Alex Coram

The rise and fall of support for political parties: a dynamic analysis

Abstract The dynamics of political systems are explained by writers in the Schumpetarian tradition in terms of such things as moods, tastes, animal spirits, fashions and irrational impulses. This paper takes the idea of a non-rational choice explanation seriously and explores some of its implications. It develops a model of how voters might behave if their actions were not rational. It shows that, under certain broad conditions, a system made up of voters that act on impulse produces cycles in party support. The analysis also raises some questions about time and continuity in the analysis partys support. I also suggest an empirical test of the theory.

The optimal extraction of water along an arbitrarily configured river system

The fundamental problem for any scheme of water management that tries to maximise welfare across a river system is that of determining the optimal allocation at every point. The problem cannot, in general, be avoided by trading water rights because the price will not account for the effect of extraction at any one point on all other points. This article interprets the problem in terms of the indeterminacy that results from missing information on the value of water at internal junctions between rivers. It is then solved in an optimal control theory framework.

Super-Agents and the Problem of Controlling the Dynamics of Regional Arms Races

Sometimes a large agent, called a super-agent, wishes to control the arms expenditures of regional powers over time, but this type of situation is difficult to analyze if the smaller agents are interacting with others. This paper attempts to overcome some of these difficulties and to provide general results that will be useful for comparison with models of more particular cases. It does this by extending the well known Richardson approach to dynamic arms races in new directions. It also produces some counterintuitive results. Among these is that the optimal programme for the super-agent may be to accelerate the expenditure of agents whose final expenditure it wishes to reduce. This has implications for large power policy in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Resource spending over time in competitions for electoral support

So far we have little by way of a theoretical understanding of the dynamics of electoral competition. This paper attempts to fill some of this gap by studying resource expenditure over the electoral cycle. Among the main results is that, when contributions from donors are independent of support, parties accelerate expenditure during the entire period between elections, even when voters do not forget. If contributions depend on support, and are significant, parties front load expenditure and decelerate.

Social Choice From An n-Dimensional Euclidean Space: A Short Impossibility Proof

Most presentations of social choice theory are difficult for a non-specialist to follow. This paper attempts to provide some feel for what is going on by providing a short proof of an impossibility theorem in terms of the techniques that are familiar to political economists. We illustrate the advantages of this approach with a short proof of an impossibility theorem.

A note on distribution in a vote bidding game with general interest and single issue voters

Abstract This paper explores the strategies of candidates bidding for votes from a population made up of single issue voters and voters who respond in a probabilistic manner.

Social Choice as a continuous Mapping from IRn → IR: A Group Invariance Approach

Social choice is studied by employing a group invariance approach in a way that appears not to have been previously been exploited. This simplifies the problem and the proofs and provides some new insights into the foundations of impossibility results.

The dynamics of asymmetric interactions: Some insights from formal theory and Richardson models

Sometimes a large power attempts to influence the actions of one or more smaller agents that may be influenced by other small agents. This situation gives rise to amixed system of symmetric and asymmetric interactions and each case of this kind seems to have unique characteristics. This article asks, can a formal approach bring out some general features of such interactions? We extend a well-known model of the dynamics of arms races in new directions, and produce some counterintuitive results that may have interest for policy debates.

Relative Satisfaction and Welfare Maximizing Wealth Distribution

Suppose individuals get utilities from the total amount of wealth they hold and from their wealth relative to those above and below them in a near neighbourhood. This paper studies the distribution of wealth that maximizes an additive welfare function made up of these utilities. It shows that the optimal distribution mostly requires an egalitarian solution if the concern is with those above. If the concern is with those below it has some unexpected properties.

Welfare and the Strategies of Preference Revelation

The purpose of this chapter is to consider the case where the state acts as a benevolent dictator and attempts to maximize the welfare of the population. The problem of finding the maximizing set of transfers would be easy to solve if the utilities of each individual and the device for aggregating these utilities, were known. All that would then be required is to specify the welfare operator and to pick the outcomes that maximized the specified measure of aggregate utilities. This may all seem straightforward. Why not simply ask each individual how much each outcome is worth? The values they report could then be aggregated and the outcome selected accordingly. It should be obvious from the previous analysis, however, that the strategies of the individuals reporting their values are unlikely to bring about an outcome on the Pareto frontier. This is because a strategy of lying cannot be prohibited and the optimum strategy for each player will be to report whatever gives the best chance of a favourable outcome. An outcome based on these reports is not necessarily optimal. An example is a game where the prize is given to the individual who reports the highest utility for some desirable outcome. Since it is optimal for everyone to give the maximum number allowable the information content of the reports is zero.