Douglas Dion

the Further Evolution of Cooperation

Axelrods model of the evolution of cooperation was based on the iterated Prisoners Dilemma. Empirical work following this approach has helped establish the prevalence of cooperation based on reciprocity. Theoretical work has led to a deeper understanding of the role of other factors in the evolution of cooperation: the number of players, the range of possible choices, variation in the payoff structure, noise, the shadow of the future, population dynamics, and population structure.

Procedural Choice and the House Committee on Rules

The Rules Committee has long played a key role in the American legislative process through its ability to craft special amendment rules in the U.S. House. This article develops and tests a formal model of policy-making in Congress, highlighting the central role of the Rules Committee. This model generates simple conditions under which restrictive and nonrestrictive procedures will be used. It also provides a new view of restrictive procedures, one which sees restrictive amendment rules as devices for securing noncentrist policy outcomes on the Floor of the House. Evidence based on rule assignments in the Ninety-fourth through Ninety-eighth Congresses supports the claim that the preferences of the Rules Committee should be incorporated in any attempt to understand the pattern of restrictive rules in the House.

Competition and Ethnic Conflict

One of the most important theories of ethnic conflict focuses on the competition hypothesis: conflict occurs between ethnic groups when they interact more rather than when they are kept separated. If true, this theory implies that attempts at desegregation will necessarily be associated with ethnic conflict and violence. The author presents a formal model that suggests that the apparent competition effect uncovered in the empirical literature may, in fact, be spurious. Ethnic conflict can appear to increase with competition, even in the case where individuals are less likely to attack individuals of other ethnicities than members of their own ethnicity. A consideration of some alterations in the basic model suggests that the result is robust. An exploratory exercise shows that after controlling for the selection bias problems involved in studying ethnic conflict, the predicted competition effects disappear.

The robustness of the structure-induced equilibrium

This paper analyzes the question of the existence of a structure-induced equilibrium (SIE) under assumptions weaker than those considered by Kenneth Shepsle (1979). It turns out that the existence result is extremely fragile: counterexamples show that weakening almost any of the assumptions of the original theorem can result in the nonexistence of an SIE. I then utilize the insights of these counterexamples to construct new models in which SIE will exist and derive implications from these models for questions of legislative politics.

Participation and boycott in authoritarian elections

The existence of authoritarian elections raises a number of questions regarding the strategies of political opposition. What explains the choice of strategy among key opponents of a regime? What determines when opposition groups willingly participate in elections and when they engage in electoral boycott? To understand the opposition’s strategic choices, we develop a formal model of government–opposition interaction under authoritarianism. We contribute to the literature on election boycotts in emphasizing the effect of uncertainty about the strength of the regime on strategic decisions. The model produces predictions for several key features of authoritarian elections, including the decision to participate, boycott, and mobilize against the regime. Importantly and uniquely, the model provides an explanation for variation in opposition strategies within a particular country. Using the case of Jordan, we illustrate how the results of the model can be used to explain variation in opposition strategy across parliamentary elections.

The Filibuster as a War of Attrition

Contrary to popular claims, we argue that the filibuster conveys meaningful information about participants’ willingness to fight for an issue. To this end, we present a model of the filibuster as a continuous-time, two-sided game of incomplete information and derive predictions about the frequency and hazards of observed filibusters. We show that informative signaling in the model can be detected by the presence of a specific mixture over distinct duration processes. Using a new estimator consistent with these predictions, we find that the filibuster has historically conveyed information and that it continues to do so, counter to many claims. In addition, the model explains variations in the frequency and duration of filibusters, including the puzzling increase in filibustering after rule changes easing the adoption of cloture.