This paper investigates between-voter interactions in a social network model of turnout. It shows that if 1) there is a small probability that voters imitate the behavior of one of their acquaintances, and 2) individuals are closely connected to others in a population (the “smallworld” effect), then a single voting decision may affect dozens of other voters in a “turnout cascade. ” If people tend to be ideologically similar to other people they are connected to, then these turnout cascades will produce net favorable results for their favorite candidate. By changing more than one vote with one’s own turnout decision, the turnout incentive is thus substantially larger than previously thought. We analyze conditions that are favorable to turnout cascades and show that the effect is consistent with real social network data from Huckfeldt and Sprague’s South Bend and Indianapolis-St. Louis election surveys. We also suggest that turnout cascades may help explain over-reporting of turnout and the ubiquitous belief in a duty to vote. I thank Robert Bates, Lars-Erik Cederman, Eric Dickson, Paul E. Johnson, Orit Kedar, Gary King, Ferran Martinez I Coma, and Ken Shepsle for valuable feedback on earlier drafts. How does the turnout decision of a single person affect an election? Decision-theoretic models of voting show that the probability of one vote being “pivotal ” in a large electorate is extremely small (Tullock

As the U.S. experience in Vietnam and Iraq attests, occupation by a foreign power can generate counterproductive conflict dynamics. Winning hearts and minds is the key to the long-term success of occupations, and both occupation forces and resistance movements employ a mix of coercive and non-coercive strategies (punishments and rewards) to shape support within the occupied public. The resulting cross-cutting pressures and the problem of preference falsification can lead to fragile social orders vulnerable to tipping, complicating the short-term evaluation and long-term success of occupation/resistance strategies. This paper presents a preliminary implementation of the Occupation Dynamics (OD) model which uses social agent simulation to explore the complex interaction of occupation and resistance strategies on the making of social order.

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This paper looks empirically at discharge petition bargaining in the 104 , and 106 House. While previous approaches rely on vote buying theories, we o#er an explanation based on the logic of informational cascades. The theory provides a number of directly testable hypotheses. We estimate event history models to understand not only the occurrence of, but the timing of, signatures on discharge petitions. Our results suggest that entrepreneurs structure their behavior to cause an informational cascade to occur. The findings also support the notion that many discharge petitions are used solely for position taking.

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Will the information technology revolution make autocratic regimes easier to overthrow? Probably not. I describe a game between one such regime and a large number of individuals. Individuals face a coordination problem: the more people act against the regime, the more likely it is to be overthrown and the greater the incentive for any individual to also act against it. Individual decisions are based on public and private information. The internet revolution, modeled as better private information, may make otherwise formidable regimes easier to overthrow. But knowing this, regimes engage in propaganda – they manipulate information. I characterize this manipulation and demonstrate that it may be used to more than offset the threat of new and relatively diffuse technologies like the internet. In particular, control of centralized technologies like television and radio provides a powerful tool with which autocratic regimes may shape beliefs and so ensure their survival.

If democracy is to have any of the good effects said to justify it, it must be self-enforcing. Those who control the government must choose to hold regular, competitive elections for the highest offices, and all parties must be willing to comply with the results. I consider simple models of electoral accountability along the lines of Barro (1973) and Ferejohn (1986), but allowing rulers to chose whether to hold elections and citizens whether to rebel or protest. When individuals privately observe a signal of government’s performance (e.g., their own welfare), they face a difficult problem of how to coordinate to pose a credible threat of rebellion necessary to induce the ruler to provide public goods. The convention of holding elections according to a known schedule and rules can provide a public signal for coordinating rebellion in the event that elections are suspended or blatantly rigged, while the elections themselves aggregate private observations of performance. Two threats to this solution to political moral hazard are also considered. First, when the ruling faction controls the army, it may prefer to fight rather step down after losing an election, and ex post transfers may be incredible. A party system where parties can return to office in the future is shown to be able to restore self-enforcing democracy, though at the expense of weaker electoral control. Second, subtle or piecemeal electoral fraud may undermine the ability of the citizens to credibly threaten the opposition that maintains elections. I show that when there are organizations in society that can privately (though noisily) observe and announce fraud or the state of popular discontent (such as an opposition party), under some conditions the incumbent prefers to commit to fair elections over an “accountable autocratic ” equilibrium in which public goods are provided but costly rebellions periodically occur. 1

doi:10.1017/S0003055410000274 Istudy how a revolutionary vanguard might use violence to mobilize a mass public. The mechanism is informational—–the vanguard uses violence to manipulate population member’s beliefs about the level of antigovernment sentiment in society. The model has multiple equilibria, one equilibrium in which there may be revolution and another in which there is certain not to be. In the former, structural factors influence expected mobilization, whereas in the latter they do not. Hence, the model is consistent with structural factors influencing the likelihood of revolution in some societies but not others, offering a partial defense of structural accounts from common critiques. The model also challenges standard arguments about the role of revolutionary vanguards. The model is consistent with vanguard violence facilitating mobilization and even sparking spontaneous uprisings. However, it also predicts selection effects—–an active vanguard emerges only in societies that are already coordinated on a participatory equilibrium. Hence, a correlation between vanguard activity and mass mobilization may not constitute evidence for the causal efficacy of vanguards—–be it through creating focal points, providing selective incentives, or communicating information. Imagine a citizen with antiregime feelings who is