Coalition Strategies Research Articles

Ideas, coalitions and compromise: reinterpreting EU-ETS lobbying through discursive institutionalism

ABSTRACT Collective political action among divergent interest groups is not always easy. It requires coordination, compromise and, often, the persuasive action of a policy entrepreneur. Coalition strategies are often shaped by participants’ skill in mobilising ideas. Business-environmental coalitions – often considered ‘strange bedfellows’ – have proved to be important in emissions trading policy-making. In 2013, chronically low emissions prices meant that the EU’s climate policy flagship, the EU-ETS, was holed beneath the waterline. But, within two years and against the odds, ambitious reforms were agreed to steady the ship. Crucial to the rescue were the actions of a pro-ETS business lobby, orchestrated by environmentalists. We draw on thirty-two in-depth interviews to construct a discursive institutionalist account of collective interest representation in relation to the reforms. We highlight the ability of policy entrepreneurs to fashion a ‘change-but-no-change’ pro-reform narrative attractive to businesses, despite the fact that such discursive strategies risked marginalising alternative and more disruptive ideas.

The evolution of collaboration in symmetric 2×2-games with imperfect recognition of types

A recent series of papers has introduced a fresh perspective on the problem of the evolution of human cooperation by suggesting an amendment to the concept of cooperation itself: instead of thinking of cooperation as playing a particular strategy in a given game, usually C in the prisoner's dilemma, we could also think of cooperation as collaboration, i.e. as coalitional strategy choice, such as jointly switching from (D,D) to (C,C). The present paper complements previous work on collaboration by expanding on its genericity while relaxing the assumption that collaborators are able to perfectly identify their own kind. Conditions for the evolutionary viability of such collaboration under fairly undemanding assumptions about population and interaction structure are derived. Doing so, this paper shows that collaboration is an adaptive principle of strategy choice in a broad range of niches, i.e., stochastic mixtures of games.

Modelling of Collective Actions: The Significance of Cooperative Agreements

Using mathematical modelling methods, we investigate the collective’s ability to achieve results which are Pareto-dominant over Nash equilibrium. Egoistic urges of the members of the collective, under the law of diminishing returns, give rise to the free-rider problem. Cooperation among agents in an environment where some individuals are characterised by opportunistic tendencies is impaired within a large group due to deficit of trust, yet it is possible within a small group (a coalition) based on interpersonal trust. By deploying a coalitional strategy aimed at maximizing coalitional gains, each individual member of the large group increases their gain. To attain a stable coalition, an agreement must be formed among agents implying adherence to conditions of individual rationality by all members of the collective and compatibility stimuli for all members of the coalition. We further set down the content of such an agreement and calculate side payments that guarantee adherence to conditions necessary for sustainable cooperation, as well as the investment of requisite effort by coalition members.

The Macro-Level Driving Factors of Negative Campaigning in Europe

Covering the largest sample of countries to date, this study examines the effect of three country-specific factors on the tone of electoral campaigns across Europe: electoral system disproportionality, party system fragmentation, and the polarization of the electorate. We use an original dataset of statements made by political actors during eighteen electoral campaigns in nine European countries. Our multinomial logit model suggests that increasing disproportionality slightly increases negativity, while thanks to parties competing on the same market, less polarized electorates invite more negative political campaigns. Finally, we find a U-shaped relationship between party system fragmentation and negativity: Increasing the number of parties, negativity decreases first, only to start increasing again once the party system becomes very fragmented. We explain this with parties altering their coalition strategies with the changing number of parties: Less fragmentation makes it more likely to having to step into coalition with the competitors, thus decreasing negativity, while in very fragmented systems, parties not needed to any potential coalitions become easy targets to negative campaign.

Together we know how to achieve: An epistemic logic of know-how

The existence of a coalition strategy to achieve a goal does not necessarily mean that the coalition has enough information to know how to follow the strategy. Neither does it mean that the coalition knows that such a strategy exists. The article studies an interplay between the distributed knowledge, coalition strategies, and coalition “know-how” strategies. The main technical result is a sound and complete trimodal logical system that describes the properties of this interplay.

Unravelling narratives of water management: Reflections on epistemic uncertainty in the first cycle of implementation of the Water Framework Directive in southern Spain

The participatory planning model promoted by the Water Framework Directive (WFD) leads to the emergence of new questions on how to define problems, how to know if something is a problem and for whom. We propose the concept of epistemic uncertainty to assess adaptive governance in the context of broadening of narratives about how water should be managed. For this purpose, we analyse how framings of the problem-solution duality with regards to water management evolve throughout the first cycle of implementation of the WFD in a semi-arid river basin in Southern Spain. We identify five narratives on water management: supply-side management, demand-side management, deep ecology, rural livelihoods and knowledge and governance. The paper contributes to the adaptive governance literature by arguing that epistemic uncertainty cannot be treated as a technical problem, and dealing with pluralism and accommodating evolving narratives are essential to adaptability in governance. We submit that the implementation of the WFD should take into account stakeholders’ uneven capacities to influence water management and the hindrances to implementation that ensue. With regard to the study area, we find that (i) narrative pluralism is handled through ambiguity and coalition strategies based on large infrastructural investments, traditional in the Spanish context, (ii) unexpected events such as the economic crisis had greater influence on water management than participatory processes, and (iii) little evolution was observed in the perception of problems after implementation of the plan and mistrust of the water administration rose during the period analysed.

A new model of development coalition building: USAID achieving legitimate access and dominant information in Bangladesh’s forest policy

The influence of non-domestic actors and institutions on domestic policymaking process has been a constant research topic for a long time in the field of development studies. During recent years, however, the coalition strategy of foreign donors seems to have changed in favor of non-governmental allies in development cooperation, instead of state bureaucracies of the target countries. As a key foreign donor, for instance, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has introduced the forest co-management development concept, altering important policy and institutional settings in Bangladesh. The changes resulted from a combination of development inputs and politics, including funding, technical assistance and coalition with multiple, mostly non-state stakeholders. In this article, we use the concepts of development policy change, the global governance theorem of direct access to domestic policymaking process, and bureaucratic politics theory from development policy analysis for analyzing this new coalition strategy. A mixed qualitative-quantitative methods approach and the case of the USAID-induced forest co-management development model were employed to analyze the new coalition strategy based on the main interests of the donor. The results indicate that in the development process, USAID formed coalitions with non-state actors at all levels, thus circumventing national bureaucracies. The donor substantially involved non-state actors to (1) overcome the dominant information of state bureaucracies by eliciting data in the donors’ informal interests, (2) gain control over the implementation process at multiple levels, and (3) enhance pressure on all levels of government for substantive policy changes. In contrast, the initial and very marginal coalitions with state agencies imply an initial cost for legitimately accessing a country’s governance system. Furthermore, such detouring of state agencies poses the questions of operational authority and, concurrently, of ownership to sustain the changed practices. A broader implication based on the study findings is to especially consider the sovereignty issue in a development context in a recipient country.

Editorial Introduction

Editorial Introduction Patti Duncan Welcome to our second issue of 2018—the thirtieth year of Feminist Formations! This year is a landmark year for us, as we celebrate and reflect on thirty years of publishing cutting edge feminist scholarship. Such reflection requires an engagement with the history, as well as the future, of feminist knowledge production, organizing, and resistance—a process we invite you to participate in as we move through the writings in this issue, and throughout the year. This has been a devastating year in many ways, considering the separation of migrant children from their parents at the US border, the anti-Muslim travel ban, and the continued onslaught of policies from the Trump administration that create and contribute to ongoing forms of gendered, racialized state violence. Considering the history of such events and policies reminds us that the deliberate fragmentation of families has been a cornerstone of US politics, particularly for Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and LGBTQ+ communities, people with disabilities, working-class and poor people, and other marginalized communities. Acknowledging this history allows us to also acknowledge the long history of resistance that has always existed alongside such forms of oppression. Many of the articles in this issue engage multiple ways of reading histories, through archival research, interviews, analyses of film and literature, and within popular and social media. In doing so, the authors detail the strategies of resistance, collective organizing, and coalitions that have emerged within specific communities at certain historical moments. Our cover features the beautiful art of Wura-Natasha Ogunji, "She moved the road" (2007), thread and acrylic on paper. Ogunji, a visual artist and performer whose works include drawings, videos, and public performances, explores the presence of women in public space. As Ogunji explains, her hand-stitched drawings, made on architectural trace paper, are inspired by the daily interactions and frequencies that occur in the city of Lagos, from the epic to the intimate. In "She moved the road," as the title implies, the woman moves the road, rather than (or in addition to) moving herself on the road. The image invites us to ask questions about space and place, especially our different experiences of movement within and through public spaces. References in the piece situate the figure in a specific geographical location, but also indicate an engagement with [End Page vii] movement, and with history. The figure represented in this piece could be seen as deliberately acting on the world around her, mobilizing change, imagining something different. Facing forward, arms crossed, eyes alert, she is prepared for struggle. See more of Wura-Natasha Ogunji's work at www.wuraogunji.com. As always, I am grateful to managing editor, Rebecca Lambert, and editorial assistants, Andrés López and LK Mae. We could not do the work we do at Feminist Formations without the excellent labor of copyeditor Hank Southgate and compositor Jamie McKee, as well as the staff of Johns Hopkins University Press. Thank you, also, to the members of our Editorial and Advisory Boards, and the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Oregon State University, for ongoing support. ________ We begin this issue with a timely article by Katrina Karkazis and Rebecca M. Jordan-Young, "The Powers of Testosterone: Race, Nation, and the Regulation of Women Athletes." Karkazis and Jordan-Young introduce their article by describing an image of two white women runners rejecting the outstretched arms of gold medalist Caster Semenya at the 2016 Olympic Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro. Drawing on media coverage, scientific publications, interviews, and sport regulation documents, and framing their analysis through intersectional feminist science studies and critical race studies, Karkazis and Jordan-Young investigate how the regulation of testosterone in women athletes disproportionately affects women of color from the Global South. To do so, they introduce the concept of "T talk," in order to "signal a web of direct claims and indirect associations that circulate around testosterone both as a material substance and as a multivalent cultural symbol." Through their reading of "T talk" in multiple discursive spaces, Karkazis and Jordan-Young powerfully demonstrate that racism and colonialism are central to the regulation of testosterone in women athletes. Kate Boyd, in "Stop Thinking...

Strong coalitional equilibrium in a transportation game

This paper introduces an extension of the vehicle routing problem by involving several decision makers in competition. Each customer is characterized by demand and distance to the warehouse. The problem is described in form of a cooperative transportation game (CTG). We consider customers as players in the game. Their strategies are the routes for a vehicle they should rent in a coalition to deliver goods subject to their demand with minimal transportation costs, under the assumption that transportation costs are allocated between the players according to the Nash arbitration scheme. For each profile in coalitional strategies, we define a coalitional structure of players and the costs of each player. A strong equilibrium is found for the cooperative transportation game. In addition, we develop a procedure to calculate the strong equilibrium. This procedure is illustrated by a numerical example.

Together We Know How to Achieve: An Epistemic Logic of Know-How (Extended Abstract)

The existence of a coalition strategy to achieve a goal does not necessarily mean that the coalition has enough information to know how to follow the strategy. Neither does it mean that the coalition knows that such a strategy exists. The paper studies an interplay between the distributed knowledge, coalition strategies, and coalition "know-how" strategies. The main technical result is a sound and complete trimodal logical system that describes the properties of this interplay.

Interests, ideas and legacies of the past: Analysing the positions and strategies of Swedish policy actors in the establishment of the European Research Council

In the past decade, the number of EU policy activities in research and higher education has increased greatly. The governance processes in these areas are increasingly characterized as multilayered, involving actors with a variety of roles, functions and loyalties. This article focuses on the forces shaping the policy positions and strategies of national science policy actors and coalitions in transnational policy processes through a case study of the positions, ideas and strategies held by central Swedish science policy actors in the process of building the European Research Council (ERC) during the first decade of the 2000s. The case is analysed from the perspectives of three versions of neo-institutional theory, each of which has somewhat different views on how institutions, interests and policy ideas interact in these kind of processes. The analysis shows that the Swedish influence on this process consisted primarily of an advocacy coalition of individuals with strong institutional positions in the Swedish science policy system and affiliations to transnational policy institutions and communities. Furthermore, the study shows that the policy actors largely functioned as normative entrepreneurs who related to general policy ideas shared by members of a transnational community, but also that the drivers of the development and the policy solutions were largely anchored in experiences and legacies from a national context.

Advocacy Coalition for Safer Sex in the Adult Film Industry: The Case of Los Angeles County's Measure B.

Performers in the adult film industry are routinely exposed to bloodborne pathogens. In 2012, public health advocates in Los Angeles County convinced voters to pass a ballot initiative-Measure B-to mandate condom use on adult film sets. This article presents a case study of the advocacy coalition's strategies used to achieve greater workplace safety using the advocacy coalition framework. The authors were given access to all memoranda, market research, and campaign tools used to promote Measure B. To reconstruct adult film industry counterefforts, the authors reviewed trade publications, social media, and blog posts. When legislative efforts failed, advocates engaged in a step-by-step strategy built around voters to achieve passage of a ballot initiative mandating condom use for all adult films produced in Los Angeles County. Although the industry immediately filed a lawsuit after passage of Measure B, its constitutionality has been upheld. Measure B passed because public health advocates were able to assemble scientific evidence, build public support, counter false claims, and maintain consistent messages throughout the campaign. The adult film industry lacked social capital, cohesion, and nimbleness. To bolster regulatory efforts, appealing to voters to favor safe workplaces may be an effective advocacy strategy for other industries.

The Accuracy-Privacy Trade-off of Mobile Crowdsensing

Mobile crowdsensing has emerged as an efficient sensing paradigm that combines the crowd intelligence and the sensing power of mobile devices, such as mobile phones and Internet of Things gadgets. This article addresses the contradicting incentives of privacy preservation by crowdsensing users, and accuracy maximization and collection of true data by service providers. We first define the individual contributions of crowdsensing users based on the accuracy in data analytics achieved by the service provider from buying their data. We then propose a truthful mechanism for achieving high service accuracy while protecting privacy based on user preferences. The users are incentivized to provide true data by being paid based on their individual contribution to the overall service accuracy. Moreover, we propose a coalition strategy that allows users to cooperate in providing their data under one identity, increasing their anonymity privacy protection, and sharing the resulting payoff. Finally, we outline important open research directions in mobile and people- centric crowdsensing.

Assessing Organizational Effectiveness of Cooperative Agents

This paper investigates the effect of agents coalitional strategy on their effectiveness using an evaluation approach that causes no alteration of the global system’s performance. Cooperation process is thus considered during the execution of a Multiagent System (MAS) in order to collect all necessary data for the evaluation phase. A structural analysis is then led to set instant and global assessments of the agents management and output. The observation and evaluation tools are implemented using aspect-oriented programming. We prove through experiments that they do not alter the global performance of the system regarding execution time and reached scores. The approach could then be validated as an objective evaluator of the system by judging real organizational capabilities of its agents in achieving their goals.

Justice perceptions, leader-member exchange, and upward influence tactics

Purpose The authors examine the relationship between leader-member exchange (LMX) and the selection of upward influence tactics. The purpose of this paper is to integrate research on perceptions of justice, LMX, and influence tactics in order to empirically test an integrative model. Design/methodology/approach Questionnaires were administered to n=407 employed Masters of Business Administration students at a private Southeastern University in the USA. Structural equation modeling was used to test the statistical significance of paths specified in the models. Findings Results indicate that perceptions of organizational justice have indirect effects on upward influence tactics reported. LMX had mediating effects on the relationship between interactional justice and the use of rational and coalition tactics. Research limitations/implications The data are cross-sectional and were collected using self-reports, which limits the conclusions that can be drawn. The findings however, suggest that perceptions of interactional justice are associated with LMX, whose effects in turn are associated with the use of influence tactics. Practical implications Coalition strategies were used more when subordinates experienced poor LMX. The research suggests that perhaps for individuals experiencing poor relationships with the supervisor, coalition strategies might present an alternative to “rational” influence tactics (which are used more in high-quality relationships). Originality/value The current study extends LMX research by examining differing subordinate influence strategies in high- and low-quality relationships. It also extends organizational justice research by examining the effects of the interpersonal implementation of fair procedures on the dynamics between leadership and upward influence.

Exploring Cause–Effect Relationship

This article argues that while the concept of peace building proved beneficial to Western society, it drew flak in pre-2014 Afghanistan for its inbuilt faults, the overarching US–Taliban conflict and the state failure towards meeting the prerequisites of the coalition strategy. It also argues that peace building in the immediate future of post-2014 Afghanistan is improbable due to the existing and likely conflicts between and among the Afghan government, the Taliban and the newly emerging Daesh or IS group for power, group and ideological domination. The given predicament, the article notes, is fraught with serious consequences for the war-haggard Afghans, their fragile country and its sensitive neighbourhood.

Unification and Its Discontents

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, during the height of protests and actions by civil rights activists around de facto school segregation in the Los Angeles area, the residents of a group of small cities just southeast of the City of Los Angeles fought to break away from the Los Angeles City Schools and create a new, independent school district—one that would help preserve racially segregated schools in the area. The “Four Cities” coalition was comprised of residents of the majority white, working-class cities of Vernon, Maywood, Huntington Park, and Bell—all of which had joined the Los Angeles City Schools in the 1920s and 1930s rather than continue to operate local districts. The coalition later expanded to include residents of the cities of South Gate, Cudahy, and some unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County, although Vernon was eventually excluded. The Four Cities coalition petitioned for the new district in response to a planned merger of the Los Angeles City Schools—until this time comprised of separate elementary and high school districts—into the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The coalition's strategy was to utilize a provision of the district unification process that allowed citizens to petition for reconfiguration or redrawing of boundaries. Unification was encouraged by the California State Board of Education and legislature in order to combine the administrative functions of separate primary and secondary school districts—the dominant model up to this time—to better serve the state's rapidly growing population of children and their educational needs, and was being deliberated in communities across the state and throughout Los Angeles County. The debates at the time over school district unification in the Greater Los Angeles area, like the one over the Four Cities proposal, were inextricably tied to larger issues, such as taxation, control of community institutions, the size and role of state and county government, and racial segregation. At the same time that civil rights activists in the area and the state government alike were articulating a vision of public schools that was more inclusive and demanded larger-scale, consolidated administration, the unification process reveals an often-overlooked grassroots activism among residents of the majority white, working-class cities surrounding Los Angeles that put forward a vision of exclusionary, smaller-scale school districts based on notions of local control and what they termed “community identity.”

Against the Grain of Urban Bias: Elite Conflict and the Logic of Coalition Formation in Colonial and Post-Colonial Africa

The theory of urban bias was a major contribution to the evolution of contemporary theories of political economy that remains highly relevant today. Yet theorists of urban bias have still not produced a general explanation that accounts for anomalous cases of what we call “rural incorporation,” or coalition strategies based on modest rural producers. These anomalous cases suggest that the collective action underpinnings of urban bias theory underdetermine outcomes. This paper advances a new explanation of the anomalous African cases of Kenya, Cote d’Ivoire, and Zimbabwe. After detailing the costs of rural incorporation, we theorize the conditions that would motivate state elites to overcome their pro-urban biases and offer substantial material benefits to non-elite agrarian producers. Rural incorporation is an optimal strategy only when state elites are locked in unusually intense conflict with their rivals. Most nationalist movements in Africa did not meet this condition and their leaders followed pro-urban policies. The three outliers are all cases of settler colonialism: bitter rivalry between European settlers and native planters created the conditions for rural incorporation. We show how native planters and their political allies selected rural incorporation as a political-economic instrument of commercial competition and political supremacy. Case studies of Ghana and Nigeria demonstrate that in the absence of political and economic rivalry with settlers, African leaders selected the “default” strategy of urban bias.

Advocacy Coalition Resources and Strategies in Colorado Hydraulic Fracturing Politics

ABSTRACTThis article examines how members of competing coalitions seek to influence public policy. Past research examined coalitions and policy change, but offered limited understanding about the relationships between coalitions’ resources, strategies, and policy change. The case study focuses on the establishment of various regulations related to hydraulic fracturing in Colorado. Data were collected using interviews (n = 14) and a survey (n = 137) of policy actors asking about their beliefs, resources, and strategies in April 2013. This study found that members of the coalition proposing stricter regulations were successful. This winning coalition more frequently engaged in a wider range of strategies and had greater public support compared to their opponents. The study also found that among the winning coalition members, leadership and information technology resources were associated with the majority of their strategies, but financial resources did not have a significant relationship with any strategy.

A quantum derivation of a reputational risk premium

Using quantum modeling, we propose a novel approach to reputational risk management arguing that taking care of corporate reputation can be considered a coalitional strategy framed into a quantum game theory schema. Following a stochastic mechanics approach, and assuming that the revenues of a firm can be modeled as an Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process represented by the well-known Langevin equation for the diffusion of a particle with unit mass under non-linear friction, we offer a mathematical derivation for the discount rate of a firm that does not manage its reputational risk and for a company that optimally manages its reputational risk. By comparison, we derive an analytical expression for the reputational risk premium. Our approach provides useful managerial and financial implications, suggesting that the use of the quantum ideology may result useful in enlarging the body of knowledge of corporate management.