Terry D. Clark

Electoral Mandate and Party Cohesion: Does It Matter in Lithuania?

Legislators elected on a party list vote (proportional representation system) are ostensibly more disciplined than those elected in single-seat district contests. However, previous efforts to test this hypothesis in cross-national studies have led to ambiguous results, as contextual factors were found to be at least as important as the type of mandate. In the case of Lithuania, which has adopted a mixed electoral system, the behaviour of elected deputies in 962 roll-call votes between 2003 and 2006 reveals that deputies from single-seat constituencies, rather than deputies on party lists, are more disciplined in the Lithuanian Seimas. This unexpected finding may be related to the peculiar dynamics of mixed electoral systems.

THE RATIONALITY OF FUZZY CHOICE FUNCTIONS

If we assume that the preferences of a set of political actors are not cyclic, we would like to know if their collective choices are rationalizable. Given a fuzzy choice rule, do they collectively choose an alternative from the set of undominated alternatives? We consider necessary and sufficient conditions for a partially acyclic fuzzy choice function to be rationalizable. We find that certain fuzzy choice functions that satisfy conditions α and β are rationalizable. Furthermore, any fuzzy choice function that satisfies these two conditions also satisfies Arrow and Warp.

Single Peaked Fuzzy Preferences In One-Dimensional Models: Does Black'S Median Voter Theorem Hold?

Blacks Median Voter Theorem is among the more useful mathematical tools available to political scientists for predicting choices of political actors based on their preferences over a finite set of alternatives within an institutional or constitutional setting. If the alternatives can be placed on a single-dimensional continuum such that the preferences of all players descend monotonically from their ideal point, then the outcome will be the alternative at the median position. We demonstrate that the Median Voter Theorem holds for fuzzy preferences. Our approach considers the degree to which players prefer options in binary relations.

Fuzzy Arrow's Theorem

In this paper, we prove a fuzzy version of Arrows Theorem that contains the crisp version. We show that under our definitions, Arrows Theorem remains intact even if levels of intensities of the players and levels of membership in the set of alternatives are considered.

Fuzzy Social Choice Theory

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the social choice literature and shows, by applying fuzzy sets, how the use of fuzzy preferences, rather than that of strict ones, may affect the social choice theorems. To do this, the book explores the presupposition of rationality within the fuzzy framework and shows that the two conditions for rationality, completeness and transitivity, do exist with fuzzy preferences. Specifically, this book examines: the conditions under which a maximal set exists; the Arrows theorem; the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem and the median voter theorem. After showing that a non-empty maximal set does exists for fuzzy preference relations, this book goes on to demonstrating the existence of a fuzzy aggregation rule satisfying all five Arrowian conditions, including non-dictatorship. While the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem only considers individual fuzzy preferences, this work shows that both individuals and groups can choose alternatives to various degrees, resulting in a social choice that can be both strategy-proof and non-dictatorial. Moreover, the median voter theorem is shown to hold under strict fuzzy preferences but not under weak fuzzy preferences. By providing a standard model of fuzzy social choice and by drawing the necessary connections between the major theorems, this book fills an important gap in the current literature and encourages future empirical research in the field.

The uncovered set and indifference in spatial models: A fuzzy set approach

The uncovered set was developed in order to predict outcomes when spatial models result in an empty core. In contrast to conventional approaches, fuzzy spatial models induce a substantial degree of individual and collective indifference over alternatives. Hence, existing definitions of the covering relationship return differing results. We develop a definition for a fuzzy covering relation. Our definition results in an uncovered set that is, in most cases, contained within the Pareto set. We conclude by characterizing the exceptions.

‘“Keeping Tabs” on Coalition Partners’: a Theoretically Salient Case Study of Lithuanian Coalitional Governments

Abstract Portfolio allocation raises the potential for de facto abdication on a broad range of policy issues among coalition partners. Recent scholarship has addressed how parties in governing coalitions ‘keep tabs’ on each other in order to avoid such abdication. Two mechanisms have been identified: junior ministerial appointments and chairs of parliamentary oversight committees. We argue that the former is the most common method for intra-coalitional oversight in the Lithuanian parliament and that a combination of the two appears to be employed for monitoring the activities of the most important ministries. We conjecture that dependence on junior ministerial oversight is more likely among coalition partners in less institutionalised parliaments.

An inductive approach to determining causality in comparative politics: A fuzzy set alternative

Political science typically tests hypotheses by demonstrating correlations between variables. The most commonly employed method for doing so is regression analysis. The approach is essentially crisp, which carries with it a number of questionable assumptions about the data. Political phenomena such as democracy or stability often involve measuring the degree to which a particular observation demonstrates the qualities of the category. A fuzzy set approach better captures the inherent ambiguity in classifying our observations relative to such categories. However, the attempt to establish correlations between fuzzy sets in the social sciences has been plagued by the priority ranking issue. We illustrate the potential that Jeffreys Rule has to overcome this difficulty.

INDEPENDENCE OF IRRELEVANT ALTERNATIVES AND FUZZY ARROW'S THEOREM

The literature involving fuzzy Arrow results uses the same independence of irrelevant alternatives condition. We introduce three other types of independence of irrelevant alternative conditions and show that they can be profitably used in the examination of Arrows theorem. We also generalize some known nondictatorship results. One known fuzzy aggregation rule that is nondictatorial is the average of the individual preferences. We show that a weighted average is also nondictatorial. Moreover, it is not an automorphic image of the ordinary average, which demonstrates that we have proposed a framework unique from the present known results.

THE EXISTENCE OF A MAJORITY RULE MAXIMAL SET IN ARBITRARY n-DIMENSIONAL SPATIAL MODELS

We examine the effect of indifference on the existence of a majority rule maximal set. In our setting, it is shown in all but a limited number of cases that the maximal set is empty in an n-dimensional spatial model if and only if the Pareto set contains a union of cycles. The elements that constitute the exception are completely characterized.