CPO3930 Exam 1 Introduction from the Text Book The political science that a college student at the end of WW2 might have encountered was primarily descriptive and judgmental while now it is more explanation and analysis Models are purposely stripped down versions of the real thing Theory is a specialized elaboration of a model intended for a specific application Introduction from Class What is an Institution Rules that govern social interaction constraining the options for action They also guide deliberation structure aggregation of preferences and govern protocol Some examples are Congress The Constitution Robert s Rules There are parchment institution which are formal rules regulations and protocol that are written down These are things like the syllabus This is what we will be focusing on The parchment neither necessary nor sufficient For institution to be effective constraints they don t need to be written down necessary Jut the act of writing them down matters little nor sufficient Institutions must be self reinforcing What is important is definition of institution as eq behavior participants in social interactions The act of writing things down creates mutual expectations for behavior Under these circumstances the institutions are worth more than the paper on which they are written Old Institutionalism in CP Approach to studying political institutions that focused on legalism formal rules and documentation of procedural How a bill becomes law Legalism and formal rules Comparative Politics The advantages of this is you get a lot of description However it also make things apply to a different context It had the tendency to be overtly 1950 1960 was the reaction to old institutionalism and the emphasis on The Behavioral Revolution real politics and hard data This was the first time that public opinion polls voting behavior and party competition stop scientist s focus on archives and merely reading laws The Civic Culture would get public opinion data about democracy in different cultures Maximizing Behavior Social Choice Theory rules Social choice theorist focused on this type of problem there are a lot of ways to construct representative democracy and majority Intellectual reaction to Old Institutionalism in economics that emphasizes the consequences of rules and procedures with particular regard for preferences aggregation electorates legislature and committees A motivation for comparative research on institution says that the same set of preferences among political actors different methods of pref aggregation produce different result It follows that institutions matter to political outcomes Hypothesis about the connection between institutional design and political outcomes are often New Institutionalism casualty and empirical analysis social choice and game theory and concern drawn from formal theories of SC for rules agenda setting vote aggregation BR SC New Institutionalism which has three sub groups Ration Choice Institutionalism Historical Institutionalism and Constructivist Institutionalism Coordination with Conflict has to do with institutions The game matrix box thingy look at the slides Equilibrium when neither party has a unilateral incentive to move we want to change it but not on our own for our in class example dog and movies they both want to do something together rather than alone it s coordination because they want to be together there is conflict because they don t have the same first choice Multiple equilibrium can exist useful to remember for CP Moving from one eq to the next may be contentious Two Insights Coordination models highlight the following multiple eq possible moving across eq sticky and institutional origins and change is contentious Helps us to explore why coordination happens at one eq and not another It also reminds us that changing is contentious Theories and Methods for Institutional Study Rational Choice Institutionalism RCI usually identifies with Deductive Research Approach Deductive starts with theory then hypothesis observation and then confirmation RCI RC theorist aim to produce parsimonious statements of social processes in order to generate testable hypothesis and falsifiable theories within explicit scope conditions RCI s objective is to devise a model of human behavior A model is a simplified version of real life If the model doesn t work its the fault of the model not of the human or of real life The RC approach attempts to divorce normative what ought to be influence from analytical process Though important normative questions might be raised along the way Unit of analysis is individual actors and it assume these individuals are rational and that they act intentionally In this context rationality is adopted as an analytical assumption in order to connect purposeful actors to their actions They do the best they can within the constraints they face with the information they have Assumption of Rationality includes Individuals have preferences preferences are wants desires and motivations It can be anything They do not ask why they are taken as exogenous given outside the model These preferences must satisfy two criteria Completeness the actor prefers options X to Y option Y to X or is indifferent between them They are comparable in actors mind For example not comparing apples to blue Transitivity If I prefer X to Y and I prefer Y to Z then I must prefer X to Z or be indifferent between them The C and T properties imply that among individual actors options there is a top preferences Actors maximize utility by picking the top preference External Environment the external environment is everything else like constraints institutions incentives and other actor s behaviors The EE is exogenous to the model external is taken as given Beliefs uncertainty people are unsure about how their choices will influence their outcome Preferences Beliefs Rational Actions Pref combine with belief to help actors generate their expected utility The payoff they expect and assign to any course of action Weights probabilistically to account for uncertainty in their environment Strengths of RCI Criticisms of RCI are the we are not rational we don t maximize payoffs we are not calculating automatons how can you make so many assumptions and limited scope implies limited generalizability RCI and Structured Institutions Identify the object of study usually individuals Specify actors preferences and payoffs Characterize the environment institutional rules and