In the name of health security, individual freedoms were constrained in an unprecedented way in many countries, democratic or authoritarian, all over the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet the constraints have not been consistent across countries, which motivates this paper to examine the relevance of value preferences towards freedom or security in the society for COVID-19 policies. Based on data for 40 democratic and authoritarian countries, the analyses show that the variation in the stringency of COVID-19 policies can be explained by value preferences of the population only in autocracies. In democracies, however, we do not find such a relationship. Governments in democratic political systems, we argue, are responsive to their constitutions and face prosecution by the judiciary if they violate the law or provisions of the constitution, limiting their capacity to implement strong COVID-19 policies. Nevertheless, their COVID-19 policies restricted citizens’ freedoms and liberties, which means that these policies were rather not responsive to citizens’ preferences for freedom, democratic rights and liberties. By highlighting how autocracies respond to their citizens’ value preferences for security, this paper contributes to a better understanding of how autocracies might gain legitimacy in times of crises.

Critics of deliberative democracy theory have argued that deliberation should be supplemented with forms of emotional expression to eliminate the inequalities of gender, race, and class which are reproduced in deliberations that privilege rational discussion. This article presents results from a qualitative empirical study on emotion work in deliberations. Emotional expression requires emotion work on the part of the participants. The capacity for such emotion work appears to depend on the individual participant's emotional capital. The results show that, given the participants' varying levels of emotional capital, an emphasis on emotion work tends to reproduce inequalities, rather than to eliminate them.

In the name of health security, individual freedoms were constrained in an unprecedented way in many countries, democratic or authoritarian, all over the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet the constraints have not been consistent across countries, which motivates this paper to examine the relevance of value preferences towards freedom or security in the society for COVID-19 policies. Based on data for 40 democratic and authoritarian countries, the analyses show that the variation in the stringency of COVID-19 policies can be explained by value preferences of the population only in autocracies. In democracies, however, we do not find such a relationship. Governments in democratic political systems, we argue, are responsive to their constitutions and face prosecution by the judiciary if they violate the law or provisions of the constitution, limiting their capacity to implement strong COVID-19 policies. Nevertheless, their COVID-19 policies restricted citizens’ freedoms and liberties, which means that these policies were rather not responsive to citizens’ preferences for freedom, democratic rights and liberties. By highlighting how autocracies respond to their citizens’ value preferences for security, this paper contributes to a better understanding of how autocracies might gain legitimacy in times of crises.

Only a few birds besides domestic pigeons and poultry can be described as domesticated. Therefore, keeping a pet bird can be challenging, and the human-avian relationship will have a major influence on the quality of this cohabitation. Studies that focus on characterizing the owner-bird relationship generally use adapted cat/dog scales which may not identify its specific features. Following a sociological approach, a concept of human-animal relationship was developed leading to three types of human-animal relationship (impersonal, personal, and close personal). This concept was used to develop a 21-item owner-bird-relationship scale (OBRS). This scale was applied to measure the relationship between pet bird owners (or keepers) ( = 1,444) and their birds in an online survey performed in Germany. Factor analysis revealed that the relationship between owner and bird consisted of four dimensions: the tendency of the owner to anthropomorphize the bird; the social support the bird provides for the owner; the empathy, attentiveness, and respect of the owner toward the bird; and the relationship of the bird toward the owner. More than one quarter of the German bird owners of this sample showed an impersonal, half a personal, and less than a quarter a close personal relationship to their bird. The relationship varied with the socio-demographic characteristics of the owners, such as gender, marital status, and education. This scale supports more comprehensive quantitative research into the human-bird relationship in the broad field of human-animal studies including the psychology and sociology of animals as well as animal welfare and veterinary medicine.

This article investigates intervention strategies in workplace bullying which have so far received little attention from researchers. Until now the focus has been on approaches to classifying intervention strategies, the appropriateness of mediation as an intervention strategy and ways different organizations respond to workplace bullying. This study prefers a qualitative design and employs a new empirical approach. Consultants who have specialized in bullying consultation were interviewed and asked which intervention strategies they apply and for what reason and to what purpose the strategies are adopted. It is found that consultants apply conflict moderation or mediation, coaching, and/or organization development. This is interesting as the dominating contingency approach to conflict intervention (Fisher & Keasly, 1990 ; Glasl, 1982 ; Prein, 1984 ) recommends neither coaching nor organization development. Based on Heames and Harvey's ( 2006 ) multilevel model of bullying, this article therefore suggests a new approach, a multilevel approach of interventions in workplace bullying that considers interventions at the dyadic, group and organizational level.

Where should computer simulations be located on the 'usual methodological map' (Galison 1996, 120) which distinguishes experiment from (mathematical) theory? Specifically, do simulations ultimately qualify as experiments or as thought experiments? Ever since Galison raised that question, a passionate debate has developed, pushing many issues to the forefront of discussions concerning the epistemology and methodology of computer simulation. This review article illuminates the positions in that debate, evaluates the discourse and gives an outlook on questions that have not yet been addressed.

Decentralised experimentation and mutual learning of public policies is seen as one of the important advantages of federal systems (Oates: laboratory federalism). Based upon Hayekian ideas of the advantages of decentralised experimentation (as a discovery procedure), we analyse the long-term benefits of parallel experimentation in a federal system from an evolutionary economics perspective. We present a simulation model in which the lower-level jurisdictions in a federal system experiment with randomly chosen policy innovations and can imitate the relatively best solutions. The simulations confirm our hypotheses that a higher degree of decentralisation has positive effects on the long-term accumulation of knowledge of suitable policy solutions and also limits risks through better protection against erroneous policies. Also problems of policy learning and trade offs with (static and dynamic) advantages of centralisation are taken into account. Adapted from the source document.

Das Handbuch Modellbildung und Simulation in den Sozialwissenschaften bietet in 37 Artikeln einen umfassenden Uberblick uber sozialwissenschaftliche Modellbildung und Simulation. Es vermittelt wissenschaftstheoretische und methodische Grundlagen sowie den Stand der Forschung in den wichtigsten Anwendungsgebieten.Behandelt werden realistische, strukturalistische und konstruktivistische Zugriffe auf Modellbildung und Simulation, bedeutende Methoden und Typen der Modellierung (u.a. stochastische Prozesse und Bayes-Verfahren, nutzen- und spieltheoretische Modellierungen) und Ansatze der Computersimulation (z.B. Multi-Agenten-Modelle, zellulare Automaten, neuronale Netze, Small Worlds). Die Anwendungskapitel befassen sich u.a. mit sozialen Dilemmata, sozialen Normen, Innovation und Diffusion, Herrschaft und Organisation, Gewalt und Krieg.

»Freiheit« findet als politisch-rechtliche Leitidee der Moderne weitreichende Zustimmung. Bei näherem Hinsehen zeigen sich gleichwohl höchst unterschiedliche Deutungen und Akzentuierungen. Darüber hinaus ist der Freiheitsbegriff semantischen Umkehrungen ausgesetzt, die sogar darauf hinauslaufen können, faktische Unfreiheit als höchste Freiheit auszugeben. Die interdisziplinären Beiträge sprechen sich für ein anspruchsvolles Freiheitsverständnis aus und legen ihr Augenmerk nicht zuletzt auf die relationale Dimension von Freiheitspraxen.

This article presents results from an empirical study. Here, seven different types of large‐group intervention methods that were applied to redesign organizational and societal structures have been explored, thus, relating change management literature to deliberative democracy literature. From a Habermasian perspective, distorted discourses are identified as a major factor hampering learning. Distortions produce a working consensus with a bias. It is shown that large‐group interventions are typically characterized by different types of distortions. The problem of bias in participative change management should be given more attention. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In this paper we present the peer co-ordination approach which we apply to EU intergovernmental negotiations. This approach seeks to contribute to liberal intergovernmentalist' bargaining theory (Moravcsik 1993, 1998). It assumes that EU intergovernmental negotiations should be conceptualized as a rational learning process under uncertainty in which governments co-ordinate with peers in intergovernmental policy networks. In particular, we investigate the reasons why an EU government should select another government as a peer. Relying on a dataset on the EU Intergovernmental Conference of 1996 which led to the Amsterdam Treaty, we test five alternative hypotheses on peer selection (ex ante transnational co-ordination, preference, salience, power, and neighbourship; H1-H5). A random model provides us with a null model (H0) against which to test alternative models. We find that peer selection during these EU intergovernmental negotiations can best be explained by ex ante transnational co-ordination networks.

EU institutional reforms are far from trivial, as the recent rejection of the treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe by the French and Dutch electorate has demonstrated. With the exception of this treaty, all other treaties in the process of European institution building have been approved by the member states' governments. In this paper, we ask how these governments reach a decision on EU institutional reforms. Do they engage in coalition formation as is often observed in intergovernmental negotiations* It is our hypothesis that they do not necessarily engage in coalition formation but in peer coordination in policy networks to reach decisions in these multilateral, multiple issue, multi-stage negotiations. In order to test our theory we have implemented a simulation model which we apply to the EU Intergovernmental Conference of 1996 which led to the Amsterdam treaty. We conclude by discussing policy implications of our approach. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

What is the effect of the fallible knowledge of consumers on knowledge accumulation in markets? This is the question which this article investigates based on Hayek’s evolutionary concept of competition as a discovery procedure and of Popper’s concept of fallible knowledge. The article presents results from a simulation model. It tests the hypothesis that the growth rate of knowledge accumulation of an industry should decrease with the increase in fallible knowledge of consumers. Surprisingly, under certain conditions, the growth rate of knowledge accumulation of an industry increases with the increase in fallible knowledge of consumers.

The hypothesis of this article is that agency theory makes implicit assumptions on the power relation between principal and agent. It implicitly assumes an asymmetry in power in favour of the principal. The bases of power approach [French Jr., J.R.P., Raven, B.H., 1959. The bases of social power. In: Cartwright, D. (Ed.), Studies in Social Power. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, pp. 150–167; Raven, B.H., 1992. A power/interaction model of interpersonal influence: French and Raven 30 years later. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality 7, 217–244] of social psychology is used to prove this argument. Surprisingly, the social power perspective does not only reveal this implicit assumption. It also paves the way for a new mechanism that resolves agency problems that had not yet been discovered by agency theory: identification systems.

Reports early steps in research that seeks to clarify how publications of scientists interact dynamically with citations & reputation in shaping the evolution of scientific fields. It is assumed that A. J. Lotka's (1926) modified law holds for scientific fields. A primary approach to model publication productivity was published by A. I. Yablonsky (1980). In contrast to Yablonsky's unfinished mathematical approach, the simulation approach presented here is not predominately driven by insight into the formal generation mechanisms of certain processes, but more theory driven. It considers the evolution of publication & citation distributions over the histories of scientific fields using both simulated & real historical data. 4 Tables, 3 Figures, 38 References. Adapted from the source document.

The central issue of this paper is that one can develop emergent macro-dynamics from micro agent models and that the resulting models fall very much in the complexity-chaos line of the development of theory. The core theoretical contribution is a presentation of a clear, sensical, and potentially very powerful architecture for developing algorithms for the embedding of levels-the so-called master equation approach-and its comparison with alternative architectures. Finally, to illustrate the strategy and to demonstrate that the approach produces interesting and useful results, we give an application: a multilevel simulation model of military coups d'état, which is tested using data from Thailand between 1932 and 1992.

The central issue of this paper is that one can develop emergent macro-dynamics from micro agent models and that the resulting models fall very much in the complexity-chaos line of the development of theory. The core theoretical contribution is a presentation of a clear, sensical, and potentially very powerful architecture for developing algorithms for the embedding of levels—the so-called master equation approach—and its comparison with alternative architectures. Finally, to illustrate the strategy and to demonstrate that the approach produces interesting and useful results, we give an application: a multilevel simulation model of military coups d'état, which is tested using data from Thailand between 1932 and 1992.

This article takes a look at the economics approaches to management consulting. It discusses the evolution of economics as well as its basic assumptions. The next section identifies the contributions of new institutional economics for a better understanding of management consulting, especially the concepts of transaction-cost economics, agency theory, and property rights theory. This article also discusses the classical microeconomic theory and behavioral economics and presents contributions from heterodox institutional economics.