Quantal response equilibrium (QRE) has become a popular alternative to the standard Nash equilibrium concept in game theoretic applications. It is well known that human subjects do not regularly choose Nash equilibrium strategies. It has been hypothesized that subjects are limited by strategic...

Twentieth-century dispositions to model human cognition as logical systems have been undermined by evidence from the wild. Formal models of cognition as symbolic, algorithmic, internally consistent, disembodied, and sequentially marching through linear inference are not ecologically valid and...

Survey research shows that voters know embarrassingly little about politics. Some scholars believe this finding demonstrates that representative democracy does not work. Others argue that voters do not need much information to make political decisions. Neither strand of research provides a...

The institutions that define the sequence of delegations that democracy entails have systematic effects on public policy. Democratic states that systematically provide public goods are typically seen as having three characteristics: they are decisive; they have the administrative capacity to...

The public policy benefits that parties deliver are allocated by democratic procedures that devolve ultimately to majority rule. Majority-rule decision make, however, does not lead to consistent policy choices; it is unstable. In this paper, we argue that institutions - and thereby policy...

In this paper, we discuss and debunk the four most common critiques of the rational choice research program (which we prefer to call Positive Political Theory) by explaining and advocating its foundations: the rationality assumption, component analysis (abstraction), strategic behavior, and...

This report suggests and justifies a simple approach to arms competitions, wherein arms competitions are viewed as disaggregated competition between pairs of weapons systems for executing mutually incompatible policy goals. This approach is derived from a decision theoretic model of armament...

Voters are thought to rely on elite endorsements in helping them make decisions. Their ability to use these endorsements is especially important in direct democracy, since ballot measures are complex policy proposals that lack partisan cues printed on the ballot. Using an exit survey, we look at...