Evolution Of Norms Research Articles

Cheat or perish? A theory of scientific customs

Performance incentives have become increasingly important in academia. Evidence suggest that they increase not only researchers’ effort but also their cheating. We develop a principal–agent framework in which a research institution (principal) aims to reward scientific productivity considering the social benefit of research and the remuneration costs. Researchers (agents) take into account what others are doing. As a consequence, the introduction of performance incentives not only leads to fraudulent behavior in the short run, but may also deteriorate the scientific norm in the long run. In the face of these dynamics, the principal pursues two goals: to increase productivity (effort incentive policy) and to deal with fraud (anti-fraud policy). Several factors determine the optimal mix of policies: economic factors (researchers’ cost of providing high or low effort, the societal value of scientific knowledge and the societal costs of scientific misbehavior) and psychological factors (the evolution of norms over time). An important insight of our theory is that when research institutions seek to encourage the production of high quality research, they should also raise the salary for normal research to avoid misconduct.

Close cousins in protection: the evolution of two norms

Abstract The Protection of Civilians (PoC) in peacekeeping and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) populations from atrocity crimes are two norms that emerged at the turn of the new millennium with the aim of protecting vulnerable peoples from mass violence and/or systematic and widespread violations of human rights. To date, most scholars have analysed the discourses over the status, strength and robustness of both norms separately. And yet, the distinction between the two has at times been exceptionally fine. In this article, we analyse the constitutive relationship between PoC and R2P, and the impact of discursive and behavioural contestation on their joint evolution within the UN system and state practice over three phases (1999–2005; 2006–10; 2011–18). In so doing, we contribute to the International Relations literature on norms by illuminating ideational interplay in the dynamics of norm evolution and contestation. More specifically, we illustrate how actors may seek to strengthen support for one norm, or dimension of a norm, by contrasting it or linking it with another. Our analysis also reveals that while the two norms of R2P and PoC were initially debated and implemented through different institutional paths and policy frameworks, discursive and behavioural contestation has in more recent years brought them closer together in one important respect. The meaning ascribed to both norms—by representatives of states and institutions such as the United Nations—has become more state-centric, with an emphasis on building and strengthening the capacity of national authorities to protect populations. This meaning contrasts with the more cosmopolitan origins of R2P and PoC, and arguably limits possibilities for the external enforcement of both norms through any form of international authority that stands above or outside sovereign states. This article forms part of the special section of the May 2019 issue of International Affairs on ‘The dynamics of dissent’, guest-edited by Anette Stimmer and Lea Wisken.

The evolution of norms and their influence on performance among self-governing irrigation systems in the Southwestern United States

Irrigation is important for global food supply and is vulnerable to climate change. Internalized cultural norms are important for the performance of Common Pool Resource (CPR) regimes such as irrigation systems, but much is unknown about the role of norms in shaping irrigation performance. This paper applies multi-level selection (MLS) theory and CPR theory to a stratified, semi-random sample of 71 irrigation systems of distinct cultural origins in the Upper Rio Grande Basin of the United States to test hypotheses related to the role of norms in irrigation system form and function. Results show that internalized norms of cooperation are strongly associated with the rules and technologies adopted by irrigators, the frequency of water use violations, average crop production, and the equality of crop production. Systems with internalized norms of cooperation have adopted rules and technologies which are associated with increased care for the commons, public goods, and higher equality between irrigators. Further, agents designated as monitors of CPR use have different effects depending on whether irrigators possess cooperative or competitive norms. Notably, the presence of monitors that enforce rules that are incongruent with norms is associated with increased water use violations and lower average crop production. These findings add weight to the growing body of work giving greater attention to cultural context when analyzing user-governed CPR regimes and climate resilience, and further illustrate the compatibility of MLS theory with other prevailing theories in CPR research.

Norm emergence as agenda diffusion: Failure and success in the regulation of cluster munitions

The research on international norms offers several models of their evolution; however, a convincing model specifically depicting the phase of norm emergence is still lacking. Macro models (e.g. the norm life cycle) focus on the overall evolution of norms and distinguish the emergence phase as one among others, but they remain too rough. Meso models focus on a specific phase, but on phases other than norm emergence, such as diffusion (e.g. the signalling model) or enforcement (e.g. the spiral model). If they do focus on emergence, this focus remains case-specific and lacks theorisation. Micro models (e.g. the persuasion model or the funnelling model) focus on specific sequences within a phase. In this article, I develop one model of norm emergence by conceptualising it as the diffusion of a problem through different agendas and the discursive transformation of a problem into a (problem-solving) norm. The model distinguishes four sequences of norm emergence: problem adoption by norm entrepreneurs; issue creation in the public sphere; candidate norm creation in the institutional-deliberative sphere; and norm creation in multilateral negotiations. I illustrate the utility of this model by tracing the emergence of the norm against cluster munitions.

Evolution of social norms and correlated equilibria

Social norms regulate and coordinate most aspects of human social life, yet they emerge and change as a result of individual behaviors, beliefs, and expectations. A satisfactory account for the evolutionary dynamics of social norms, therefore, has to link individual beliefs and expectations to population-level dynamics, where individual norms change according to their consequences for individuals. Here, we present a model of evolutionary dynamics of social norms that encompasses this objective and addresses the emergence of social norms. In this model, a norm is a set of behavioral prescriptions and a set of environmental descriptions that describe the expected behaviors of those with whom the norm holder will interact. These prescriptions and descriptions are functions of exogenous environmental events. These events have no intrinsic meaning or effect on the payoffs to individuals, yet beliefs/superstitions regarding them can effectuate coordination. Although a norm's prescriptions and descriptions are dependent on one another, we show how they emerge from random accumulations of beliefs. We categorize the space of social norms into several natural classes and study the evolutionary competition between these classes of norms. We apply our model to the Game of Chicken and the Nash Bargaining Game. Furthermore, we show how the space of norms and evolutionary stability are dependent on the correlation structure of the environment and under which such correlation structures social dilemmas can be ameliorated or exacerbated.

Право на свободу мирних зібрань в Україні: еволюція конституційних норм протягом століття

У статті досліджено еволюцію конституційних норм щодо врегулювання здійснення та інституалізації права на свободу мирних зібрань в Україні. Проаналізовано норми чотирьох Конституцій УРСР та Конституції України щодо закріплення права на свободу мирних зібрань і формулювання змісту згаданого права. Зазначено, що розвиток громадянського суспільства суттєво позначатиметься на розумінні та здійсненні права на свободу мирних зібрань, а тому твердити про абсолютну визначеність та усталеність цього правового явища не доречно, оскільки правова практика, законотворчість правозастосування вноситимуть до права на свободу мирних зібрань свої особливості, які можуть набути сталих рис і привести до їх нормативно-правового закріплення.

Society, sexuality, and medicine in Hogarth's Marriage A-la-Mode.

Discussions about sexuality permeate all fields of medicine and yet are still taboo.1 If medical professionals were to promote a liberated dialogue about sex, we could encourage a societal shift towards acceptance. This could benefit not only individual patients, but also public health outcomes.2 Hafferty and Franks found that prevailing ethics and the study of the development, structure, and functioning of human society, that is, sociology, are often embedded in medical education,3 but this alone does not guarantee patient-centred care. Reflecting on past popular culture might better cultivate best practice as it allows us to consider historical narratives around medicine, and how these influence our patients’ perceptions of the field. William Hogarth’s series Marriage A-la-Mode ( c . 1743) offers a deeply satirical commentary on the sexual hedonism of a young couple married not for love, but for social and financial gain. Such artefacts can aid our understanding of the evolution of social norms. In The Tete a Tete (image, above right), we encounter a Viscount and Viscountess having both returned from wayward evenings with other sexual partners. The woman’s mischievous expression and languorous posture suggest that she has been disturbed by her …

Formation of Global Animal Law as an Autonomous Branch of International Law

This paper discusses the emergence of global animal law as an autonomous branch of international law through transnational legal processes, where the main actors are not only states, but also international organizations, individuals, NGOs, civil society movements, etc. A close examination of the recent developments in this field shows that the evolution of animal welfare norms has already reached the global level and this branch can already claim a place in the system of global law. Based on a thorough analysis of the existing universal or regional hard law instruments, as well as general principles of law, case law and soft law, the paper suggests that the current state of development of animal law indeed indicates the existence of an international consensus towards the formation of global animal law as a separate branch of international law. The final part of the paper considers different models of how the process of animal law formation can be finalized and additionally discusses the risk of fragmentation, which might be caused by the process of expansion of animal law.

Critical analysis on the evolution of ethical norms for the use of assisted reproduction techniques in Brazil

The Federal Medical Council (FMC) published FMC Resolution No. 1,358/1992 with the aim of adopting ethical standards for the use of Assisted Reproduction Techniques (ART). This resolution was updated in 2010 (CFM No. 1957/2010), in 2013 (CFM No. 2,013/13) and the last update was in 2015 (CFM No. 2.121/2015). The scope of this article is to conduct a critical analysis of the evolution of the ethical norms proposed by FMC for the use of ART in Brazil. A documentary analysis of the text of the four published Resolutions was carried out, in which the ethical standards for the use of ART were described. It was observed that the resolution evolved in relation to the rights of homosexuals, adopted more permissive measures regarding cryopreservation, donation of gametes and embryos and uteruses on loan and lastly authorized some procedures in ART such as postmortem reproduction, donation and shared gestation. From 2013 onwards the resolution gained a liberal character being updated in terms of clinical practice. For the next updates it would be interesting to include procedures in ART not previously addressed such as nuclear and cytoplasmic transfer. The update frequency (every two years) should be kept to the ethical standards enabling the ART to continue evolving together with the advancement of science.

Immigration and the Evolution of Local Cultural Norms

We study the local evolution of cultural norms in West Germany in reaction to the sudden presence of East Germans who migrated to the West after reunification. These migrants grew up with very high rates of maternal employment, whereas West German families followed the traditional breadwinner-housewife model. We find that West German women increase their labor supply and that this holds within household. We provide additional evidence on stated gender norms, West-East friendships, intermarriage, and childcare infrastructure. The dynamic evolution of the local effects on labor supply is best explained by local cultural learning and endogenous childcare infrastructure.

On the Evolution of Norms in Strategic Environments

In a heterogeneous population divided into two cultural groups, we investigate the intergenerational dynamics of norms, modeled as preferences over actions, as depending on strategic environments. We find that environments with strategic complementarity or substitutability lead to different long-run norms and horizontal socializations. When players face many games within the same class, under complementarity agents converge to the same norm and socialization is high, under substitutability norms may diverge or become neutral and socialization is low. However, for specific games, partial convergence can arise under complementarity, providing an explanation to cultural heterogeneity, and partial divergence can arise under substitutability.

Wariancja innowacyjna w normie skodyfikowanej w ostatnich stu latach rozwoju polszczyzny

The article escribes the changes in the innovative variants which appeared in the codified norm within the last century. An example of such a variant is the form zjednują, first noted in 1937 as a balanced alternate of the form zjednywam. This type of units appeared in correctness dictionaries and they competed with the primarily neutral forms. Owing to the expansiveness of the innovative variants several levels of the strength of their influence on the doublet were distinguished. The variants, which appeared in one or two dictionaries and are not noted contemporarily (e.g. the form dworka as a variant of dworku) were the weakest. The strongest were the variants which became the only ones in the contemporary times and the former do not appear or are perceived as incorrect (e.g. the form wzwierciadle displaced the form w zwierciedle). An exceptional example in the group of innovative variants where those which were primarily noted as incorrect and in the course of the codified norm evolution obtained the status of correct forms (e.g. the form romansy, rznąc). Sometimes they were so expansive that the former variants became recessive (e.g. powątpiewac o czymś) or are no longer noted (e.g. porznąc).

Ecological change alters the evolutionary response to harvest in a freshwater fish.

Harvesting can induce rapid evolution in animal populations, yet the role of ecological change in buffering or enhancing that response is poorly understood. Here, we developed an eco-genetic model to examine how ecological changes brought about by two notorious invasive species, zebra and quagga mussels, influence harvest-induced evolution and resilience in a freshwater fish. Our study focused on lake whitefish (Coregonus clupeaformis) in the Laurentian Great Lakes, where the species supports valuable commercial and subsistence fisheries, and where the invasion of dreissenid (zebra and quagga) mussels caused drastic shifts in ecosystem productivity. Using our model system, we predicted faster rates of evolution of maturation reaction norms in lake whitefish under pre-invasion ecosystem conditions when growth and recruitment of young to the population were high. Slower growth rates that occurred under post-invasion conditions delayed when fish became vulnerable to the fishery, thus decreasing selection pressure and lessening the evolutionary response to harvest. Fishing with gill nets and traps nets generally selected for early maturation at small sizes, except when fishing at low levels with small mesh gill nets under pre-invasion conditions; in this latter case, evolution of delayed maturation was predicted. Overall, the invasion of dreissenid mussels lessened the evolutionary response to harvest, while also reducing the productivity and commercial yield potential of the stock. These results demonstrate how ecological conditions shape evolutionary outcomes and how invasive species can have a direct effect on evolutionary responses to harvest and sustainability.

Keeping It in the Family: Female Inheritance, Inmarriage, and the Status of Women

While female property ownership is associated with positive outcomes for women, their right to inherit property in patrlineal societies may also result in more constraining marriage norms. I test the following hypothesis: Where a woman inherits property, her male relatives are more likely to arrange her marriage to a cousin in order to keep her share of property within the male lineage. The increase in unearned income due to female inheritance also reduces women’s economic participation, especially in blue-collar jobs where women’s work is subject to social stigmas. Using a difference-in-differences design that exploits exogenous variation induced by a reform of inheritance laws in India in 2005, the study finds that women exposed to the female inheritance law are more likely to marry their paternal cousins and less likely to work, especially in agriculture. The paper also discusses possible implications for the evolution of marriage and gender norms in Islamic societies, where female inheritance is mandated by Islamic law.

Evolutionary models and the normative significance of stability

Many have expected that understanding the evolution of norms should, in some way, bear on our first-order normative outlook: How norms evolve should shape which norms we accept. But recent philosophy has not done much to shore up this expectation. Most existing discussions of evolution and norms either jump headlong into the is/ought gap or else target meta-ethical issues, such as the objectivity of norms. My aim in this paper is to sketch a different way in which evolutionary considerations can feed into normative thinking—focusing on stability. I will discuss two (related) forms of argument that utilize information about social stability drawn from evolutionary models, and employs it to assess claims in political philosophy. One such argument treats stability as feature of social states that may be taken into account alongside other features. The other uses stability as a constraint on the realization of social ideals, via a version of the ought-implies-can maxim. These forms of argument are not new; indeed they have a history going back at least to early modern philosophy. But their marriage with evolutionary information is relatively recent, has a significantly novel character, and has received little attention in recent moral and political philosophy.

FEW SELF-INVOLVED AGENTS AMONG BOUNDED CONFIDENCE AGENTS CAN CHANGE NORMS

Social issues are generally discussed by highly-involved and less-involved people to build social norms defining what has to be thought and done about them. As self-involved agents share different attitude dynamics to other agents [Wood, W., Pool, G., Leck, K. and Purvis, D., Self-definition, defensive processing, and influence: The normative impact of majority and minority groups, J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. (1996) 1181–1193], we study the emergence and evolution of norms through an individual-based model involving these two types of agents. The dynamics of self-involved agents is drawn from [Huet, S. and Deffuant, G., Openness leads to opinion stability and narrowness to volatility, Adv. Complex Syst. 13 (2010) 405–423], and the dynamics of others, from [Deffuant, G., Neau, D., Amblard, F. and Weisbuch, G., Mixing beliefs among interacting agents, Adv. Complex Syst. 3 (2001) 87–98]. The attitude of an agent is represented as a segment on a continuous attitudinal space. Two agents are close if their attitude segments share sufficient overlap. Our agents discuss two different issues, one of which, called main issue, is more important for the self-involved agents than the other, called secondary issue. Self-involved agents are attracted to both issues if they are close to the main issue, but shift away from their peer’s opinion if they are only close on the secondary issue. Differently, non-self-involved agents are attracted by other agents when they are close on both the main and secondary issues. We observe the emergence of various types of extreme minor clusters. In one or different groups of attitudes, they can lead to an already-built moderate norm or a norm polarized on secondary and/or main issues. They can also push disagreeing agents gathered in different groups to a global moderate consensus.

The Affective Evolution of Social Norms in Social Networks

Social norms are a core concept in social sciences and play a critical role in regulating a society’s behavior. Organizations and even governmental bodies use this social component to tackle varying challenges in the society, as it is a less costly alternative to establishing new laws and regulations. Social networks are an important and effective infrastructure in which social norms can evolve. Therefore, there is a need for theoretical models for studying the spread of social norms in social networks. In this paper, by using the intrinsic properties of norms, we redefine and tune the Rescorla–Wagner conditioning model in order to obtain an effective model for the spread of social norms. We extend this model for a network of people as a Markov chain. The potential structures of steady states in this process are studied. Then, we formulate the problem of maximizing the adoption of social norms in a social network by finding the best set of initial norm adopters. Finally, we propose an algorithm for solving this problem that runs in polynomial time and experiments it on different networks. Our experiments show that our algorithm has superior performance over other methods.

The dynamics of norm change in the cultural evolution of language

What happens when a new social convention replaces an old one? While the possible forces favoring norm change-such as institutions or committed activists-have been identified for a long time, little is known about how a population adopts a new convention, due to the difficulties of finding representative data. Here, we address this issue by looking at changes that occurred to 2,541 orthographic and lexical norms in English and Spanish through the analysis of a large corpora of books published between the years 1800 and 2008. We detect three markedly distinct patterns in the data, depending on whether the behavioral change results from the action of a formal institution, an informal authority, or a spontaneous process of unregulated evolution. We propose a simple evolutionary model able to capture all of the observed behaviors, and we show that it reproduces quantitatively the empirical data. This work identifies general mechanisms of norm change, and we anticipate that it will be of interest to researchers investigating the cultural evolution of language and, more broadly, human collective behavior.

Corporate Governance Evolution and Challenges in the New Companies Act

The proposed paper discusses the evolution of corporate governance norms in India since the liberalization of the Indian economy, touching upon the Kumar Mangalam Committee Report, the Narayana Murthy Committee on Corporate Governance and clause 49 of the Listing Agreement. In particular, it identifies and critically analyzes the corporate governance changes brought in the new Companies Act enacted in 2013. Saliently, the Act has amended the definition of independent directors and made it stricter; it is submitted that a “principles-based” approach to defining independence may be better suited as the categories creating conflict of interest cannot be exhaustively enumerated. Similarly, the scope of limitation of liability for directors under this Act should have been extended to exempt outside directors from liability under all acts/laws as it has been observed anecdotally that outside directors face charges under other statutes like the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881, the various environmental laws et al. In other respects, the recognition of short form mergers is a welcome reform to the MA the stipulation of prescribed shareholding (and debt holding) thresholds to challenge MA however, the expression, “prejudicial to the company or members” as interpreted by Supreme Court earlier appears to prescribe a high onus of proof on the class action plaintiffs.

A theory on the evolution of religious norms and economic prohibition

This paper provides a theory of religious prohibition against usury and innovation and its consequences on economic activities and occupations. As an economic prohibition from the majority religion is sustained by a threat of social exclusion from that cultural group, it has less effects on religious minorities. It then creates an occupational pattern where only the religious minorities choose activities that transgress the prohibition. By creating resentment against the religious minorities, this occupational pattern strengthens the diffusion of the majority religion in the population. An economic prohibition is then instigated by the clerics in the majority religion, because it allows them to consolidate their norms and to increase the scope of their control over popular masses. This work also demonstrates that an economic prohibition lasts longer when religious clerics can legitimize secular rulers and when the competition on the religious market is weaker.