Third party assessments in trust problems with conflict of interest: An experiment on the effects of promisesm

Is it possible to elicit reliable assessment from an assessor having a conflict of interest (e.g. a professor that writes a recommendation letter for a formal PhD student)? We propose an experimental test and show that compared to a not-incentivized assessment, a promise to give a truthful assessment reduces misreporting to the same extent as an incentivized assessment (i.e. when the assessor gains higher payoff if the assessment is correct).

The Beauty and the Beast. A Tale of Democratic Crises and Globalization

There are two competing hypotheses concerning the connection between democracy and globalization. The critics hold globalization responsible for an ongoing crisis of democracy. The enthusiasts highlight the positive contributions of financial openness and international political cooperation on the development of democracy. In this contribution the author investigates the interrelation between globalization and the quality of established democracies. He introduces the Democracy Barometer, a new instrument that measures the quality of democracy in 30 established democratic regimes between 1995 and 2005 and that explicitly does not measure sustainable government because it aims at serving as dependent as well as independent variable to explain different economic, societal and natural environment, i.e. sustainable development. Based on this instrument, the author first shows that one cannot speak of an ongoing crisis of (established) democracies. Second, he also conducts several multilevel analyses to model the different developments of the quality of democracy in the different countries. The author then shows that economy, i.e. economic globalization indeed has a positive impact on the quality of democracy. However, this impact is stronger in stable, i.e. older than in younger established democracies. Further investigations show that a high quality of democracy also goes hand in hand with societal and environmental performance.

Intergroup bias in third-party punishment stems from both ingroup favoritism and outgroup discrimination

Social norms pervade almost every aspect of social interaction. If they are violated, not only legal institutions, but other members of society as well, punish, i.e., inflict costs on the wrongdoer. Sanctioning occurs even when the punishers themselves were not harmed directly and even when it is costly for them. There is evidence for intergroup bias in this third-party punishment: third-parties, who share group membership with victims, punish outgroup perpetrators more harshly than ingroup perpetrators. However, it is unknown whether a discriminatory treatment of outgroup perpetrators (outgroup discrimination) or a preferential treatment of ingroup perpetrators (ingroup favoritism) drives this bias. To answer this question, the punishment of outgroup and ingroup perpetrators must be compared to a baseline, i.e., unaffiliated perpetrators. By applying a costly punishment game, we found stronger punishment of outgroup versus unaffiliated perpetrators and weaker punishment of ingroup versus unaffiliated perpetrators. This demonstrates that both ingroup favoritism and outgroup discrimination drive intergroup bias in third-party punishment of perpetrators that belong to distinct social groups.

The Conflict between Basescu and Tariceanu – A Governmental System Viewpoint

Semi-presidential systems of democratic governance risk ending up in a stalemate when it is not clear which of the two „heads” – head of State or head of Government – shall take the lead. The current political situation in Romania features some of the commonly observed characteristics of such an institutional blockade. However, after addressing these formal aspects of political Romania, the author argues for not forgetting to take into account the informal, actor-related factors. The nature of the Romanian political parties and party system seems to hinder the finding of a consensus needed to exit the self-imposed blockade. More specifically, it is the Democratic Party (PD) that is the key to understanding the recent developments. The Government of April the third has yet to prove its efficiency.