Jenna Bednar

A political theory of federalism

Multi-ethnic nations have sometimes found decentralized political arrangements attractive. Such arrangements permit peoples who may differ greatly in their conceptions of a good public life to develop and maintain their own separate communities, within the context of a larger and more powerful political economy. Ethnically more homogeneous nations such as the United States, at the time of its founding, or Australia today, often find decentralized modes of policy formation and administration convenient as well. In such nations, geographic distances, diverse economies, regional disparities in preferences, and variations in local historical experience can make decentralized policy-making institutions more efficient and more responsive than national ones. Federalism, the division of sovereign authority among levels of government, can be seen as a way of stabilizing, or making credible, decentralized governmental structures. This paper examines whether practical federal arrangements can sufficiently insulate governmental decisions at all levels to maintain a stable and credible decentralized political structure.

Can Game(s) Theory Explain Culture? The Emergence of Cultural Behavior within Multiple Games

The hallmarks of cultural behavior include consistency within and across individuals, variance between populations, behavioral stickiness, and possibly suboptimal performance. In this article, we build a formal framework within which these behavioral attributes emerge from the interactions of purposive agents. We then derive mathematical results showing these behaviors are optimal given our assumptions. Our framework rests on two primary assumptions: (1) agents play ensembles of games, not just single games as is traditionally the case in evolutionary game theory models; and (2) agents have finite cognitive capacity. Our analysis combines agent-based techniques and mathematics, enabling us to explore dynamics and to prove when the behaviors produced by the agents are equilibria. Our results provide game theoretic foundations for cultural diversity and agent-based support for how cultural behavior might emerge.

Behavioral spillovers and cognitive load in multiple games: An experimental study

We present evidence from laboratory experiments of behavioral spillovers and cognitive load that spread across strategic contexts. In the experiments, subjects play two distinct games simultaneously with different opponents. We find that the strategies chosen and the efficiency of outcomes in one game depends on the other game that the subject plays, and that play is altered in predictable directions. We develop a measure of behavioral variation in a normal form game, outcome entropy, and find that prevalent strategies in games with low outcome entropy are more likely to be used in the games with high outcome entropy, but not vice versa. Taken together, these findings suggest that people do not treat strategic situations in isolation, but may instead develop heuristics that they apply across games.

Emergent Cultural Signatures and Persistent Diversity: A Model of Conformity and Consistency

Empirical evidence demonstrates that cultures exist, they differ from one another, they’re coherent and yet diversity persists within them. In this paper, we describe a multi-dimensional model of cultural formation that produces all of these properties. Our model includes two forces: an internal desire to be consistent and social pressure to conform. When both forces operate, the society converges to a coordinated behavior that is consistent across the attributes. We find that convergence in the two-force model is slower than a pure conformity model and that a preponderance of one force over the other slows convergence, rather than hastening it. We further find that the two forces amplify small errors in individual behavior and prove capable of producing substantial persistent diversity.

Is Full Compliance Possible? Conditions for Shirking with Imperfect Monitoring and Continuous Action Spaces

Games of public good provision, collective action, and collusion share concern for the free rider that shirks on its obligations. According to the folk theorem, the free rider problem can be resolved through punishment mechanisms. Versions of the folk theorem have been applied when monitoring is imperfect. Empirical evidence contradicts this theory: while often subjects cooperate significantly, rarely is all shirking eliminated. To reconcile theory with empirical evidence, I provide a theoretical basis for the inability of participants in collective action problems to attain full compliance. I construct a general class of compliance models with imperfect monitoring through a common signal. I derive sufficient conditions — on both the utility of agents and the monitoring capabilities — under which slippage from full compliance is unavoidable, showing the limits of the folk theorem logic. The results cover most cases of concern to political scientists and political economists including public goods provision, contract and treaty compliance, collective action, and even Cournot competition. The article concludes with a discussion about institutional design.

Credit Assignment and Federal Encroachment

Opportunistic encroachment by the national government on state policy domains erodes the robustness of federal unions. Theories of electoral and political safeguards of federalism suggest that the political process protects federalism’s boundaries. This article develops a theory distinguishing riskseeking and risk-avoiding political behavior and applies its insights to the debate about the sufficiency of the political process to police federalism. Under average conditions, the political process deters encroachment, but under more extreme conditions it fails: elected officials set policy according to the risk associated with their electoral retention rather than the policy’s expected return to the voters or the health of the federation; this manipulation of the risk environment may lead a central government to encroach upon a state’s domain opportunistically. The federal problem of credit assignment exposes a weakness in the political safeguards theory to protect federalism’s boundaries: electoral mechanisms both encourage and discourage encroachment. Due to this fallibility in the political process, judicial intervention in federalism disputes may be justified.

Nudging Federalism towards Productive Experimentation

Formal constitutional amendment can be difficult to achieve and, without the confidence of experience, may introduce changes that too quickly and too rigidly alter the balance of authority between federal and state governments. Therefore, in federal systems it is preferable to experiment with alterations prior to formal adoption. In this article I address how federal systems encourage two types of policy experimentation that are either unlikely to be tried or unlikely to be accepted. To encourage costly state experimentation, the federal government can alter financial incentives, nudge states towards a new policy by shifting public attention, set a pre-emptive floor and offer party-based rewards. To smooth union acceptance of selfish experimentation, a set of safeguards encourages deliberation and experience with the policy that leads to public acceptance or rejection.

Judicial Predictability and Federal Stability Strategic Consequences of Institutional Imperfection

Institutions structure incentive environments for strategic actors. What is the effect of a flawed institution - one that is not perfectly predictable - on strategic behavior? This paper focuses on the influence of the judiciary on inter-governmental rivalry in a federation, in particular considering how shifts in judicial predictability affect federal opportunism. Results of the model indicate that governments in a federation challenge one another’s behavior in court less frequently as the judiciary grows more predictable but the effect of predictability on opportunism depends upon the cost of challenging an agent. When costs are low, increasing the predictability of the court increases opportunism, contrary to intuition. The model is extended to consider the effect of a biased court.

Subsidiarity and Robustness: Building the Adaptive Efficiency of Federal Systems

Subsidiarity - a systemic predilection for locating authority at the most local level feasible - has long been admired for its ability to protect localized, diverse interests from the tyranny of a national majority. In this article I suggest a novel benefit of subsidiarity: it boosts the adaptive efficiency of federal systems. To remain relevant, federal systems must adapt to meet changing circumstances. The process of adaptation involves both pushing federalisms boundaries in search of improved national-state balance, and selecting beneficial changes and rejecting harmful ones, a job most efficiently conducted by a set of diverse, complementary safeguards. By drawing a distinction between policy subsidiarity and safeguard subsidiarity, I describe how each form of subsidiarity contributes to the process of constitutional adaptation and federal system robustness.

Adoption as a social marker: Innovation diffusion with outgroup aversion

ABSTRACT Social identities are among the key factors driving behavior in complex societies. Signals of social identity are known to influence individual behaviors in the adoption of innovations. Yet the population-level consequences of identity signaling on the diffusion of innovations are largely unknown. Here we use both analytical and agent-based modeling to consider the spread of a beneficial innovation in a structured population in which there exist two groups who are averse to being mistaken for each other. We investigate the dynamics of adoption and consider the role of structural factors such as demographic skew and communication scale on population-level outcomes. We find that outgroup aversion can lead to adoption being delayed or suppressed in one group, and that population-wide underadoption is common. Comparing the two models, we find that differential adoption can arise due to structural constraints on information flow even in the absence of intrinsic between-group differences in adoption rates. Further, we find that patterns of polarization in adoption at both local and global scales depend on the details of demographic organization and the scale of communication. This research has particular relevance to widely beneficial but identity-relevant products and behaviors, such as green technologies, where overall levels of adoption determine the positive benefits that accrue to society at large.