Emerson M S Niou
Biographic Data
| ID | 104837 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Emerson M S Niou |
| GIVEN NAMES | Emerson M S |
| FAMILY NAME | Niou |
| SIGNATURE | NIOU E M S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Duke University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 551 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1985 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Measuring 'closeness' in 3-candidate elections: Methodology and an application to strategic voting
External Threat, Internal Rivalry, and Alliance Formation
History reveals enemies often ally to confront a common threat. In such competitive coalitions actors must balance the simultaneous risk of distrust of their ally against external danger. We model this interactive relationship and generate several novel outcomes. Intra-alliance rivalry forces allying players to preemptively commit more resources to conflict and to free ride less. Consequently, their likelihood of conflict success increases. Howev…
Measuring Preferences for Divided Government: Some Americans Want Divided Government and Vote to Create It
Taiwan in 2016
The opposition Democratic Progressive Party won decisive victories in the Legislative Yuan and presidential elections. Despite these victories, 2016 proved to be a difficult year for Taiwan’s new ruling party. As 2016 drew to a close, polls showed that most of Taiwan’s population disapproved of Tsai Ing-wen’s performance as president
Taiwan in 2015
In 2015, Taipei’s relations with Washington moved forward in parallel with the improvements in cross-Strait relations initiated in 2008. Perhaps most notable was President Ma Ying-jeou’s summit meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping. Despite gains in external relations, however, the island was plagued by partisan gridlock, a stagnating economy, and political unrest. Most anticipated a Democratic Progressive Party victory over the ruling Kuomin…
Information and Heterogeneity in Issue Voting: Evidence from the 2008 Presidential Election in Taiwan
A voter's capacity to acquire and retain information moderates the relationship between issues and the vote. Issues differ in their distance from the voter's personal experience. Proximate issues, such as personal economic conditions, affect the vote decisions of highly informed and less informed voters equally. Distant issues, such as national economic conditions and foreign affairs, affect the vote of highly informed voters but not less informe…
Protest voting in plurality elections: A theory of voter signaling
Strategic Voting in Plurality Elections
This paper extends theCalculus of Votingof McKelvey and Ordeshook, providing the first direct derivation of the conditions under which voters will votestrategically: choose their second-most preferred candidate in order to prevent their least-preferred candidate from winning. Addressing this theoretical problem is important, as nearly all empirical research on strategic voting either implicitly or explicitly tests hypotheses which originate from …
Economic Interdependence and Peace: A Game-Theoretic Analysis
Most of the contemporary policy debate regarding economic interdependence and peace has focused on devising responses either in favor of or in opposition to the prevailing notion that trade is positively and unconditionally correlated with peace. The China and Taiwan case—noteworthy for the simultaneous presence of an ever-increasing economic interdependence and an adversarial political relationship—provides an interesting counterexample to the l…
Term Limits as a Response to Incumbency Advantage
In this paper we develop a spatial model to provide an explanation for the seeming paradox that voters in some states reelect incumbents while unilaterally self-imposing legislative term limits. The model shows that voters are more likely to support term limits if the incumbent's position is farther from the median voter position or if the incumbent's party is more moderate. Furthermore, it suggests that term limits, or the threat of term limits,…
Public Opinion, Foreign Policy, and the Security Balance in the Taiwan Strait
The delicate security balance in the Taiwan Strait is threatened on several fronts. In Taiwan, democratization has placed Taiwan independence as one of the most salient issues in its domestic politics, and the rise of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party to power has created uncertainty regarding Taiwan's future policy on the Taiwan independence-unification issue. In this paper, we investigate whether external factors such as China's…
A New Measure of Preferences on the Independence-Unification Issue in Taiwan
An accurate and reliable measure of preferences on the independence-unification issue is indispensable to the study of Taiwanese politics. In the foreseeable future the study of Taiwanese politics and the cross-Strait relations will continue to focus on Taiwanese preferences on the independence-unification issue. These preferences, however, are neither readily identifiable nor easily defined. For many people, it might be a simple and a straightfo…
Understanding Taiwan Independence and Its Policy Implications
Taiwan's democratization has placed Taiwan independence as one of the most important issues for its domestic politics and for the security balance in the Taiwan Strait. Surveys have been conducted regularly to track shifts in Taiwanese public sentiment on this issue. This article presents a new measure of the Taiwan independence issue and shows how voters' preferences can be influenced
A Theory of Economic Sanctions and Issue Linkage: The Roles of Preferences, Information, and Threats
A realistic theory of economic sanctions should be built on the facts that sanctions are a game of issue linkage involving two or more issues, players may not know each other's preferences for the outcome of the game, and threatening sanctions may be as important as imposing sanctions as a strategy in international disputes. The threat and use of economic sanctions are modeled as a multistage game of two-sided incomplete information between a tar…
The rise of the opposition party in Taiwan: Explaining Chen Shui-bian's victory in the 2000 Presidential election
Strategic Voting under Plurality and Runoff Rules
Choosing a method of electing a president is often a contentious constitutional issue for newly emerging democracies. The debate focuses largely on two alternative electoral procedures: plurality rule and plurality rule with a runoff. Duverger (1954) argues that plurality rule has a consolidating influence on parties that a runoff rule lacks. This paper focuses on the `psychological effect' identified by Duverger as the principal basis of consoli…
A Problem with Referendums
When some voters have nonseparable preferences across multiple binary issues, majority rule may not select a Condorcet winning set of outcomes when one exists, and the social choice may be a Condorcet loser or Pareto-dominated by every other set of outcomes. We present an empirical example of one such paradox from voting on the Internet. We evaluate potential solutions to the problem of nonseparable preferences in referendums, including set-wise …
Return of the Luddites
Stephen Walt's critique 1 of the application of formal analysis to international security studies, we take strong issue with a number of Walt's arguments and assertions, and we try to clarify what we believe are his misconceptions about the nature and mechanisms of progress in scientic research. We begin, however, by identifying some of the issues we do not dispute with Walt. First, it is true that formal analysis, especially in the area of secur…
Alliances versus Federations: An Extension of Riker's Analysis of Federal Formation
Retrospective and prospective voting in a one-party-dominant democracy: Taiwan's 1996 presidential election
Elections in Double-Member Districts with Nonseparable Voter Preferences
We derive Nash equilibrium candidate strategies in a double-member district election when voters have nonseparable preferences for candidates in a single-dimensional policy space. When candidates are elected simultaneously, nonseparable voter preferences create multiple equilibria, including some in which candidates adopt extreme positions. The results are robust to limited voter uncertainty about candidate interaction in the legislature. Nonsepa…
Police Patrol versus Self-Policing: A Comparative Analysis of the Control Systems Used in the Former Soviet Union and Communist China
The policing systems used in the former Soviet Union and Communist China are prototypes of control systems found in many political systems. The system in the former Soviet Union is a variant on the `police patrol', while the system in Communist China is a self-policing system calling upon citizens to report not only their own behavior, but the behavior of others. Our paper applies both game-theoretic and learning models to explore the relative ef…
Electoral Politics in Taiwan
Electoral politics in Taiwan has undergone drastic changes in the past few years. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), established in 1986, has proven to be a viable political force, challenging the long-ruling Kuomintang (KMT). The KMT's dominance has been further threatened by the defection of some KMT members, who formed the New Party (NP) in 1993. In the 1995 legislative Yuan election, the NP won 21 out of 164 seats, the DPP won 54 seats (…
Issue Voting in the Republic of China on Taiwan's 1992 Legislative Yuan Election
In the past few years, the Republic of China on Taiwan has undergone a quiet transformation from an authoritarian to a democratic system. On 19 December 1992, forty-five years after the first legislative yuan election, voters went to the poll to elect the entire body of the second legislative yuan. The 1992 election marks a turning point in the ROC's electoral history. This paper examines the role that issues played in that election. The Kuominta…
Managing Nuclear Proliferation: Condemn, Strike, or Assist
The nonproliferation regime, which denies countries access to critical materials, makes it more likely that defiant proliferators will develop unsafe arsenals. In order to manage proliferation, the U.S. could continue to uphold the regime, hoping to persuade the proliferator to return to non-nuclear status. It could attack, thereby ensuring that the proliferator is unable to join the nuclear club. Or it could concede the nonproliferation goal and…
A Theory of Economic Sanctions and Issue Linkage: The Roles of Preferences, Information, and Threats
A realistic theory of economic sanctions should be built on the facts that sanctions are a game of issue linkage involving two or more issues, players may not know each other's preferences for the outcome of the game, and threatening sanctions may be as important as imposing sanctions as a strategy in international disputes. The threat and use of economic sanctions are modeled as a multistage game of two-sided incomplete information between a tar…
Seat Bonuses under the Single Nontransferable Vote System: Evidence from Japan and Taiwan
L'article decrit les problemes que pose le systeme de vote unique non-transferable utilise au Japon et a Taiwan pour les elections nationales. Il etudie les consequences de ce systeme electoral pour les grands partis politiques, notamment le parti democratique liberal du Japon et le Kuomintang de Taiwan. Il souligne la frequence des erreurs imputables a ce systeme a partir des donnees issues des elections japonaises de 1958 a 1990 et des election…
Universalism in Congress
Several earlier attempts at explaining the norm of universalism in Congress rely on a simple expected value comparison between the rewards to legislators of the coalition of the whole as against the uncertainties associated with minimal winning coalitions. Such a comparison, however, fails to model directly the decision processes within a legislature-the game legislators play-and, thus, fails to explain why it is in no member's self-interest to d…
Protest voting in plurality elections: A theory of voter signaling
Salient issues in Taiwan's electoral politics
A Problem with Referendums
When some voters have nonseparable preferences across multiple binary issues, majority rule may not select a Condorcet winning set of outcomes when one exists, and the social choice may be a Condorcet loser or Pareto-dominated by every other set of outcomes. We present an empirical example of one such paradox from voting on the Internet. We evaluate potential solutions to the problem of nonseparable preferences in referendums, including set-wise …
Stability in Anarchic International Systems
Can stability emerge solely from the competition and self-interest of sovereign powers existing in a state of anarchy, or does stability depend on restraints from the complex nexus of interdependencies characterizing the contemporary world economy and its associated institutions? We suppose some infinitely divisible resource, that all nation-states are endowed with and maximize and that enables them to overcome adversaries in the event of conflic…
Understanding Taiwan Independence and Its Policy Implications
Taiwan's democratization has placed Taiwan independence as one of the most important issues for its domestic politics and for the security balance in the Taiwan Strait. Surveys have been conducted regularly to track shifts in Taiwanese public sentiment on this issue. This article presents a new measure of the Taiwan independence issue and shows how voters' preferences can be influenced
Less Filling, Tastes Great: The Realist-Neoliberal Debate
This essay examines and reformulates the realist-neoliberal debate. It focuses initially on the issue of the attribution of instrumental goals to states—the goals they pursue as a function of the environment they confront—and argues not only that such goals are epiphenomena of other things but also that their specification constitutes a mere redescription of the alternative equilibria that states can achieve in anarchic systems. The world orders …
Issue Voting in the Republic of China on Taiwan's 1992 Legislative Yuan Election
In the past few years, the Republic of China on Taiwan has undergone a quiet transformation from an authoritarian to a democratic system. On 19 December 1992, forty-five years after the first legislative yuan election, voters went to the poll to elect the entire body of the second legislative yuan. The 1992 election marks a turning point in the ROC's electoral history. This paper examines the role that issues played in that election. The Kuominta…
Strategic Voting under Plurality and Runoff Rules
Choosing a method of electing a president is often a contentious constitutional issue for newly emerging democracies. The debate focuses largely on two alternative electoral procedures: plurality rule and plurality rule with a runoff. Duverger (1954) argues that plurality rule has a consolidating influence on parties that a runoff rule lacks. This paper focuses on the `psychological effect' identified by Duverger as the principal basis of consoli…
Managing Nuclear Proliferation: Condemn, Strike, or Assist
The nonproliferation regime, which denies countries access to critical materials, makes it more likely that defiant proliferators will develop unsafe arsenals. In order to manage proliferation, the U.S. could continue to uphold the regime, hoping to persuade the proliferator to return to non-nuclear status. It could attack, thereby ensuring that the proliferator is unable to join the nuclear club. Or it could concede the nonproliferation goal and…
The Balance of Power: Stability in International Systems
One of the fundamental issues of international relations concerns whether, and under what conditions, stability prevails in anarchic systems, these being systems in which all authority and institutional restraints to action are wholly endogenous. This book uses the tools of game theory to develop a comprehensive theory of such systems and details both necessary and sufficient conditions for stability. The authors first define two forms of stabili…
Realism versus Neoliberalism: A Formulation
Although the debate between realism and neoliberalism offers deep insights and raises fundamental questions into the nature of international systems, it also offers the confusion that accompanies imprecisely formulated concepts and an imperfect application of subsidiary ideas. Using a noncooperative extensive-form game to model anarchic international systems, this essay seeks to resolve that debate by restating it in a more explicit and deductive…
Strategic Voting in Plurality Elections
This paper extends theCalculus of Votingof McKelvey and Ordeshook, providing the first direct derivation of the conditions under which voters will votestrategically: choose their second-most preferred candidate in order to prevent their least-preferred candidate from winning. Addressing this theoretical problem is important, as nearly all empirical research on strategic voting either implicitly or explicitly tests hypotheses which originate from …
Preventive War and the Balance of Power: A Game-Theoretic Approach
Preventive wars are commonly defined as wars initiated by a major power to preempt an anticipated disadvantageous position in terms of resources or military capabilities owing to the differential growth rates of countries. This essay extends a game-theoretic model of the balance of power to admit differential growth rates and also to permit countries to adjust their investments for the future. After establishing the conditions for equilibrium inv…
Alliances in Anarchic International Systems
Alliances play a central role in international relations theory. However, aside from applications of traditional cooperative game theory which ignore the issue of enforcement in anarchic systems, or interpretations of the repeated Prisoners' Dilemma in the attempt to understand the source of cooperation in such systems, we have little theory on which to base predictions about alliance formation. This article, then, builds on an n-country, noncoop…
A Theory of the Balance of Power in International Systems
Attempts at incorporating the assumption that national leaders pursue clearly defined objectives, and at applying the theory of cooperative games to the analysis of international systems, have led to little success in formalizing the concept of balance of power, and in providing a theoretical justification for much of the scholarly intuition about this concept. But by assuming that such leaders temper their desire to maximize resources by the goa…
Return of the Luddites
Stephen Walt's critique 1 of the application of formal analysis to international security studies, we take strong issue with a number of Walt's arguments and assertions, and we try to clarify what we believe are his misconceptions about the nature and mechanisms of progress in scientic research. We begin, however, by identifying some of the issues we do not dispute with Walt. First, it is true that formal analysis, especially in the area of secur…
Elections in Double-Member Districts with Nonseparable Voter Preferences
We derive Nash equilibrium candidate strategies in a double-member district election when voters have nonseparable preferences for candidates in a single-dimensional policy space. When candidates are elected simultaneously, nonseparable voter preferences create multiple equilibria, including some in which candidates adopt extreme positions. The results are robust to limited voter uncertainty about candidate interaction in the legislature. Nonsepa…
The rise of the opposition party in Taiwan: Explaining Chen Shui-bian's victory in the 2000 Presidential election
Retrospective and prospective voting in a one-party-dominant democracy: Taiwan's 1996 presidential election
External Threat, Internal Rivalry, and Alliance Formation
History reveals enemies often ally to confront a common threat. In such competitive coalitions actors must balance the simultaneous risk of distrust of their ally against external danger. We model this interactive relationship and generate several novel outcomes. Intra-alliance rivalry forces allying players to preemptively commit more resources to conflict and to free ride less. Consequently, their likelihood of conflict success increases. Howev…
Measuring Preferences for Divided Government: Some Americans Want Divided Government and Vote to Create It
Public Opinion, Foreign Policy, and the Security Balance in the Taiwan Strait
The delicate security balance in the Taiwan Strait is threatened on several fronts. In Taiwan, democratization has placed Taiwan independence as one of the most salient issues in its domestic politics, and the rise of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party to power has created uncertainty regarding Taiwan's future policy on the Taiwan independence-unification issue. In this paper, we investigate whether external factors such as China's…
Universalism in Congress
Several earlier attempts at explaining the norm of universalism in Congress rely on a simple expected value comparison between the rewards to legislators of the coalition of the whole as against the uncertainties associated with minimal winning coalitions. Such a comparison, however, fails to model directly the decision processes within a legislature-the game legislators play-and, thus, fails to explain why it is in no member's self-interest to d…
A Theory of the Balance of Power in International Systems
Attempts at incorporating the assumption that national leaders pursue clearly defined objectives, and at applying the theory of cooperative games to the analysis of international systems, have led to little success in formalizing the concept of balance of power, and in providing a theoretical justification for much of the scholarly intuition about this concept. But by assuming that such leaders temper their desire to maximize resources by the goa…
A note on Nanson's rule
Preventive War and the Balance of Power: A Game-Theoretic Approach
Preventive wars are commonly defined as wars initiated by a major power to preempt an anticipated disadvantageous position in terms of resources or military capabilities owing to the differential growth rates of countries. This essay extends a game-theoretic model of the balance of power to admit differential growth rates and also to permit countries to adjust their investments for the future. After establishing the conditions for equilibrium inv…
A Theory of the Balance of Power: An Experimental Test
The Balance of Power: Stability in International Systems
One of the fundamental issues of international relations concerns whether, and under what conditions, stability prevails in anarchic systems, these being systems in which all authority and institutional restraints to action are wholly endogenous. This book uses the tools of game theory to develop a comprehensive theory of such systems and details both necessary and sufficient conditions for stability. The authors first define two forms of stabili…
Balance of power in international systems: A game-theoretic analysis
Stability in Anarchic International Systems
Can stability emerge solely from the competition and self-interest of sovereign powers existing in a state of anarchy, or does stability depend on restraints from the complex nexus of interdependencies characterizing the contemporary world economy and its associated institutions? We suppose some infinitely divisible resource, that all nation-states are endowed with and maximize and that enables them to overcome adversaries in the event of conflic…
Realism versus Neoliberalism: A Formulation
Although the debate between realism and neoliberalism offers deep insights and raises fundamental questions into the nature of international systems, it also offers the confusion that accompanies imprecisely formulated concepts and an imperfect application of subsidiary ideas. Using a noncooperative extensive-form game to model anarchic international systems, this essay seeks to resolve that debate by restating it in a more explicit and deductive…
A Game Theoretic Analysis of the Republic of China's Emerging Electoral System
Despite differences in history, culture, and stages of political development, the same theoretical constructs used to study American and European political processes can be used to understand the Republic of China's evolving electoral institutions and processes. The particular theoretical constructs upon which we focus are game theory and its application to electoral politics, spatial models of party competition. After reviewing the core results …
An analysis of Dr. Sun Yat-sen's self-assessment scheme for land taxation
Less Filling, Tastes Great: The Realist-Neoliberal Debate
This essay examines and reformulates the realist-neoliberal debate. It focuses initially on the issue of the attribution of instrumental goals to states—the goals they pursue as a function of the environment they confront—and argues not only that such goals are epiphenomena of other things but also that their specification constitutes a mere redescription of the alternative equilibria that states can achieve in anarchic systems. The world orders …
Alliances in Anarchic International Systems
Alliances play a central role in international relations theory. However, aside from applications of traditional cooperative game theory which ignore the issue of enforcement in anarchic systems, or interpretations of the repeated Prisoners' Dilemma in the attempt to understand the source of cooperation in such systems, we have little theory on which to base predictions about alliance formation. This article, then, builds on an n-country, noncoop…
Seat Bonuses under the Single Nontransferable Vote System: Evidence from Japan and Taiwan
L'article decrit les problemes que pose le systeme de vote unique non-transferable utilise au Japon et a Taiwan pour les elections nationales. Il etudie les consequences de ce systeme electoral pour les grands partis politiques, notamment le parti democratique liberal du Japon et le Kuomintang de Taiwan. Il souligne la frequence des erreurs imputables a ce systeme a partir des donnees issues des elections japonaises de 1958 a 1990 et des election…
A Game-Theoretic Interpretation of Sun Tzu's: The Art of War
Over 25 hundred years ago the Chinese scholar Sun Tzu, in The Art of War, attempted to codify the general strategic character of conflict and, in the process, offer practical advice about how to win military conflicts. His advice is credited with having greatly influenced both Japanese military and business practices, as well as Mao Tse-Tung's approach to conflict and revolution. The question, however, is whether or to what extent Sun Tzu anticip…
Electoral Politics in Taiwan
Electoral politics in Taiwan has undergone drastic changes in the past few years. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), established in 1986, has proven to be a viable political force, challenging the long-ruling Kuomintang (KMT). The KMT's dominance has been further threatened by the defection of some KMT members, who formed the New Party (NP) in 1993. In the 1995 legislative Yuan election, the NP won 21 out of 164 seats, the DPP won 54 seats (…
Issue Voting in the Republic of China on Taiwan's 1992 Legislative Yuan Election
In the past few years, the Republic of China on Taiwan has undergone a quiet transformation from an authoritarian to a democratic system. On 19 December 1992, forty-five years after the first legislative yuan election, voters went to the poll to elect the entire body of the second legislative yuan. The 1992 election marks a turning point in the ROC's electoral history. This paper examines the role that issues played in that election. The Kuominta…
Managing Nuclear Proliferation: Condemn, Strike, or Assist
The nonproliferation regime, which denies countries access to critical materials, makes it more likely that defiant proliferators will develop unsafe arsenals. In order to manage proliferation, the U.S. could continue to uphold the regime, hoping to persuade the proliferator to return to non-nuclear status. It could attack, thereby ensuring that the proliferator is unable to join the nuclear club. Or it could concede the nonproliferation goal and…
Salient issues in Taiwan's electoral politics
Police Patrol versus Self-Policing: A Comparative Analysis of the Control Systems Used in the Former Soviet Union and Communist China
The policing systems used in the former Soviet Union and Communist China are prototypes of control systems found in many political systems. The system in the former Soviet Union is a variant on the `police patrol', while the system in Communist China is a self-policing system calling upon citizens to report not only their own behavior, but the behavior of others. Our paper applies both game-theoretic and learning models to explore the relative ef…
Alliances versus Federations: An Extension of Riker's Analysis of Federal Formation
Retrospective and prospective voting in a one-party-dominant democracy: Taiwan's 1996 presidential election
Elections in Double-Member Districts with Nonseparable Voter Preferences
We derive Nash equilibrium candidate strategies in a double-member district election when voters have nonseparable preferences for candidates in a single-dimensional policy space. When candidates are elected simultaneously, nonseparable voter preferences create multiple equilibria, including some in which candidates adopt extreme positions. The results are robust to limited voter uncertainty about candidate interaction in the legislature. Nonsepa…
Return of the Luddites
Stephen Walt's critique 1 of the application of formal analysis to international security studies, we take strong issue with a number of Walt's arguments and assertions, and we try to clarify what we believe are his misconceptions about the nature and mechanisms of progress in scientic research. We begin, however, by identifying some of the issues we do not dispute with Walt. First, it is true that formal analysis, especially in the area of secur…
A Problem with Referendums
When some voters have nonseparable preferences across multiple binary issues, majority rule may not select a Condorcet winning set of outcomes when one exists, and the social choice may be a Condorcet loser or Pareto-dominated by every other set of outcomes. We present an empirical example of one such paradox from voting on the Internet. We evaluate potential solutions to the problem of nonseparable preferences in referendums, including set-wise …
Economics (37 works) · Political science (37 works) · Law (32 works) · Law (30 works) · Politics (27 works) · Political economy (17 works) · Computer Science (16 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (16 works) · Law and economics (12 works) · China (10 works)