|
William H. Riker
William Harrison Riker (September 22, 1920 – June 26, 1993) was an American political scientist known for applying game theory and mathematics to political science. He helped establish University of Rochester as a center of the behavioral revolution in political science. Early life and education William Harrison Riker was born on September 22, 1920, in Des Moines, Iowa. He had 4 children, 2 sons and 2 daughters, with wife Mary Elizabeth. He earned his bachelor's degree in economics at Indiana's DePauw University in 1942 and received his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1948. While a student at DePauw, he was initiated into the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. Before his Ph.D., Riker worked at the RCA (then Radio Corporation of America), where he worked as a time-and-motion analyst. Academic career Riker took on a professorship at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin (then Lawrence College), where he published '' The Theory of Political Coalitions'' (1962). In 1962, he be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Des Moines, Iowa
Des Moines is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities in Iowa, most populous city in the U.S. state of Iowa. It is the county seat of Polk County, Iowa, Polk County with parts extending into Warren County, Iowa, Warren County. It is named after the Des Moines River, likely derived from the French "Rivière des Moines" meaning "River of the Monks." The city was incorporated in 1851 as Fort Des Moines and shortened to "Des Moines" in 1857. Its population was 214,133 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. The Des Moines metropolitan area, covering six counties, is the Metropolitan statistical area, 81st largest metropolitan area in the U.S. with about 750,000 residents, and is the largest metropolitan area entirely in Iowa. Des Moines is a major center of the United States insurance industry and has a sizable financial services and publishing business base. The city is the headquarters for the Principal Financial Group and Wellmark Blue Cross B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Choice Theory
Social choice theory is a branch of welfare economics that extends the Decision theory, theory of rational choice to collective decision-making. Social choice studies the behavior of different mathematical procedures (social welfare function, social welfare functions) used to combine individual preferences into a coherent whole.Amartya Sen (2008). "Social Choice". ''The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics'', 2nd EditionAbstract & TOC./ref> It contrasts with political science in that it is a Normative economics, normative field that studies how a society can make good decisions, whereas political science is a Positive economics, descriptive field that observes how societies actually do make decisions. While social choice began as a branch of economics and decision theory, it has since received substantial contributions from mathematics, philosophy, political science, and game theory. Real-world examples of social choice rules include constitution, constitutions and Parliamentary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1920 Births
Events January * January 1 ** Polish–Soviet War: The Russian Red Army increases its troops along the Polish border from 4 divisions to 20. ** Kauniainen in Finland, completely surrounded by the city of Espoo, secedes from Espoo as its own market town. * January 7 – Russian Civil War: The forces of White movement, Russian White Admiral Alexander Kolchak surrender in Krasnoyarsk; the Great Siberian Ice March ensues. * January 10 ** The Treaty of Versailles takes effect, officially ending World War I. ** The League of Nations Covenant enters into force. On January 16, the organization holds its first council meeting, in Paris. * January 11 – The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic is recognised de facto by European powers in Palace of Versailles, Versailles. * January 13 – ''The New York Times'' Robert H. Goddard#Publicity and criticism, ridicules American rocket scientist Robert H. Goddard, which it will rescind following the launch of Apollo 11 in 1969. * Janua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Duverger's Law
In political science, Duverger's law ( ) holds that in political systems with single-member districts and the first-past-the-post voting system, as in, for example, the United States and Britain, only 2 powerful political parties tend to control power. Citizens do not vote for small parties because they fear splitting votes away from the major party. By contrast, in countries with proportional representation or two-round elections, such as France, Sweden, New Zealand or Spain, there is no two-party duopoly on power. There is usually a significant number of political parties. Citizens are actively encouraged to create, join and vote for new political parties if they are unhappy with current parties. Mechanism A two-party system is most common under plurality voting. Voters typically cast one vote per race. Maurice Duverger argued there were two main mechanisms by which plurality voting systems lead to fewer major parties: (i) small parties are disincentivized to form because t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Public Affairs Press
Public Affairs Press ( – mid-1980s) was a book publisher in Washington, D.C., owned and often edited by Morris Bartel Schnapper (1912–1999). History According to notional successor Peter Osnos of the 1997-founded PublicAffairs: For fifty years, the banner of Public Affairs Press was carried by its owner, Morris B. Schnapper, who published Gandhi, Nasser, Toynbee, Truman, and about 1,500 other authors... His legacy will endure in the books to come. Supreme Court Case In 1961, '' Pub. Affairs Associates, Inc. v. Rickover'', 369 U.S. 111 (1962), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the circuit court's decision should be vacated because the facts of the case were too unclear. Remanded to district court to create an "adequate and full-bodied record." The case concerned whether or not speeches written by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover in the course of his duties to the federal government of the United States were copyrightable. Generally, wor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eamonn Butler
Eamonn Butler (born 1953) is a British economist. He is the co-founder and director of the Adam Smith Institute. Early life Eamonn Butler was born in 1953. His brother is Stuart Butler.Michael David Kandiah, Anthony Seldon, ''Ideas and Think Tanks in Contemporary Britain'', Routledge, 2014, Volume 1, pp. 73-7/ref> He graduated from the University of St Andrews and also studied at the University of Aberdeen. Career Butler worked on pensions and welfare issues for the United States House of Representatives in Washington DC, before returning to the UK where he served as editor of the ''British Insurance Broker Monthly''. He co-founded the Adam Smith Institute in London with his brother Stuart and Madsen Pirie, both graduates from the University of St Andrews. He now serves as its director. He is author of books on the work of three economists: '' Hayek: His Contribution to the Economic and Political Thought of Our Time''; ''Milton Friedman: A Guide to his Economic Thought''; ''L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
McKelvey–Schofield Chaos Theorem
The McKelvey–Schofield chaos theorem is a result in social choice theory. It states that if preferences are defined over a multidimensional policy space, then choosing policies using majority rule is unstable. There will in most cases be no Condorcet winner and any policy can be enacted through a sequence of votes, regardless of the original policy. This means that adding more policies and changing the order of votes ("agenda manipulation") can be used to arbitrarily pick the winner. Versions of the theorem have been proved for different types of preferences, with different classes of exceptions. A version of the theorem was first proved by Richard McKelvey in 1976, for preferences based on Euclidean distances in \mathbb^. Another version of the theorem was proved by Norman Schofield in 1978, for differentiable preferences. The theorem can be thought of as showing that Arrow's impossibility theorem holds when preferences are restricted to be concave in \mathbb^. The median vo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arrow's Impossibility Theorem
Arrow's impossibility theorem is a key result in social choice theory showing that no ranked-choice procedure for group decision-making can satisfy the requirements of rational choice. Specifically, Arrow showed no such rule can satisfy the independence of irrelevant alternatives axiom. This is the principle that a choice between two alternatives and should not depend on the quality of some third, unrelated option, . The result is often cited in discussions of voting rules, where it shows no ranked voting rule to eliminate the spoiler effect. This result was first shown by the Marquis de Condorcet, whose voting paradox showed the impossibility of logically-consistent majority rule; Arrow's theorem generalizes Condorcet's findings to include non-majoritarian rules like collective leadership or consensus decision-making. While the impossibility theorem shows all ranked voting rules must have spoilers, the frequency of spoilers differs dramatically by rule. Plurality-rule me ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heresthetic
Heresthetic is a theoretical approach within political science that examines how political actors strategically Psychological manipulation, manipulate the structure of political situations, decision-making processes, and agenda-setting to achieve favorable outcomes even when they lack majority support. The term was coined by political scientist William H. Riker in the 1980s, combining the Greek words "hairesis" (choosing) and "rhetoric" to describe tactics beyond mere persuasion. Heresthetic belongs to the tradition of positive political theory, incorporating elements from game theory, public choice theory, rational choice theory, and social choice theory to analyze strategic political behavior. While rhetoric focuses on persuading others to change their preferences, heresthetic involves restructuring the political environment to achieve victory using opponents' existing preferences. Common heresthetic strategies include dimension manipulation, strategic voting, agenda control, an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Federalism
Federalism is a mode of government that combines a general level of government (a central or federal government) with a regional level of sub-unit governments (e.g., provinces, State (sub-national), states, Canton (administrative division), cantons, territorial, territories, etc.), while dividing the powers of governing between the two levels of governments. Two illustrative examples of federated countries—one of the world's oldest federations, and one recently organized—are Australia #Government and politics, Australia and Federated States of Micronesia, Micronesia. Johannes Althusius (1563–1638), is considered the father of modern federalism, along with Montesquieu. In 1603, Althusius first described the bases of this political philosophy in his ''Politica Methodice Digesta, Atque Exemplis Sacris et Profanis Illustrata''. By 1748, in his treatise ''The Spirit of Law'', Montesquieu (1689-1755) observed various examples of federalist governments: in corporate societies, i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rational Choice Theory
Rational choice modeling refers to the use of decision theory (the theory of rational choice) as a set of guidelines to help understand economic and social behavior. The theory tries to approximate, predict, or mathematically model human behavior by analyzing the behavior of a rational actor facing the same costs and benefits.Gary Browning, Abigail Halcli, Frank Webster (2000). ''Understanding Contemporary Society: Theories of the Present'', London: Sage Publications. Rational choice models are most closely associated with economics, where mathematical analysis of behavior is standard. However, they are widely used throughout the social sciences, and are commonly applied to cognitive science, criminology, political science, and sociology. Overview The basic premise of rational choice theory is that the decisions made by individual actors will collectively produce aggregate social behaviour. The theory also assumes that individuals have preferences out of available choice ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kenneth Shepsle
Kenneth Shepsle (born September 10, 1945) is an American political scientist who is influential for rational choice scholarship. He is George D. Markham professor of government at Harvard University, and a research associate at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science there. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the National Academy of Sciences. As an undergraduate, he majored in mathematics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC, UNC–Chapel Hill, or simply Carolina) is a public university, public research university in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States. Chartered in 1789, the university first began enrolli .... His doctorate is from University of Rochester. References Harvard University faculty American political scientists University of Rochester alumni 1945 births Living people Washington University in St. Louis faculty University of North Carolina at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
