heterogeneous societies.

611 citations

Book
01 Jan 2004
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors define the fundamental problem of federal stability as "the long search for stability" and propose three levels of institutional design: 1.1 Alliances versus federations 2.3 Equilibrium selection and redistribution 2.4 Secession: the special road to renegotiation 4.5 Other parameters of design 4.6 Bilateral decision-making and the case of Russia 5.3 The feasibility of success in initial bargaining 3.4 Voters versus elites 5.6 India Leadership incentives Rank and file incentives 6.3 Level 3 institutions 7.4 Conclusion.
Abstract: 1. Federations and the theoretical problem: 1.1 Why Federalism 1.2 Definitions 1.3 The long search for stability Federalism as nuisance Federalism as engine of prosperity Riker as intermediary 1.4 The fundamental problem of stability 1.5 Basic premises and conclusions 2. Federal bargaining: 2.1 Alliances versus federations 2.2 The private character of public goods 2.3 Equilibrium selection and redistribution 2.4 The 'federal problem' 2.5 Bargaining for control of the center 2.6 Allocating jurisdictions 2.7 Three levels of institutional design 3. Two cases of uninstitutionalized bargaining: 3.1 The Czechoslovak dissolution 3.2 The Soviet dissolution 3.3 The feasibility of success in initial bargaining 3.4 Secession: the special road to renegotiation 4. Representation: 4.1 Two alternative models of Federalism 4.2 A national venue for bargaining 4.3 Within versus without 4.4 Direct versus delegated representation 4.5 Other parameters of design 4.6 Bilateral decision making and the case of Russia 5. Incentives: 5.1 Institutional enforcement 5.2 The court 5.3 Some simple rules of constitutional design 5.4 Voters versus elites 5.5 Desirable imperfection and a democratic as if principle 6. Political parties in a federal state: 6.1 An extreme hypothesis 6.2 Parties in a democracy 6.3 The idealized party system 6.4 Integrated parties 6.5 Integration outside the United States Australian Federalism and the role of parties Canada 6.6 India Leadership incentives Rank and file incentives The party and Federalism 1967 and thereafter 7. Institutional sources of federal stability I: 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Level 2 and the federalist 7.3 Level 3 institutions 7.4 Australia, Canada, Germany, and India revisited Germany Canada Canada vs Australia and India 7.3 Local and regional design parameters 8. Institutional sources of federal stability II: 8.1 Electoral mechanisms and societal structures Representation Ethnicity Defining federal subjects Number of local jurisdictions Authority over local governments 8.2 Bicameralism Symmetry Presidential authority Presidential selection Electoral connections 8.3 Level 1 and the scope of the federal mandate 8.4 Level 0 - things beyond design 9. Designing Federalism: 9.1 Russia Electoral arrangements Regional autonomy Constitutional matters Parties and the current status quo 9.2 The European Union Background The role of parties The puzzle of the collusion France versus Britain EU institutional design 9.4 Conclusion.

306 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a model that draws on existing substantive literature and on theories that assume strategic behavior on the part of judges, executives, and legislatures is proposed to understand the behavior of the Russian Constitutional Court (Konstitucjonnyj sud).
Abstract: What role do courts play in the establishment and maintenance of constitutional democracies? To address this question, we elaborate a model that draws on existing substantive literature and on theories that assume strategic behavior on the part of judges, executives, and legislatures. This model, in turn, leads to several behavioral predictions about the interactions among the relevant political actors. Although those predictions could be assessed in many distinct contexts, we focus on Russia. In particular, we provide a demonstration of how the model helps make sense of the behavior of the Constitutional Court (Konstitucjonnyj sud) in light of the difficult political situation it confronted. We conclude with some thoughts on the broader implications of our theory for the study of courts throughout Eastern Europe and how it may well illuminate constitutional politics in other parts of the world. Before World War II, few European States had constitutional courts, and virtually none exercised any significant judicial review over legislation. After 1945 all that changed. West Germany, Italy, Austria, Cyprus, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Greece, Spain, Portugal and even France . . created tribunals with power to annul legislative enactments inconsistent with constitutional requirements. Many of these courts have become significant-even powerful-actors. -Herman Schwartz (1992:741) European constitutional courts have created situations in which legislators feel obliged to enter into constitutional discourse, both an internal discourse and a discourse with the court, to make and to take seriously constitutional arguments, and to cast and recast statutory language in the light of potential constitutional objections. -Martin Shapiro & Alec Stone (1994b:417) [T]here is an expansion of judicial power afoot in the world's political systems. -C. Neal Tate (1995:27) Today, at the end of the twentieth century, it is scarcely possible to recount, much less understand, the major political and social developments in industrial societies without attention to legal norms, courts and judges. -Sally J. Kenney, William A Reisinger & John C. Reitz (1999:1) These quotes, from legal academics and social scientists alike, are just the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, for more than a decade now, the community of law and society scholars has acknowledged the "active role" courts are playing "in ensuring the supremacy of constitutional principles" (Henckaerts & Van der Jeught 1998) and in democratization efforts throughout the world, but especially in Eastern Europe. This expansion of judicial power-or what some term the "judicialization of politics" (Tate & Vallinder 1995a) raises whole sets of intriguing questions, and unanswered questions at that.1 For, despite an acknowledgment of their importance, we "know precious little," as Gibson et al. (1998) recently lamented, "about the judicial and legal systems in countries outside the United States. We understand little or nothing about the degree to which various judiciaries are politicized; how judges make decisions; how, whether, and to what extent those decisions are implemented; how ordinary citizens influence courts, if at all; or what effect courts have on institutions and cultures" (p. 343). Certainly no single research endeavor can fill all the voids Gibson and his colleagues identify. What we do instead is tackle one question, albeit one that is of core concern to the Gibson team, as well as to many others laboring in this field: What role do constitutional courts play in the establishment and maintenance of democracies? For judicial specialists, this question is of obvious significance, having served as a focal point for studies on the U.S. Supreme Court for over four decades (Casper 1976; Dahl 1957; Gates 1992; Rosenberg 1991). But there are at least two other groups for which our question might resonate. …

279 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Olga Shvetsova1
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the ex-post institutional effects do not need to be endogenous, since at the time of designing the rules the designers were not in position to control the selection of these effects.
Abstract: Institutions shape social outcomes, yet institutions themselves are products of political choices When institutional choices are determined by the same political and social processes that they shape, institutions are endogenously selected Here I address the question of whether this endogenous institutional selection necessarily implies endogenous institutional effects If it does, the use of institutional parameters as independent variables explaining policy outcomes and properties of the resulting political regimes, widespread in the literature on comparative political institutions, is hard to justify I argue, however, that strategic choice of the rules of the game implies designers' ability to obtain their preferred institutional effects only under conditions of complete information Under incomplete information, ex-post institutional effects do not need to be endogenous, since at the time of designing the rules the designers were not in position to control the selection of these effects The reason why the choice of the rules does not imply the choice of their effects lies in the intervening and interactive (rather than additive) role played by the environmental parameters, including players' own characteristics, that are not revealed at the time of the institutional choice Additionally to the model which illustrates the logic of the argument and the workings of intervening structural effects, I find supporting evidence in the processes of design of election laws in post-communist Europe, where stages of design and implementation followed each other in a very quick succession yet were characterized by substantial changes in manifested institutional preferences of the key political players

108 citations


Cited by
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Book
01 Jan 2001
TL;DR: This chapter discusses Decision-Theoretic Foundations, Game Theory, Rationality, and Intelligence, and the Decision-Analytic Approach to Games, which aims to clarify the role of rationality in decision-making.
Abstract: Preface 1. Decision-Theoretic Foundations 1.1 Game Theory, Rationality, and Intelligence 1.2 Basic Concepts of Decision Theory 1.3 Axioms 1.4 The Expected-Utility Maximization Theorem 1.5 Equivalent Representations 1.6 Bayesian Conditional-Probability Systems 1.7 Limitations of the Bayesian Model 1.8 Domination 1.9 Proofs of the Domination Theorems Exercises 2. Basic Models 2.1 Games in Extensive Form 2.2 Strategic Form and the Normal Representation 2.3 Equivalence of Strategic-Form Games 2.4 Reduced Normal Representations 2.5 Elimination of Dominated Strategies 2.6 Multiagent Representations 2.7 Common Knowledge 2.8 Bayesian Games 2.9 Modeling Games with Incomplete Information Exercises 3. Equilibria of Strategic-Form Games 3.1 Domination and Ratonalizability 3.2 Nash Equilibrium 3.3 Computing Nash Equilibria 3.4 Significance of Nash Equilibria 3.5 The Focal-Point Effect 3.6 The Decision-Analytic Approach to Games 3.7 Evolution. Resistance. and Risk Dominance 3.8 Two-Person Zero-Sum Games 3.9 Bayesian Equilibria 3.10 Purification of Randomized Strategies in Equilibria 3.11 Auctions 3.12 Proof of Existence of Equilibrium 3.13 Infinite Strategy Sets Exercises 4. Sequential Equilibria of Extensive-Form Games 4.1 Mixed Strategies and Behavioral Strategies 4.2 Equilibria in Behavioral Strategies 4.3 Sequential Rationality at Information States with Positive Probability 4.4 Consistent Beliefs and Sequential Rationality at All Information States 4.5 Computing Sequential Equilibria 4.6 Subgame-Perfect Equilibria 4.7 Games with Perfect Information 4.8 Adding Chance Events with Small Probability 4.9 Forward Induction 4.10 Voting and Binary Agendas 4.11 Technical Proofs Exercises 5. Refinements of Equilibrium in Strategic Form 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Perfect Equilibria 5.3 Existence of Perfect and Sequential Equilibria 5.4 Proper Equilibria 5.5 Persistent Equilibria 5.6 Stable Sets 01 Equilibria 5.7 Generic Properties 5.8 Conclusions Exercises 6. Games with Communication 6.1 Contracts and Correlated Strategies 6.2 Correlated Equilibria 6.3 Bayesian Games with Communication 6.4 Bayesian Collective-Choice Problems and Bayesian Bargaining Problems 6.5 Trading Problems with Linear Utility 6.6 General Participation Constraints for Bayesian Games with Contracts 6.7 Sender-Receiver Games 6.8 Acceptable and Predominant Correlated Equilibria 6.9 Communication in Extensive-Form and Multistage Games Exercises Bibliographic Note 7. Repeated Games 7.1 The Repeated Prisoners Dilemma 7.2 A General Model of Repeated Garnet 7.3 Stationary Equilibria of Repeated Games with Complete State Information and Discounting 7.4 Repeated Games with Standard Information: Examples 7.5 General Feasibility Theorems for Standard Repeated Games 7.6 Finitely Repeated Games and the Role of Initial Doubt 7.7 Imperfect Observability of Moves 7.8 Repeated Wines in Large Decentralized Groups 7.9 Repeated Games with Incomplete Information 7.10 Continuous Time 7.11 Evolutionary Simulation of Repeated Games Exercises 8. Bargaining and Cooperation in Two-Person Games 8.1 Noncooperative Foundations of Cooperative Game Theory 8.2 Two-Person Bargaining Problems and the Nash Bargaining Solution 8.3 Interpersonal Comparisons of Weighted Utility 8.4 Transferable Utility 8.5 Rational Threats 8.6 Other Bargaining Solutions 8.7 An Alternating-Offer Bargaining Game 8.8 An Alternating-Offer Game with Incomplete Information 8.9 A Discrete Alternating-Offer Game 8.10 Renegotiation Exercises 9. Coalitions in Cooperative Games 9.1 Introduction to Coalitional Analysis 9.2 Characteristic Functions with Transferable Utility 9.3 The Core 9.4 The Shapkey Value 9.5 Values with Cooperation Structures 9.6 Other Solution Concepts 9.7 Colational Games with Nontransferable Utility 9.8 Cores without Transferable Utility 9.9 Values without Transferable Utility Exercises Bibliographic Note 10. Cooperation under Uncertainty 10.1 Introduction 10.2 Concepts of Efficiency 10.3 An Example 10.4 Ex Post Inefficiency and Subsequent Oilers 10.5 Computing Incentive-Efficient Mechanisms 10.6 Inscrutability and Durability 10.7 Mechanism Selection by an Informed Principal 10.8 Neutral Bargaining Solutions 10.9 Dynamic Matching Processes with Incomplete Information Exercises Bibliography Index

3,569 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors address the strengths and weaknesses of the main available measures of political regime and extend the dichotomous regime classification first introduced in Alvarez et al. (Stud. Comp. Int. Dev. 31(2):3-36, 1996).
Abstract: We address the strengths and weaknesses of the main available measures of political regime and extend the dichotomous regime classification first introduced in Alvarez et al. (Stud. Comp. Int. Dev. 31(2):3–36, 1996). This extension focuses on how incumbents are removed from office. We argue that differences across regime measures must be taken seriously and that they should be evaluated in terms of whether they (1) serve to address important research questions, (2) can be interpreted meaningfully, and (3) are reproducible. We argue that existing measures of democracy are not interchangeable and that the choice of measure should be guided by its theoretical and empirical underpinnings. We show that the choice of regime measure matters by replicating studies published in leading journals.

1,922 citations

Book Chapter
01 Jan 2010

1,556 citations

Book
01 Jan 2006
TL;DR: The politics of vote-buying and the game of electoral transitions are discussed in this article, where the authors focus on the structural determinants of mass support and the electoral fraud.
Abstract: 1. Equilibrium party hegemony 2. Structural determinants of mass support 3. Budget cycles under autocracy 4. The politics of vote-buying 5. Judging economic performance in hard times 6. Ideological divisions in the opposition camp 7. How voters choose and mass coordination dilemmas 8. Electoral fraud and the game of electoral transitions 9. Conclusion.

1,227 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors view federalism as a governance solution of the state to credibly preserving market incentives and suggest that some forms of federalism are self-sustaining.
Abstract: The authors advance a new perspective in the study of federalism. Their approach views federalism as a governance solution of the state to credibly preserving market incentives. Market incentives are preserved if the state is credibly prevented from compromising on future economic success and from bailing out future failures. The salient features of federalism--decentralization of information and authority and interjurisdictional competition--help provide credible commitment or these purposes. In addition, the authors suggest that some federalism are self-sustaining.

1,205 citations