This study uses variables derived from Rational Choice Theory to examine the theory’s predicted covariancebetween public opinion and the parties’ policies. The collection of material has been guided by three arenas: the parliamentarian, the media and the voter’s. It has categorized the analysis based on the strategy concept, using ends, means and ways. It asks how the Moderate Party and the Social Democratic Party changed their strategy within the period of 31 May 2013 and 14 September 2014, and how this can be understood from a rational choice perspective. The purpose of the study is to examine the assumptions of Rational Choice Theory in the Swedish context in front of the election in 2014, and to understand this from the perspective of the theory. This can help in our understanding of defense policy formation and to our understanding of states’ relations on the international arena. The results show that there has been a more ambitious change in defense policy which covariates with the indicated positive change in public opinion on defense issues, but this did not make defense issues one of the 2014 election’s most important questions for the voters in choice of party to vote for. This can be understood as rational, seen from a RCT-perspective, since the other issues renders more support, a circumstance that is in line with the history of Swedish elections.

The following essay can be described as an election pledge research where the presidential pledges are compared to the politics they implement when in power. The purpose is to see if they are genuine with their promises or just seeking the votes of the public. The study will focus on three election campaigns, 2008, 2012 and 2016. This essay will implement two theories: Rational choice theory and the Mandate Model. To answer this two questions will be dealt with. They are as follows: How likely is it that the promises made during a presidential campaign are kept? What category of pledges are kept to the most extent and in what way does this influence the voter?  To deal with those questions this essay will apply a case study design that implement the methods of a theory consuming- and qualitative text analysis.  The result of the study showed that for the three studied elections a minority of the pledges were fulfilled. But as previous studies also have done is adding fulfilled pledges and compromises. In that case 71,18% of the election pledges were at least partly fulfilled. The pledges that were kept to the greatest extent was economic aid and financial support. The influence on the voter depends if they are satisfied by compromises or just want pledges to be kept.

Recent results from cognitive psychology suggest that human behavior can be, in some situations, better described by laws known from physical quantum theory. This work responds to this development and seeks to answer the question of how quantum models of cognition and decision-making can contribute to our understanding of the social world. We introduce the approaches to the application of quantum theory in social sciences - quantum consciousness, quantum reasoning and quantum metaphor and further develop the second, in the context of strategic interaction in game theory. We show that the quantum model corresponds to both the psychological intuition and many empirically known anomalies such as the order effect, disjunction effect, or context effect. In this work, we derive a specific model of strategic interaction between two players, and we test it in the experimental Prisoner's Dilemma game. The model is based on the rational choice theory, which is nevertheless re-defined when it is shown how the strategic choice is changed if the quantum probability (C*-algebra) is used as the underlying theory instead of classical probability (σ-algebra). The results obtained support the quantum model and showed a different representation of the game among various groups of players. The quantum model of...

Superficial information of the civil wars in Aceh, Indonesia and Sri Lanka creates the idea that both conflicts were in similar situations when they were hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. It thus seems surprising that in the wake of the tsunami, the Free Aceh Movement and the Government of Indonesia signed a peace agreement, while the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Government of Sri Lanka returned to war. This thesis aims to explore what factors related to the tsunami contributed to this difference and whether rational choice theory can serve as an explanation for this difference. In order to find out, I conducted a qualitative comparative case study though the analysis of secondary documents. The results suggest that the factors that contributed to the difference can be divided into four broad themes: (1) the timing of the tsunami and thus the pre-disaster context; (2) the geographical situation and with that, the military impact; (3) the types of guerilla groups, including their abilities to rule, their access to financial capital and their strategic; (4) the role of the international community, which can be further divided into firstly, the geopolitical relevance of these countries, and secondly, internationalization, community engagement and separating the tsunami and conflict. I believe that rational choice theory explains the difference in outcome between the two conflicts very well. This theory assumes that people, given the circumstances, and in view of all the possible options, will act in line with the option that is expected to satisfy them most and minimize their losses. Applying this theory to the case studies of Aceh and Sri Lanka following the tsunami, it was appealing for the Free Aceh Movement to settle, but this was not the case for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. As a result, the former chose to sign a peace agreement with the Government of Indonesia, whereas the latter chose to continue its fight against the Government of Sri Lanka.

The aim of this thesis is to answer how and why France intervenes in Sub-Saharan Africa in the new millennium. This region represented the pivotal part of French colonial empire and France maintained close mutual relationship even after decolonization, partly due to the numerous military interventions. Security and defence policy towards Sub-Saharan Africa underwent gradual changes since the 1990s', France started to participate in multilateral peace operations and outside its traditional sphere of influence. Since 2003, when the European Union launched the first operation on the African continent, the vast majority of French interventions took place within the Common Security and Defence Policy of the EU. There were twelve new operations in the examined period 2003-2012, from which four military missions were selected for the purpose of this research: Operation Artemis in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2003, EUFOR DR Congo ibidem in 2006, EUFOR Chad/CAR in Chad and Central African Republic from 2008 to 2009 and naval operation EU NAVFOR Atalanta launched by the coast of Somalia in 2008. The thesis compares these cases in order to analyse motives which lead France to intervene in Sub-Saharan Africa and to prefere multilateral type of operation. The motives are assessed in the context of the...

203 12 Dissertation Summary Dissertation title: Democracy in the Lack of Interest: the Effects of Remote Internet Voting Implementation in the Electoral Process of Selected Countries Name and Surname: Karel Sál Field of Study: Political Science Place of Work: Institute of Political Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague Dissertation Supervisor: PhDr. Petr Jüptner, Ph.D. No. of Pages: 203 No. of Appendixes: 30 Year of Defense: 2016 Keywords: internet voting; remote internet voting; electoral turnout; crisis of democracy; theory of participation; rational choice theory; Estonia; Switzerland; France; Norway; Spain. Abstract: The dissertation thesis named Democracy in the Lack of Interest: the Effects of Remote Internet Voting Implementation in the Electoral Process of Selected States reflects the phenomenon of the last decade - incorporation of new media into the political process. Internet voting is one of the discussed and suggested solutions of the so-called crisis of democracy, which could possibly stop the negative trend of diminishing voter turnout in advanced western democracies. The entire academic debate can be summarized into one question: It is possible, that the way of ballot casting can affect the voter turnout in that scale, that we can recognize a significant-positive...

.:1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 Fairness norms can explain the emergence of specific cooperation norms in the Battle of the Prisoners Dilemma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2.1 Solving the cooperation problem in repeated interactions . . . . . . . . . 8 2.2 Solving the “coordinate to cooperate” problem in repeated interaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2.2 .1 The coordination problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2.2 .2 Feasible norms in the Battle of the Prisoners Dilemma . . . . . . 12 2.3 Hypothesis on the emergence of cooperation norms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 2.4 Fairness norms as a predictor for the emergence of different cooperation norms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 2.5 Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2.5 .1 Experimental design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 2.5 .2 Phase 1: Social dilemma game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 2.5 .3 Phase 2: Social value orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 2.6 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 2.6 .1 Patterns of cooperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 2.6 .2 Which cooperation norms emerge in the PD and in the BOPD? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 2.6 .3 Which cooperation norms emerge under the shadow of the future? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 2.6 .4 Which cooperation norms emerge under asymmetric pay-offs? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 2.6 .5 Fairness norms can explain the emerging cooperation norms 27 2.7 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 3 A sociological perspective on measuring social norms by means of strategy method experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 3.1 Towards methodological integration of economics and sociology . . 34 3.2 Measuring conditionality, intensity and consensus of social norms 35 3.3 An introduction to the strategy method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 3.4 Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 3.4 .1 Operationalization of conditionality, intensity, and consensus with the ultimatum game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 3.4 .2 Design of the strategy game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 3.4 .3 Design of the response game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 3.4 .4 Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 3.4 .5 Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 3.5 Empirical demonstration of measuring conditionality, intensity and consensus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 3.6 The differences between measuring normative principles and their intensity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 3.6 .1 Derivation of hypotheses about differences between strategy and response game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 3.6 .2 Analysis of offers in strategy and response game . . . . . . . . . . . 48 3.6 .3 Analysis of acceptance decisions in strategy and response game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 3.7 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 4 How norms can generate conflict: An experiment on the failure of cooperative micro-motives on the macro-level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 4.1 A perspective of normative conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 4.2 Bargaining norms as an exemplification of normative conflict . . . . . 58 4.2 .1 Conditional and unconditional bargaining norms . . . . . . . . . . 58 4.2 .2 Normative conflict over commitments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 4.2 .3 Normative conflict over contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 4.3 Derivation of hypotheses on normative conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 4.3 .1 A general model of normative behavior and its application to the ultimatum game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 4.3 .2 Application of the model to study normative conflict . . . . . . . 65 4.3 .3 Hypotheses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 4.4 Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 4.4 .1 The ultimatum game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 4.4 .2 The real effort task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 4.4 .3 The strategy vector method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 4.4 .4 Discussion of the strategy vector method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 4.4 .5 Procedure and participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 4.5 Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 4.6 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 4.6 .1 Macro-level conditions for normative conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 4.6 .2 The micro-level roots of normative conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 4.6 .3 Aggregation of norm adherence on the micro-level to normative conflict on the macro-level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 4.7 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 5 The emergence of norms from conflicts over just distributions . . . . . . 86 5.1 A conflict theory of norm emergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 5.2 Application on distributive justice and definition of fairness norms 91 5.3 Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 5.3 .1 Procedure and participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 5.3 .2 Experimental design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 5.3 .3 The real effort task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 5.3 .4 The bargaining game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 5.3 .5 Treatments and measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 5.4 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 5.4 .1 The bargaining process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 5.4 .2 Consequences of normative conflict: Costly delays . . . . . . . . . . 98 5.4 .3 Macro emergence of norms (mixture model) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 5.5 Discussion and open questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 A Proofs and instructions for chapter 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 1.1 Proof of lemma 2.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 1.2 Proof of lemma 2.2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 1.3 Instructions chapter 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 B Complete strategy profiles and instructions for chapter 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 2.1 Instructions chapter 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 2.1 .1 Instructions for the strategy method game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 2.1 .2 Instructions for the response method game, proposer . . . . . . . 125 2.1 .3 Instructions for the response method game, responder . . . . . . 126 C Classification algorithm for fairness types in chapter 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 3.1 Proof of proposition 4.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 3.2 Proof of proposition 4.2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 3.3 Classification algorithm for fairness types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 D Instructions chapter 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

This research paper addresses the compelling intersection of economic behavior and neo-colonial structures, specifically within the context of the CFA Franc currency union. The central issue under examination is the impact of the CFA Franc agreement on the behavior of capital owners in Guinea-Bissau. The purpose of this study is to understand the complex interplay between economic actions and neo-colonial mechanisms, tested via two hypotheses derived from Public Choice theory and the CFA agreement, and further relate the findings to the discourse on neo-colonialism. The study employs an Interrupted Time Series (ITS) design and Time Series Analysis (TSA) to systematically explore changes over time and assess the cause-effect relationships in a realistic manner. Findings partially confirm the hypothesis regarding foreign reserves, indicating that the CFA agreement indeed impacts capital owners' behavior. However, contrary to expectations, capital flight was found to decrease post-intervention, suggesting additional factors at play. The results illuminate the complex dynamics of the CFA union and broaden the understanding of potential neo-colonial structures, contributing to the ongoing debate on economic inequality and neo-colonialism.

The purpose of this essay is to explain Chinas growing presence in Africa through a case study regarding the relationship with South Africa and highlight the specific features of this Chinese presence. In order to achieve the essays goal two theoretical perspectives will be applied to examine the data. These two theoretical perspective is the theory of imperialism defined by Johan Galtung and Rational Choice theory defined by Vivien Lowndes, et al. Through a textual analysis of the sources used, the essay has found that Chinese finance projects in Africa that are commercially viable and mutually beneficial for the African countries still somehow have an negative impact on the African countries development. The textual analysis also account for the motives and reasons behind Chinese presence on the continent as lack of resources as the main reason for China and the lack of a developed society for the African countries. The essay examine as well the consequence with the Chineses expansion on the continent for the African sovereignty and their development in the future.

No description available.