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Seminar Descriptions (Click
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Theoretical
and Methodological Foundations
June 2-6,
2003
June 14-17, 2004
Instructors:
Randall Calvert (Washington University in St. Louis)
Andrew Martin (Washington University in St. Louis)
Although most participants in the Summer Institute know the
basics of rational choice theory and statistical analysis,
it is necessary to cover some basic techniques from a standpoint
that will prepare participants for the advanced seminars.
Commentators on rational choice theory have asserted that
such theories generate only point predictions, unsuitable
for testing. The Foundations seminar presents important varieties
of rational choice models, specifically spatial voting models
and non-cooperative game theory, in a form that emphasizes
the techniques by which these models can be used to generate
testable implications through comparative statics analysis
and the analysis of population variations in the parameter
values. A key component of the Foundations seminar is to provide
tools with which students can develop their own statistical
models to test predictions derived from formal theories. Basic
courses in statistical methods oftentimes give scant coverage
to the following techniques fundamental to the Summer Institute's
advanced seminars: maximum likelihood estimation, Bayesian
inference, model specification for comparative statics predictions,
model comparison, and simulation. Finally, software to be
used in the subsequent advanced seminars is introduced.
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The
Operationalization of Spatial Models
June 9-13, 2003
Instructor: Kevin Quinn (University of Washington)
Special Guests: Simon Jackman (Stanford University)
Keith Poole (University of Houston)
For over fifty years, the spatial model of voting has informed
a great deal of rational choice scholarship on voting and
decision making in legislative and judicial institutions throughout
the world. The literature suggests that issue voting in a
well-defined issue space (of typically low dimensionality)
structures a good deal of voting by the mass public. Similarly,
a great deal about what is known about voting in parliaments
relies on the logic of the spatial model. The spatial model
(or, perhaps more appropriately, spatial models) of voting
by the mass public and voting by elites in institutional settings
has spawned a tremendous amount of theoretical development.
In general, we know that voting in multi-dimensional issue
spaces is inherently unstable (McKelvey 1979, Schofield 1977),
unless choice is constrained in some fashion, such as structure
induced equilibrium (Shepsle 1979). While the literature is
rich with theoretical results, there is a paucity of empirical
research that uses the spatial model. How does one take voting
data from a legislative body and estimate ideal points? How
does one take a battery of issue questions on a survey and
summarize the issue space? Given ideal points in such as space,
how does one use them in other models? How does one go about
computing equilibrium behavior from spatial models? In this
course, cutting-edge methodological tools are taught that
will allow students to (a) operationalize the spatial model
in their own research; (b) use the spatial model in other
statistical models of behavior; and (c) use computational
approaches to compute equilibrium predictions of various sorts
of formal models.
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Modeling
Individual Agents and Institutions
June 16-20, 2003
Instructor: Scott E. Page (University of
Michigan)
Special Guests: Tim Salmon (Florida State
University)
Troy L. Tassier (University of Michigan)
In this week, we will undertake a formal study of institutional
performance with a focus on how individual behavior and information
aggregates through institutions. Our emphasis will be on new
theoretical developments and modeling techniques from economics,
political science, and complex systems, and on how to test
their empirical implications.
We will begin with a formal presentation of the theory of
mechanism design and its interpretation within political science.
We will see that most of the formal models in political science
are mechanisms in the classic sense.
We will then analyze the theoretical and empirical implications
of two core assumptions of mechanism design theory: (i) the
idea that people and organizations optimize relative to their
information and (ii) the assumption that institutions can
be considered in isolation and have no impact on agent level
characteristics. The goal for the week is for participants
to develop a deeper theoretical understanding of the interplay
and feedbacks between institutions and individual behavior
and to learn how to test for those interactions empirically.
The week will be divided into two parts. In the first part
of the week we will focus on three theoretical approaches
to modeling individual behavior. (1) The first approach emphasizes
learning and will be taught by Tim Salmon, an economist who
has done some exceptional work on the empirical testing of
a variety of learning models. (2) A second approach, one implicitly
advocated by the likes of Ostrom, Bowles, Axelrod, and Chong,
embraces the behavioral diversity evident in experiments and
in empirical studies. This diversity far exceeds that predicted
by the stark learning models. This diversity is often loosely
attributed to culture. We will study formal models by Itzhak
Gilboa and David Schmeidler and by Lu Hong and Scott Page
that provide theoretical underpinnings for this diverse behavior.
We will then discuss some experimental research by Bowles,
Camerer, and others that demonstrates cultural diversity.
(3) A third approach uses network models of information to
crafting a more accurate behavioral model. Troy Tassier, from
the University of Michigan, will provide an overview of the
network literature and then show some empirical implications.
Given this more elaborate model of actors, we will then link
these richer models of behavior to the analysis of institutions.
For example, if we cast an institution as a game form, we
can then ask how quickly people learn in that game. This introduces
another way to compare institutions theoretically and empirically.
In addition to comparing their equilibrium sets, we can see
which institutions pave the smoothest path to equilibrium.
We will close with a more holistic perspective on institutions
than is provided by the mechanism design approach. Doug North,
Elinor Ostrom and others have long recognized that institutions
do not exist in a vacuum. Nations consist of multiple economic,
political, and social institutions all of which contribute
to their citizen's informational and cognitive environments.
We will consider recent work by Jenna Bednar and Scott Page
on what they call games theory. Games theory provides a theoretical
framework within which to analyze multiple institutions simultaneously.
We will explore how to use this theoretical model to capture
the empirical presence of increasing returns or institutional
path dependence.
Seminar Outline
- Mechanism and Institutional Design: The Basics
- realization vs implementation of equilibria
- the Mount-Reiter Diagram
- the Revelation Principle
- Learning Models
- fictitious play
- Roth-Erev
- Camerer-Ho
- quantal response
- empirical testing
- simulation of models
- Diversity Models
- toolboxes vs. thermometers
- Chong
- Gilboa Schmeidler
- Hong and Page
- Network Models
- information networks in voting
- strength of weak ties
- empirical testing
- Institutions and Learning
- basic framework
- application to political institutions
- Games Theory
- Bednar-Page
- cultural behavior
- path dependence
- increasing Returns
- institutional Externalities
Issues in Testing Positive Theories of Judicial Politics
June 28-July 1, 2005
Instructors: Lee Epstein (Washington University
in St. Louis)
Charles Cameron (Princeton University)
Jeffrey Segal (SUNY at Stonybrook)
After decades of invoking variants of the social-psychological
paradigm, political scientists who study courts are now gravitating
toward strategic analysis. Nonetheless, and however promising
the future is for injection of rational choice into the study
of judicial politics, the move toward the "strategization"
of the field is not without its share of debates. Already
one has developed over the question of "how to do strategic
work." On one side are analysts who are translating their
strategic intuitions into variables that they include in their
statistical models of judicial behavior. Mostly these are
scholars who were not trained in formal theory but, instead,
were schooled in the judicial politics literature and trained
in the social-psychological tradition. On the other side are
those scholars, largely trained in formal theory but not in
judicial politics, who take the position, in its strongest
form, that rational choice work must embody formal equilibrium
analysis; rational choice work, in other words, is not rational
choice work unless the analyst has written down and solved
a formal model.
Research falling into the first camp can best be interpreted
as a transitional bridge between traditional behavioral research
and strategic analysis. Research along these lines has had
mixed success. To be sure, the studies have succeeded in developing
systematic statistical tests of the effects of strategic decision
making. Unfortunately, these sorts of studies develop their
hypotheses through loose intuitions and not through formal
equilibrium analysis. As formal theorists argue, if scholars
want to explain a particular line of decisions or a substantive
body of law as the equilibrium outcome of the interdependent
choices of the judges and other actors, they must demonstrate
why the choices are in equilibrium. A formal model is an essential
feature of such a demonstration.
Still, it is undeniable that the models of formal theorists
sometimes bear little resemblance to empirical reality, reflecting
a lack of deep training in the politics of judging. Moreover,
the implications of their models more than occasionally remain
untested. In an area replete with analysts and not just political
scientists, but legal academics and business school professors
who have studied judicial politics for decades, lack of basic
knowledge about the judicial process is not just a minor inconvenience
but a severe problem in gaining acceptance.
How do we move beyond this either/or debate? One obvious
answer is to train people substantively and technically so
that they can develop realistic formal models and conduct
the requisite empirical assessments. That, at least, is the
purpose of this course.
Seminar outline: the domain of the field,
major strands in formal judicial politics, and sources of
data
formal theory meets data:
a. appointments to the federal courts
b. the judicial hierarchy
c. the separation of powers system
The instructors for the course are Charles Cameron, Lee Epstein,
and Jeffrey A. Segal. Professor Cameron is professor of political
science at Princeton University. He specializes in applied
formal theory and political institutions. Professor Cameron's
work has appeared in the American Political Science Review,
the American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal
of Politics, as well as scholarly journals in economics and
law. He is the author of Veto Bargaining: Presidents and the
Politics of Negative Power (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Professor Epstein is the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished
Professor of Political Science and Professor of Law at Washington
University, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Political
and Social Science. A recipient of ten grants from the National
Science Foundation for her work on judicial politics, Epstein
has also authored, co-authored, or edited over seventy articles
and essays, as well as twelve books, including the Constitutional
Law for a Changing America Series(in its 5th edition; winner
of the Teaching and Mentoring Award from the Law and the Courts
Secion of the American Political Science Association), The
Supreme Court Compendium(now in its 3rd edition); winner of
a Special Recognition Honor from the Law and Courts Section
of the American Political Science Association and an Outstanding
Academic Book Award from Choice, and The Choices Justices
Make (recipient of the Pritchett award for the Best Book on
Law and Courts). Current projects include Strategic Defiance
of the U.S. Supreme Court, which examines the circumstances
leading lower courts to comply with/defy higher courts; Do
We Still Need an ERA?, which analyzes constitutional sex discrimination
litigation in the 50 states to make an inference about the
need for a federal Equal Rights Amendment; and Importing Law,
which considers how courts here and abroad make use of foreign
legal materials. Professor Segal is Distinguished Professor
of Political Science at Stony Brook University. His articles
include "Predicting Supreme Court Cases Probabilistically:
The Search and Seizure Cases, 1962-1981" (American Political
Science Review, 1984), which won the Wadsworth Award (2002),
for book or article, ten years or older, that has had a lasting
influence on the field of law and courts. His books include
Majority Rule or Minority Will: Adherence to Precedent on
the U.S. Supreme Court(Cambridge University Press, 1999, with
Harold Spaeth), which won the C. Herman Pritchett Award of
the American Political Science Association for best book in
law and judician politics. His most recent book, again with
Spaeth, is The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model Revisited(Cambridge
University Press, 2002). He is now working with the papers
of Justice Harry Blackmun for a book (with Lee Epstein and
Harold Spaeth) on agenda setting on the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Issues
in Testing Positive Theories of Legislative Politics
June
30-July 2, 2004
Instructors: Keith Krehbiel (Stanford University)
Steven S. Smith (Washington University in St. Louis)
Special Guest: Nolan McCarty (Princeton University)
In recent years, theoretical advances concerning legislative
institutions, legislative parties, and the individual behavior
of legislators have generated many methodological challenges.
A central concern of the field is the development of appropriate
tests of theories about the choice of formal and informal
institutions. Closely related are theories of individual behavior
in a strategic context. The seminar is designed to give intensive
consideration of five (necessarily related) problems at the
intersection of theory and method:
The instructors for the seminar are Keith Krehbiel and Steven
S. Smith. Professor Krehbiel is the Edward B. Rust Professor
of Political Science in the Graduate School of Business at
Stanford University. He is the author of Pivotal Politics
(1998), Information and Legislative Organization (1991), and
numerous articles on the theory and method of legislative
politics. Professor Smith is the Kate M. Gregg Professor of
Social Sciences at Washington University. He is the author
or co-author of Call to Order: Floor Politics in the House
and Senate (1989), Committees in Congress (1984), Managing
Uncertainty in the U.S. House of Representatives (1988), Politics
or Principle: Filibustering in the Senate (1997), The Politics
of Institutional Choice (2001), and numerous articles on congressional
politics. Both have won awards for their teaching and both
have been principal investigators for NSF grants.
Course Syllabus.
Links to selected readings (J-Stor required):
- Groseclose and Snyder. "Vote-Buying, Supermajorities,
and Flooded Coalitions."
- Groseclose and Snyder. "Estimating Party Influence
in Roll Call Voting."
- Krehbiel. "Party Discipline and Measures of Partisanship."
- Krehbiel. "The Coefficient of Party Influence."
- Groseclose and Snyder."The Coefficient of Party Influence:
Comment on Krehbiel."
- Krehbiel. "Asymmetry in Party Influence: Reply."
- Cox and McCubbins. "Setting the Agenda." Chs.
3 & 5
- Riker "Towards a Science.."
Quantal
Response Models
June 18-19,
2004
Instructor: Thomas Palfrey (California Institute
of Technology)
Special Guests: Curt Signorino (University
of Rochester), John Patty (Carnegie Mellon University) and Jeffrey
Lewis (ULCA)
June 17-18,2005
Instructor: Curt Signorino (University of
Rochester)
Special Guest: Mark Fey (University of Rochester)
June 16-17,2006
(2006 title is Random Utility Models and Quantal Response
Equilibrium)
Instructor: Curt Signorino (University of
Rochester)
Special Guest: Mark Fey (University of Rochester)
Much of the political science literature suffers from a disconnect
between theory and the statistical techniques used to test
or analyze theory. During this module, we will examine methods
for explicity linking theory and statistical analysis, especially
in a strategic context. The material will draw heavily from
the literatures on random utility models (RUM), quantal response
equilibrium (QRE), and regression analysis with strategic
models.
Course Syllabus
Curt Signorino Lectures
The
Methodological Challenges of Coalition Theory
June 21-23, 2004
Instructors: Itai Sened and Norman Schofield
(both of Washington University in St. Louis)
Special Guest: Eric Brown (University of
Wisconsin-Madison)
Theoretical models of legislative and coalition politics
in parliamentary systems represent some of the most important
developments in political science during the past two decades.
The main advances on the theoretical front are more complex
models that place the formation and break-up of coalitions
within the context of electoral and legislative politics.
These models also include multiple levels of bargaining among
multiple players, and multi-stage, sequential-non-cooperative
and cooperative games. Equally important is the progress in
Bayesian inference, Poisson, and event count models. New econometric
tools allow us to estimate, most precisely, ideal points of
voters, individual legislators, party positions, and government
policies. New computational techniques allow the simulation
of complex theoretical models and derivation of equilibria
of legislative and coalition politics games that have generall
defied comprehensive analytical exploration due to their complexity.
The seminar will address both theoretical and empirical issues,
as follows:
Theoretical Models
- Introduction: Coalition Theory from Riker (1962) to Laver
and Shepsle (1996)
- The spatial model of electoral, legislative, and coalition
politics.
- Cooperative and Non-cooperative models of Coalition Politics.
- Introducing legislative politics, voters, and special
interests to the study of coalition politics
- Simulation-based and dynamic models of coalition formation
and break-ups.
Empirical Tools
- Survey research
- Content analysis
- Estimating Ideal Points
- Simluations Techniques
- Dynamic Modeling
Implementation
- Data: Researchers at Washington University have accumulated
a large data set on legislative and coalition politics.
Participants will gain access to this data set to put their
newly acquired knowledge to the test.
- Experiments: A carefully designed set of experiments will
be used to help participants gain a better understanding
of legislative and coalition politics by playing the games
they have learned and compare the results of these experiments
with theoretical and empirical results in the literature.
Course Materials:
- Sened Slides
- Course Readings:
- Multiparty Parliaments: Parties, Elections, Coalitions
and Legislative Politics in Parliamentary Democracies
- Norman Schofield and Itai Sened
- Preface
- Chapter One
- Chapter Two
- Chapter Three
- Appendix to Chapter Three
- Chapter Four
- Chapter Five
- Chapter Six
- Chapter Seven
- References
- Conclusion
- Schofield and Sened. "Modeling the Interaction of
Party, Activists, and Voters: Why in the Political Centre
so Empty?"
- Schofield and Sened. "Multiparty Competition in Israel:
1988-1996."
- Quinn, Martin, and Whitford. "Voter Choice in Multi-Party
Democracies: A Test of Competing Theories and Models."
- Austen-Smith and Banks. "Social Choice Theory, Game
Theory, and Positive Political Theory."
- Dutta, Jackson, and Le Breton. "Equilibrium Agenda
Formation."
- Wuffle et al. "Finagle's Law and the Finalge Point,
A New Solution for Two-Candidate Competition in Spatial
Voting Games without a Core."
- Ben-Yashar and Paroush. "A Nonasymptotic Condorcet
Jury Theorem."
- Schofield. "A Valence Model of Political Competition
in Britain: 1992-1997."
- Penn. "A Distributive N-Amendment Game with Endogenous
Agenda Formation."
- Penn. "A Model of Far-Sighted Voting."
- Patty and Penn. "The Legislative Calendar."
- McKelvey and Patty. "A Theory of Voting in Large
Elections."
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Experimental
Tests of Theoretical Models
June 19-22, 2006
June 24-28, 2004
Instructor: Rick Wilson (Russell Sage Foundation)
Special Guests: Rebecca Morton (NYU)
Gary Miller (Washington University in St. Louis);
As in other sciences, the development of rigorous, deductive
theory leads to hypotheses that demand testing. Laboratory
experiments are intended to provide the most controlled tests
of these hypotheses. In political science, laboratory experiments
play a critical role since so many of the theories presume
knowledge of preferences which are typically unknown in the
field. Political science experiments typically guarantee subjects
differing financial rewards for different outcomes, thereby
inducing known preference rankings over those outcomes. Typically,
different treatments will be identical except for one key
theoretical variable, which may be the institutional voting
rule, information conditions, communication possibilities,
or preferences. With random assignment of subjects to treatments,
differences across treatments may be confidently attributed
to the treatment variable.
Topics covered will include voting experiments, public good
experiments, tests of non-cooperative bargaining theory, experiments
on information, and recent innovations in political science
experimentation. We will discuss links between theory and
experiment, experimental design, the role of pilot experiments,
experimental technique, data gathering and data analysis.
Students will have a chance to participate both as subjects
and as observers, and will be asked to design an experiment.
Readings will be reports of experiments in political science
and economics journals.
Professor Rick Wilson of Rice University is the instructor
of this course. In addition to historical research on institutions
of American politics, Rick has done some of the most innovative
and powerful experiments in the discipline. He has designed
and administered experiments on strategic voting, agendas
and agenda costs, and repeated prisoners' dilemma games, coordination
games, and ultimatum games, among others. He has received
numerous National Science Foundation grants in support of
his experimental research.
Course Syllabus
Course Materials:
- Morton Slides
- Experimental Results
- Links to selected readings:
- Fiorina and Plott. 1978. "Committee Decisions under
Majority Rule: An Experimental Study."
Moir. 1999. "A Monte Carlo Analysis of the Fisher Randomization
Technique: Reviving Randomization for Experimental Economist."
- Henrich et al. 2001. "In Search of Homo Economicus:
Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies."
- Eckel and Grossman. 1998. "Are Women Less Selfish
Than Men?: Evidence from Dictator Experiments."
- Bianco, Lynch, and Miller. "'A Theory Waiting to
be Discovered': A Reanalysis of Canonical Experiments on
Majority Rule Decision Making."
- Bianco, Jeliazkov, and Sened. "The Uncovered Set
and the Limits of the Legislative Action."
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