Models and Methods Commons^™

The Modern Administrative State: Why We Have ‘Big Government’ And How To Run And Reform Bureaucratic Organizations, Sean Y. Sakaguchi

CMC Senior Theses

This work asserts that bureaucratic organization is not only an inevitable part of the modern administrative state, but that a high quality bureaucracy within a strongly empowered executive branch is an ideal mechanism for running government in the modern era. Beginning with a philosophical inquiry into the purpose of American government as we understand it today, this paper responds to criticisms of the role of expanded government and develops a framework for evaluating the quality of differing government structures. Following an evaluation of the current debate surrounding bureaucracies (from both proponents and critics), this thesis outlines the lessons and principles …

Evolution Of A Nation After A Dictatorship: How Law, Politics And Society Of The 1973 Dictatorship In Uruguay And Of The Subsequent Return Of Democracy In 1985, Potentially Helped Evolve The Nation Of Today., Jonathan A. Fein Proaño

Master's Theses

In 1973, Uruguay’s president authored a coup d’état with the military and changed the history and fabric of Uruguay. Once democracy returned to Uruguay in 1985, it was a chance to see if an evolution of the law, politics and society would occur. This thesis aims to analyze and understand the patterns of change and de-evolution or evolution that happened during the dictatorship and then over the last 30 years. I break down the process of changes that happened legally and politically, how the dictatorship and its leaders used law to destroy rule of law, and how society changed.

This …

Unintended Consequences Of Cigarette Prohibition, Regulation, And Taxation, Jonathan D. Kulick, James E. Prieger, Mark A. R. Kleiman

School of Public Policy Working Papers

Abstract Laws that prohibit, regulate, or tax cigarettes can generate illicit markets for tobacco products. Illicit markets both reduce the efficacy of policies intended to improve public health and create harms of their own. Enforcement can reduce evasion but creates additional harms, including incarceration and violence. There is strong evidence that more enforcement in illicit drug markets can spur violence. The presence of licit substitutes, such as electronic cigarettes, has the potential to greatly reduce the size of illicit markets. We present a model demonstrating why enforcement can increase violence, show that states with higher tobacco taxes have larger illicit …

Creativity Inspired Community: A Practice And Process For Growing Communities Through Group Creativity, David Eyman

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This project explores the use of group creativity practices to support changing attitudes and the formation of cohesive communities in civic and business settings. More specifically this project explores the use of a predetermined sequence of group creativity tools to facilitate a change in participant mentality. The attitudinal shift is from self-serving to engaged and collaborative. The ultimate outcome of using the proposed framework is the bonding of incompatibly opinionated people into a solidified community that is responsible for implementing their novel ideas. Ideas formed within this process are a reflection of the individual’s personal life objectives as they relate …

Improving Rhode Island’S Health Care System: Lessons From The Cuban Model, Sarah R. Moffitt

Senior Honors Projects

Improving Rhode Island’s health care system: lessons from the Cuban model

Cuba is world renowned for its health care system. In regards to international health crises, Cuba is a leader in sending workers abroad and training doctors from all over the world. Within its own borders, the Cuban model provides free access to all citizens in which every individual has a primary care provider. Cuba boasts high vaccination rates, a long life expectancy, low infant mortality rate, and a population that is one of the healthiest in the western hemisphere.

The purpose of this research project is to evaluate the …

Impact Of The “Nirbhaya” Rape Case: Isolated Phenomenon Or Social Change?, Tina P. Lapsia

Honors Scholar Theses

In December 2012, a twenty-three year old college student, who was given the pseudonym “Nirbhaya” (“fearless”), was fatally gang-raped on a private bus in Delhi, India, galvanizing the country to swiftly adopt new legislative measures and catapulting the issue of violence against women in India into the international spotlight. Although assault and rape cases have made India infamous for its high volume of crimes against women, the reaction to this particular incident was much different from before. This paper investigates whether the governmental and societal responses represent social change, as indicated by changing attitudes towards violence against women in India. …

Courtroom To Classroom: Judicial Policymaking And Affirmative Action, Dylan Britton Saul

Political Science Honors Projects

The judicial branch, by exercising judicial review, can replace public policies with ones of their own creation. To test the hypothesis that judicial policymaking is desirable only when courts possess high capacity and necessity, I propose an original model incorporating six variables: generalism, bi-polarity, minimalism, legitimization, structural impediments, and public support. Applying the model to a comparative case study of court-sanctioned affirmative action policies in higher education and K-12 public schools, I find that a lack of structural impediments and bi-polarity limits the desirability of judicial race-based remedies in education. Courts must restrain themselves when engaging in such policymaking.

Litigating State Interests: Attorneys General As Amici, Margaret H. Lemos, Kevin M. Quinn

Faculty Articles

An important strain of federalism scholarship locates the primary value of federalism in how it carves up the political landscape, allowing groups that are out of power at the national level to flourish—and, significantly, to govern—in the states. On that account, partisanship, rather than a commitment to state authority as such, motivates state actors to act as checks on federal power. Our study examines partisan motivation in one area where state actors can, and do, advocate on behalf of state power: the Supreme Court. We compiled data on state amicus filings in Supreme Court cases from the 1979–2013 Terms and …

Social Capital At The Capitol: A Social Network Analysis Of Interest Group Influence In The 111th Congress, Steven A. Martin

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

This dissertation builds on existing scholarship in political science and political sociology to explore the influence of interest groups in legislative action networks. The primary theoretical insight is that as the number of interest group affiliations between two members of Congress increases, so does the frequency with which they forge other sorts of social ties necessary to advance the interests of their interest group constituencies. In particular, the analysis looks at interest group donation strategies, legislative co-sponsorships, and roll-call votes during the 111^th Congress (2009-2010). The analysis uses social network analysis methods to create network models of 19 different …

A Quantum Congress, Jorge R. Roig

Scholarly Works

This article tries to address the problem of a corrupt and broken electoral system that has been captured by special interests through big money spending in political campaigns, while at the same time preserving the spirit of the Free Speech Clause of our Constitution. In doing so, this article first reviews and summarizes the different alternatives proposed as potential fixes for the campaign finance problem. It then explains why none of the proposed alternatives can accomplish the dual goals set out above. Finally, the article briefly sketches a proposal for a fundamental reworking of our representative democracy by substituting legislative …

On The Road To Watershed Hustings, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Law and former Nominated Member of Parliament Eugene Tan noted that with just 23 months left in the 12th Parliament's five-year term, the next polls, which will have to be held by Jan 9, 2017, promise to be the watershed general election. He also commented that it will almost certainly be a straight fight between the ruling People's Action Party and the Workers' Party, providing some indication of whether Singapore is evolving from a one-party dominant to a two-party political system.

The Effect Of The Syrian Crisis On Jordanian Internal Security, Andrew E. Szparaga

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Jordan has a refugee crisis; between 620,000 and 1.3 million Syrian refugees are seeking refuge in Jordan. This report aims to answer which aspect of Jordanian security the refugees have the biggest effect on. It also aims to answer whether the refugees based in camps, like Za’atari, or those integrated into the Jordanian communities are more threatening to internal security. Because many argue that Syrian refugees have a negative effect on the economic, environmental, military, political, and social securities of Jordan, many believe that they might pose a possible threat to the country’s internal security factors. The Syrian refugees have …

Invisible Ink: Intersectionality And Political Inquiry, Dara Z. Strolovich

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.

Gaming Direct Democracy: How Voters’ Views Of Job Performance Interact With Elite Endorsements Of Ballot Measures, Craig M. Burnett, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

Voters are thought to rely on elite endorsements in helping them make decisions. Their ability to use these endorsements is especially important in direct democracy, since ballot measures are complex policy proposals that lack partisan cues printed on the ballot. Using an exit survey, we look at California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s endorsement of four Indian gaming measures on the ballot during the presidential primary election of 2008. We find that voters who had knowledge of the elite endorsement differed little from those who did not. We show, however, that Schwarzenegger’s endorsement was conditionally related to support for the measures, depending …

Cheap, Easy, Or Connected: The Conditions For Creating Group Coordination, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Daniel Rodriguez, Nicholas Weller

Faculty Scholarship

In both legal and political settings there has been a push toward adopting institutions that encourage consensus. The key feature of these institutions is that they bring interested parties together to communicate with each other. Existing research about the success or failure of particular institutions is ambiguous. Therefore, we turn our attention to understanding the general conditions when consensus is achievable, and we test experimentally three crucial factors that affect a group's ability to achieve consensus: (1) the difficulty of the problem, (2) the costs of communication, and (3) the structure of communication. Using multiple experimental approaches, we find that …

The Theory Of Minds Within The Theory Of Games, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Mark Turner, Nicholas Weller

Faculty Scholarship

Classical rationality as accepted by game theory assumes that a human chooser in a given moment has consistent preferences and beliefs and that actions result consistently from those preferences and beliefs, and moreover that these preferences, beliefs, and actions remain the same across equal choice moments. Since, as is widely found in prior experiments, subjects do not follow the predictions of classical rationality, behavioral game theorists have assumed consistent deviations from classical rationality by assigning to subjects certain dispositions— risk preference, cognitive abilities, social norms, etc. All of these theories are fundamentally cognitive theories, making claims about how individual human …

Development For The Past, Present, And Future: Defining And Measuring Sustainable Development, Max Cantor

Senior Honors Projects

In 1987, the United Nations released the Brundtland Report, which defined sustainable development as “development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” While this definition provides a relatively stable theoretical base from which development economists and political scientists can begin to tackle issues surrounding sustainable development, the inherently amorphous nature of this definition has also created a fair amount of ambiguity in both the economic literature surrounding sustainable development and the subsequent attempts by economists to measure it.

Historically, those interested in the science of development have typically …

Federal Earmarks In The State Of Georgia, Jeffrey Lazarus

Georgia Journal of Public Policy

Earmarks have been controversial ever since becoming a prominent part of the congressional spending process. Critics charge that earmarks fund projects with little or no economic value (for instance Ted Stevens’ “Bridge to Nowhere,”) but instead allow Congress members to direct government spending to campaign contributors (the charge leading to a federal investigation of the now-defunct lobbying firm PMA Group). On the other side of the controversy, congressional earmarks do fund a number of community improvements which are very valuable, at least locally. In Georgia, the fiscal 2010 appropriations bills included earmarks which allocated $450,000 to update College Park’s emergency …

The Blind Leading The Blind: Who Gets Polling Information And Does It Improve Decisions?, Cheryl Boudreau, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

We analyze whether and when polls help citizens to improve their decisions. Specifically, we use experiments to investigate 1) whether and when citizens are willing to obtain polls and 2) whether and when polls help citizens to make better choices than they would have made on their own. We find that citizens are more likely to obtain polls when the decisions they must make are difficult and when they are unsophisticated. Ironically, when the decisions are difficult, the pollees are also uninformed and, therefore, do not provide useful information. We also find that when polls indicate the welfare-improving choice, citizens …

Legislatures, Judges, And Parole Boards: The Allocations Of Discretion Under Determinate Sentencing, Dhammika Dharmapala, Nuno Garoupa, Joanna Shepherd

Faculty Articles

The most significant development in criminal sentencing in recent decades has been the shift from indeterminate to determinate sentencing. Yet no study has systematically explored the factors leading to this shift. In this Article, we provide the first analysis to explain why state legislatures enact reforms that significantly reduce both judges’ and parole boards’ discretion over criminal sentencing. First, we develop a political economy model that explains why legislatures acting in their own self-interest may be motivated to enact these laws. Our model predicts that legislatures are more likely to enact determinate sentencing reforms when there is tension among the …

Did A Switch In Time Save Nine?, Daniel E. Ho, Kevin M. Quinn

Faculty Articles

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s court-packing plan of 1937 and the “switch in time that saved nine” animate central questions of law, politics, and history. Did Supreme Court Justice Roberts abruptly switch votes in 1937 to avert a showdown with Roosevelt? Scholars disagree vigorously about whether Roberts’s transformation was gradual and anticipated or abrupt and unexpected. Using newly collected data of votes from the 1931–1940 terms, we contribute to the historical understanding of this episode by providing the first quantitative evidence of Roberts’s transformation. Applying modern measurement methods, we show that Roberts shifted sharply to the left in the 1936 term. The …

How Not To Lie With Judicial Votes: Misconceptions, Measurement, And Models, Daniel E. Ho, Kevin M. Quinn

Faculty Articles

In Part I, we describe the formal spatial theory often invoked to justify the statistical approach. While spatial theory has the nice feature of synthesizing theory and empirics, legal scholars may remain skeptical of its strong assumptions. Fortunately, measurement models can be illuminating even if the spatial theory is questionable.

To illustrate this, Part II provides a nontechnical overview of the intuition behind measurement models that take merits votes as an input and return a summary score of Justice-specific behavior as an output. Such scores provide clear and intuitive descriptive summaries of differences in judicial voting.

Confusion abounds, however, and …

Connected Coordination: Network Structure And Group Coordination, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Ramamohan Paturi, Nicholas Weller

Faculty Scholarship

Networks can affect a group’s ability to solve a coordination problem. We utilize laboratory experiments to study the conditions under which groups of subjects can solve coordination games. We investigate a variety of different network structures, and we also investigate coordination games with symmetric and asymmetric payoffs. Our results show that network connections facilitate coordination in both symmetric and asymmetric games. Most significantly, we find that increases in the number of network connections encourage coordination even when payoffs are highly asymmetric. These results shed light on the conditions that may facilitate coordination in real-world networks.

Competition In The Courtroom: When Does Expert Testimony Improve Jurors’ Decisions?, Cheryl Boudreau, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

Many scholars lament the increasing complexity of jury trials and question whether the testimony of competing experts helps unsophisticated jurors to make informed decisions. In this article, we analyze experimentally the effects that the testimony of competing experts has on (1) sophisticated versus unsophisticated subjects' decisions and (2) subjects' deci- sions on difficult versus easy problems. Our results demonstrate that competing expert testimony, by itself, does not help unsophisticated subjects to behave as though they are sophisticated, nor does it help subjects make comparable decisions on difficult and easy problems. When we impose additional institutions (such as penalties for lying …

How The Dissent Becomes The Majority: Using Federalism To Transform Coalitions In The U.S. Supreme Court, Tonja Jacobi, Vanessa A. Baird

Faculty Articles

This Article proposes that dissenting Supreme Court Justices provide cues in their written opinions about how future litigants can reframe case facts and legal arguments in similar future cases to garner majority support. Questions of federal-state power cut across most other substantive legal issues, and this can provide a mechanism for splitting existing majorities in future cases. By signaling to future litigants when this potential exists, dissenting judges can transform a dissent into a majority in similar future cases.

We undertake an empirical investigation of dissenting opinions in which the dissenting Justice suggests that future cases ought to be framed …

Ideology And Exceptionalism In Intellectual Property: An Empirical Study, Matthew Sag, Tonja Jacobi, Maxim Sytch

Faculty Articles

In this Article, we examine the effect of judicial ideology on IP case outcomes before the Supreme Court from 1954 to 2006. We find that ideology is a significant determinant of IP cases: the more conservative a justice is, the more likely he or she is to vote in favor of recognizing and enforcing rights to intellectual property. We also find evidence that the relationship is more complex than a purely ideological account would suggest; our results suggest that law matters too. We find that a number of factors that are specific to IP are also consequential. Additionally, we show …

Viewpoint Diversity And Media Consolidation: An Empirical Study, Daniel E. Ho, Kevin M. Quinn

Faculty Articles

One of the central predicates of legal regulation of media ownership is that ownership consolidation reduces substantive viewpoint diversity. Appellate courts and, in turn, the Federal Communications Commission have increasingly demanded evidence for this convergence hypothesis, but extant empirical measures of viewpoint diversity sidestep the problem, ignoring diversity, viewpoints, or both. Our Article develops and offers a finely tuned, time-varying statistical measure of editorial viewpoint diversity, based on a new database of over 1600 editorial positions in twenty-five top newspapers from 1988-2004. Using this new measure, we assess the validity of the convergence hypothesis by examining the evolution of editorial …

Money, Politics, And Impartial Justice, Joanna Shepherd

Faculty Articles

A centuries-old controversy asks whether judicial elections are inconsistent with impartial justice. The debate is especially important because more than 90 percent of the United States’ judicial business is handled by state courts, and approximately nine in ten of all state court judges face the voters in some type of election. Using a stunning new data set of virtually all state supreme court decisions from 1995 to 1998, this paper provides empirical evidence that elected state supreme court judges routinely adjust their rulings to attract votes and campaign money. I find that judges who must be reelected by Republican voters, …

Are Appointed Judges Strategic Too?, Joanna Shepherd

Faculty Articles

The conventional wisdom among many legal scholars is that judicial independence can best be achieved with an appointive judiciary; judicial elections turn judges into politicians, threatening judicial autonomy. Yet the original supporters of judicial elections successfully eliminated the appointive systems of many states by arguing that judges who owed their jobs to politicians could never be truly independent. Because the judiciary could function as a check and balance on the other governmental branches only if it truly were independent of them, the reformers reasoned that only popular elections could ensure a truly independent judiciary. Using a data set of virtually …

Competing Models Of Judicial Coalition Formation And Case Outcome Determination, Tonja Jacobi

Faculty Articles

Forming a coalition on a multi-judge panel involves an inherent trade-off between coalition maximization and ideological outcome optimization. Much scholarship is premised on assumptions about how judges make that trade-off; these assumptions have consequences for how we view and measure judicial decision-making. Specifying these assumptions, formally modeling their effects, and basing measures of judicial behavior on these results offer the potential to improve analysis of judicial decision-making.

This article formally explores three commonly posited modes of judicial decision-making: a minimum winning coalition model, representing attitudinalist views of judicial decision-making; a maximum winning coalition, capturing the effect of norms of joint …