Steven Callander
Biographic Data
| ID | 1108081 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Steven Callander |
| GIVEN NAMES | Steven |
| FAMILY NAME | Callander |
| SIGNATURE | CALLANDER S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stanford University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2510-0414 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 207 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Policy decay and political competition
Modern political systems exist not in a vacuum but in a world of continuous technological, social and economic change. This change means policies designed for today’s world will fit only imperfectly tomorrow, a phenomenon they refer to as policy decay. In principle, policymakers could legislate to remove decay and restore the status quo. In practice, however, the need for “something to be done” creates opportunities for the majority party to leve…
Agenda Control under Policy Uncertainty
Models of agenda setting are central to the analysis of political institutions. Elaborations of the classical agenda‐setting model of Romer–Rosenthal have long been used to make predictions about policy outcomes and the distribution of influence among political actors. Although the canonical model is based on complete and perfect information about preferences and policy outcomes, some extensions relax these assumptions to include uncertainty abou…
The Dynamics of a Policy Outcome: Market Response and Bureaucratic Enforcement of a Policy Change
Policy outcomes are determined not by the words in a statute but by the actions of private citizens. A policy's success or failure depends on how it shapes behavior and how that behavior shapes the future course of policy. To understand this process, we develop a model that combines the political and nonpolitical domains, focusing on competition policy and the regulation of markets. We show how the outcome of a policy change develops over time as…
Ideological Competition
We propose a model of political competition not over policy programs, but over ideologies: models of the world that organize voters' experiences and guide the inferences they draw from observed outcomes. Policy‐motivated political parties develop ideologies, and voters choose the ideology that best explains their observations. Preferences over policies are then induced by the adopted ideology. Parties thus care about winning the ideological battl…
Cause and Effect in Political Polarization: A Dynamic Analysis
Political polarization is an important and enduring puzzle. Complicating attempts at explanation is that polarization is not a single thing. It is both a description of the current state of politics today and a dynamic path that has rippled across the political domain over multiple decades. In this paper we provide a simple model that is consistent with both the current state of polarization in the U.S. and the process that got it to where it is …
The Power of Referential Advice
Expert advice often extends beyond a simple recommendation, including information about alternative options. To explore the role of this referential advice, we enrich the expert’s informational advantage in a canonical model of communication with hard information. We show that when constructed just right, referential advice dissuades the decision maker from choosing options other than the recommendation, thereby making the recommendation itself m…
Durable Policy, Political Accountability, and Active Waste
The policy choices of governments are frequently durable. From the building of bridges to the creation of social programs, investments in public infrastructure typically last well beyond a single electoral cycle. In this paper we develop a dynamic model of repeated elections in which policy choices are durable. The behavior that emerges in equilibrium reveals a novel mechanism through which durability interacts with the shorter electoral cycle an…
Dynamic Policymaking with Decay
It is often said that the only constant is change itself. As time passes, the population grows, new technologies are invented, and the skills, demographics, and norms of the populace evolve. These changes, whether in isolation or in aggregate, influence the effectiveness of policy. In particular, policies designed for today's world are unlikely to provide a perfect fit tomorrow. We develop a notion of policy decay that captures this impact formal…
Precedent and Doctrine in a Complicated World
Courts resolve individual disputes and create principles of law to justify their decisions and guide the resolution of future cases. Those tasks present informational challenges that affect the whole judicial process. Judges must simultaneously learn about (1) the particular facts and legal implications of any dispute; (2) discover the doctrine that appropriately resolves the dispute; and (3) attempt to articulate those rules in the context of a …
Gridlock and Delegation in a Changing World
Fixed statutes and regulations often have variable consequences over time. If left unattended, such drift can severely erode the performance of government as an institution of representation. To better understand the mechanics of policy‐making in a changing world, we develop a positive theory that captures political drift in a dynamic separation‐of‐powers system. We show analytically that a distinctive combination of legislative supermajoritarian…
Experimentation in Federal Systems
We present a model where heterogeneous districts choose both whether to experiment and the policies to experiment with. Since districts learn from each other, the first-best requires that policy experiments converge so that innovations are useful also for neighbors. However, the equilibrium implies the reverse -policy divergence -since each district uses its policy choice to discourage free-riding. We then study a clumsy central government that h…
Searching for Good Policies
Policymaking is hard. Policymakers typically have imperfect information about which policies produce which outcomes, and they are left with little choice but to fumble their way through the policy space via a trial-and-error process. This raises a question at the heart of democracy: Do democratic systems identify good policies? To answer this question I introduce a novel model of policymaking in complex environments. I show that good policies are…
A Theory of Policy Expertise
The role of expertise in policy making has been a focus of political science research in recent decades. Underlying formal models in this area is a conception of expertise that is very simple: expertise is a single piece of information. Combined with a condition on the set of possible processes, this simplicity implies that expertise is invertible. Thus, a single recommendation by an expert can render a layperson an expert. In this paper, I offer…
Turnout, Polarization, and Duverger's Law
We reexamine the impact of abstention due to alienationon policy outcomes and the choices of strategic candidates. We establish the existence of a unique equilibrium under plurality rule in which only two candidates enter, choose divergent policy positions, and deter subsequent entry. This equilibrium is simultaneously consistent with the dual empirical regularities of Duverger's Law and policy divergence. Driving our results is the observation t…
Context-dependent Voting
In recent decades psychologists have shown that the standard model of individual choice is often violated as choices are influenced by the decision context. We propose that voting behavior may be similarly influenced and we introduce a theory of context-dependent voting . Context-dependence implies that preferences over any pair of alternatives may depend not just on the two options but on the entire choice set. With an analysis of data gathered …
Electoral Competition in Heterogeneous Districts
This paper considers a model of elections in which parties compete simultaneously for multiple districts. I show that if districts are heterogeneous, then a unique two‐party equilibrium exists under plurality rule in which further entry is deterred. The equilibrium requires that parties choose noncentrist policy platforms and not converge to the ideal policy of the median voter. These characteristics are consistent with empirical observation, in …
Duverger's Hypothesis, the Run-Off Rule, and Electoral Competition
I analyze a model of electoral competition with entry under the run-off rule. I consider both two- and multiple-party systems. The principal result is that two-party systems may prove stable under the run-off rule: I show that a continuum of equilibria exists in which only two parties enter and subsequent entry is deterred. This finding conflicts with the accepted wisdom on the run-off rule encapsulated by Duverger's Hypothesis. The results of th…
Searching for Good Policies
Policymaking is hard. Policymakers typically have imperfect information about which policies produce which outcomes, and they are left with little choice but to fumble their way through the policy space via a trial-and-error process. This raises a question at the heart of democracy: Do democratic systems identify good policies? To answer this question I introduce a novel model of policymaking in complex environments. I show that good policies are…
A Theory of Policy Expertise
The role of expertise in policy making has been a focus of political science research in recent decades. Underlying formal models in this area is a conception of expertise that is very simple: expertise is a single piece of information. Combined with a condition on the set of possible processes, this simplicity implies that expertise is invertible. Thus, a single recommendation by an expert can render a layperson an expert. In this paper, I offer…
Electoral Competition in Heterogeneous Districts
This paper considers a model of elections in which parties compete simultaneously for multiple districts. I show that if districts are heterogeneous, then a unique two‐party equilibrium exists under plurality rule in which further entry is deterred. The equilibrium requires that parties choose noncentrist policy platforms and not converge to the ideal policy of the median voter. These characteristics are consistent with empirical observation, in …
Turnout, Polarization, and Duverger's Law
We reexamine the impact of abstention due to alienationon policy outcomes and the choices of strategic candidates. We establish the existence of a unique equilibrium under plurality rule in which only two candidates enter, choose divergent policy positions, and deter subsequent entry. This equilibrium is simultaneously consistent with the dual empirical regularities of Duverger's Law and policy divergence. Driving our results is the observation t…
Gridlock and Delegation in a Changing World
Fixed statutes and regulations often have variable consequences over time. If left unattended, such drift can severely erode the performance of government as an institution of representation. To better understand the mechanics of policy‐making in a changing world, we develop a positive theory that captures political drift in a dynamic separation‐of‐powers system. We show analytically that a distinctive combination of legislative supermajoritarian…
Dynamic Policymaking with Decay
It is often said that the only constant is change itself. As time passes, the population grows, new technologies are invented, and the skills, demographics, and norms of the populace evolve. These changes, whether in isolation or in aggregate, influence the effectiveness of policy. In particular, policies designed for today's world are unlikely to provide a perfect fit tomorrow. We develop a notion of policy decay that captures this impact formal…
Precedent and Doctrine in a Complicated World
Courts resolve individual disputes and create principles of law to justify their decisions and guide the resolution of future cases. Those tasks present informational challenges that affect the whole judicial process. Judges must simultaneously learn about (1) the particular facts and legal implications of any dispute; (2) discover the doctrine that appropriately resolves the dispute; and (3) attempt to articulate those rules in the context of a …
Duverger's Hypothesis, the Run-Off Rule, and Electoral Competition
I analyze a model of electoral competition with entry under the run-off rule. I consider both two- and multiple-party systems. The principal result is that two-party systems may prove stable under the run-off rule: I show that a continuum of equilibria exists in which only two parties enter and subsequent entry is deterred. This finding conflicts with the accepted wisdom on the run-off rule encapsulated by Duverger's Hypothesis. The results of th…
Ideological Competition
We propose a model of political competition not over policy programs, but over ideologies: models of the world that organize voters' experiences and guide the inferences they draw from observed outcomes. Policy‐motivated political parties develop ideologies, and voters choose the ideology that best explains their observations. Preferences over policies are then induced by the adopted ideology. Parties thus care about winning the ideological battl…
Durable Policy, Political Accountability, and Active Waste
The policy choices of governments are frequently durable. From the building of bridges to the creation of social programs, investments in public infrastructure typically last well beyond a single electoral cycle. In this paper we develop a dynamic model of repeated elections in which policy choices are durable. The behavior that emerges in equilibrium reveals a novel mechanism through which durability interacts with the shorter electoral cycle an…
The Dynamics of a Policy Outcome: Market Response and Bureaucratic Enforcement of a Policy Change
Policy outcomes are determined not by the words in a statute but by the actions of private citizens. A policy's success or failure depends on how it shapes behavior and how that behavior shapes the future course of policy. To understand this process, we develop a model that combines the political and nonpolitical domains, focusing on competition policy and the regulation of markets. We show how the outcome of a policy change develops over time as…
Agenda Control under Policy Uncertainty
Models of agenda setting are central to the analysis of political institutions. Elaborations of the classical agenda‐setting model of Romer–Rosenthal have long been used to make predictions about policy outcomes and the distribution of influence among political actors. Although the canonical model is based on complete and perfect information about preferences and policy outcomes, some extensions relax these assumptions to include uncertainty abou…
Cause and Effect in Political Polarization: A Dynamic Analysis
Political polarization is an important and enduring puzzle. Complicating attempts at explanation is that polarization is not a single thing. It is both a description of the current state of politics today and a dynamic path that has rippled across the political domain over multiple decades. In this paper we provide a simple model that is consistent with both the current state of polarization in the U.S. and the process that got it to where it is …
The Power of Referential Advice
Expert advice often extends beyond a simple recommendation, including information about alternative options. To explore the role of this referential advice, we enrich the expert’s informational advantage in a canonical model of communication with hard information. We show that when constructed just right, referential advice dissuades the decision maker from choosing options other than the recommendation, thereby making the recommendation itself m…
Electoral Competition in Heterogeneous Districts
This paper considers a model of elections in which parties compete simultaneously for multiple districts. I show that if districts are heterogeneous, then a unique two‐party equilibrium exists under plurality rule in which further entry is deterred. The equilibrium requires that parties choose noncentrist policy platforms and not converge to the ideal policy of the median voter. These characteristics are consistent with empirical observation, in …
Duverger's Hypothesis, the Run-Off Rule, and Electoral Competition
I analyze a model of electoral competition with entry under the run-off rule. I consider both two- and multiple-party systems. The principal result is that two-party systems may prove stable under the run-off rule: I show that a continuum of equilibria exists in which only two parties enter and subsequent entry is deterred. This finding conflicts with the accepted wisdom on the run-off rule encapsulated by Duverger's Hypothesis. The results of th…
Context-dependent Voting
In recent decades psychologists have shown that the standard model of individual choice is often violated as choices are influenced by the decision context. We propose that voting behavior may be similarly influenced and we introduce a theory of context-dependent voting . Context-dependence implies that preferences over any pair of alternatives may depend not just on the two options but on the entire choice set. With an analysis of data gathered …
Turnout, Polarization, and Duverger's Law
We reexamine the impact of abstention due to alienationon policy outcomes and the choices of strategic candidates. We establish the existence of a unique equilibrium under plurality rule in which only two candidates enter, choose divergent policy positions, and deter subsequent entry. This equilibrium is simultaneously consistent with the dual empirical regularities of Duverger's Law and policy divergence. Driving our results is the observation t…
A Theory of Policy Expertise
The role of expertise in policy making has been a focus of political science research in recent decades. Underlying formal models in this area is a conception of expertise that is very simple: expertise is a single piece of information. Combined with a condition on the set of possible processes, this simplicity implies that expertise is invertible. Thus, a single recommendation by an expert can render a layperson an expert. In this paper, I offer…
Searching for Good Policies
Policymaking is hard. Policymakers typically have imperfect information about which policies produce which outcomes, and they are left with little choice but to fumble their way through the policy space via a trial-and-error process. This raises a question at the heart of democracy: Do democratic systems identify good policies? To answer this question I introduce a novel model of policymaking in complex environments. I show that good policies are…
Experimentation in Federal Systems
We present a model where heterogeneous districts choose both whether to experiment and the policies to experiment with. Since districts learn from each other, the first-best requires that policy experiments converge so that innovations are useful also for neighbors. However, the equilibrium implies the reverse -policy divergence -since each district uses its policy choice to discourage free-riding. We then study a clumsy central government that h…
Gridlock and Delegation in a Changing World
Fixed statutes and regulations often have variable consequences over time. If left unattended, such drift can severely erode the performance of government as an institution of representation. To better understand the mechanics of policy‐making in a changing world, we develop a positive theory that captures political drift in a dynamic separation‐of‐powers system. We show analytically that a distinctive combination of legislative supermajoritarian…
Durable Policy, Political Accountability, and Active Waste
The policy choices of governments are frequently durable. From the building of bridges to the creation of social programs, investments in public infrastructure typically last well beyond a single electoral cycle. In this paper we develop a dynamic model of repeated elections in which policy choices are durable. The behavior that emerges in equilibrium reveals a novel mechanism through which durability interacts with the shorter electoral cycle an…
Dynamic Policymaking with Decay
It is often said that the only constant is change itself. As time passes, the population grows, new technologies are invented, and the skills, demographics, and norms of the populace evolve. These changes, whether in isolation or in aggregate, influence the effectiveness of policy. In particular, policies designed for today's world are unlikely to provide a perfect fit tomorrow. We develop a notion of policy decay that captures this impact formal…
Precedent and Doctrine in a Complicated World
Courts resolve individual disputes and create principles of law to justify their decisions and guide the resolution of future cases. Those tasks present informational challenges that affect the whole judicial process. Judges must simultaneously learn about (1) the particular facts and legal implications of any dispute; (2) discover the doctrine that appropriately resolves the dispute; and (3) attempt to articulate those rules in the context of a …
Cause and Effect in Political Polarization: A Dynamic Analysis
Political polarization is an important and enduring puzzle. Complicating attempts at explanation is that polarization is not a single thing. It is both a description of the current state of politics today and a dynamic path that has rippled across the political domain over multiple decades. In this paper we provide a simple model that is consistent with both the current state of polarization in the U.S. and the process that got it to where it is …
The Power of Referential Advice
Expert advice often extends beyond a simple recommendation, including information about alternative options. To explore the role of this referential advice, we enrich the expert’s informational advantage in a canonical model of communication with hard information. We show that when constructed just right, referential advice dissuades the decision maker from choosing options other than the recommendation, thereby making the recommendation itself m…
The Dynamics of a Policy Outcome: Market Response and Bureaucratic Enforcement of a Policy Change
Policy outcomes are determined not by the words in a statute but by the actions of private citizens. A policy's success or failure depends on how it shapes behavior and how that behavior shapes the future course of policy. To understand this process, we develop a model that combines the political and nonpolitical domains, focusing on competition policy and the regulation of markets. We show how the outcome of a policy change develops over time as…
Ideological Competition
We propose a model of political competition not over policy programs, but over ideologies: models of the world that organize voters' experiences and guide the inferences they draw from observed outcomes. Policy‐motivated political parties develop ideologies, and voters choose the ideology that best explains their observations. Preferences over policies are then induced by the adopted ideology. Parties thus care about winning the ideological battl…
Agenda Control under Policy Uncertainty
Models of agenda setting are central to the analysis of political institutions. Elaborations of the classical agenda‐setting model of Romer–Rosenthal have long been used to make predictions about policy outcomes and the distribution of influence among political actors. Although the canonical model is based on complete and perfect information about preferences and policy outcomes, some extensions relax these assumptions to include uncertainty abou…
Policy decay and political competition
Modern political systems exist not in a vacuum but in a world of continuous technological, social and economic change. This change means policies designed for today’s world will fit only imperfectly tomorrow, a phenomenon they refer to as policy decay. In principle, policymakers could legislate to remove decay and restore the status quo. In practice, however, the need for “something to be done” creates opportunities for the majority party to leve…
Economics (14 works) · Political science (14 works) · Politics (13 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (12 works) · Law (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Microeconomics (8 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Economic Policies and Impacts (6 works) · Law and economics (5 works)