Scott A Tyson
Biographic Data
| ID | 1122846 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Scott A Tyson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Scott A |
| FAMILY NAME | Tyson |
| SIGNATURE | TYSON S A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Rochester |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0387-0944 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 290 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
To fight or to govern? Political capital and electoral competition
We examine the endogenous development of specialized political capital and its use, by both governing and opposition parties, within a model of policymaking and electoral competition. The opposition party can use political capital to impede the governing party's policy agenda—to throw sand in the gears—but may make itself less electorally desirable in the process. We characterize conditions that give rise to different equilibrium patterns of poli…
Soft Power as Constituency Cultivation
How do foreign agents, representing countries or other political actors, exert influence in another country? While scholars have directed considerable theoretical and empirical attention toward “hard power” (e.g., coercion [explicit or implicit] and corruption/bribery), far less consideration has been devoted to understanding the theoretical mechanisms associated with “soft” channels of political influence. We develop a novel theory of soft power…
Demanding more than what you want
It is widely agreed that politicians are prone to hyperbole, proposing platforms that no one expects them to fully accomplish. We develop a theory of electoral competition focusing on politicians who differ in terms of both ideological preferences and in their capability to “get things done.” An imperfect ability to implement platforms introduces a novel role for status quo policies. We first show that the traditional left-right orientation of po…
Sign-Congruence, External Validity, and Replication
We develop a formal framework for accumulating evidence across studies and apply it to develop theoretical foundations for replication. Our primary contribution is to characterize the relationship between replication and distinct formulations of external validity. Whereas conventional wisdom holds that replication facilitates learning about external validity, we show that this is not, in general, the case. Our results show how comparisons of the …
Partisan Leaning
A decisive voter's exact ideological preferences can be hard to predict, even for seasoned candidates. We develop a novel theory of electoral competition where candidates are evaluated on ideological and nonideological dimensions. The key feature of our theory is that an electorate's partisan leaning serves as a signal of the median voter's ideological position where extreme leanings are more informative about voters than centrist leanings. We sh…
The Punisher’s Dilemma
Constraining to deter
Governments use a variety of tools to discourage, impede, or limit the ability of foreign adversaries to purse their ambitions. Some of these measures seek to constrain an opponent's capacity, while others seek to deter an opponent to take (or not) a particular action. We develop a theory to study how constraining and coercive threats interact strategically. Building on canonical models of deterrence, we first identify how coercive measures, in i…
The Peaceful Transfer of Power and the Social Contract
The potential breakdown of political order stresses the importance of strategic challenges that surface during transitions of power. To understand these challenges, I take a social contract perspective, developing a theoretical framework that highlights the strategic incentives underlying political sovereignty. I show that the stability of political order essentially requires a ruler to consent to her own removal, giving rise to a key incentive c…
The concreteness of social knowledge and the quality of democratic choice
Democracy relies on citizens who are politically knowledgeable and engaged. However, when a voter gains political knowledge regarding important issues, through television, town halls, or social media, she also learns that there are many other politically knowledgeable voters, highlighting the importance of social knowledge in political participation. Will a voter with concrete—as opposed to hypothetical—knowledge about other voters’ political kno…
External Validity and Meta‐Analysis
Meta‐analysis is a method that combines estimates from studies conducted on different samples, in different contexts, or at different times. Social scientists increasingly use meta‐analyses to aggregate evidence and learn about general substantive phenomena. We develop a framework to examine the theoretical foundations of meta‐analysis, with emphasis on clarifying the role of external validity. We identify the conditions under which multiple stud…
Cross-Workshop Reflections
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Political Instability and the Failure of Deterrence
To study the conceptual foundations of deterrence, we develop a model of an international crisis between a country seeking to maintain a peaceful status quo (Defender), and a potential aggressor (Attacker). Attacker's leader is politically insecure and may be unseated by domestic elites. Leaders and elites can each be hawkish, benefiting from conflict, or dovish and prefer peace. We show that the ability to maintain peace through deterrence cruci…
Sowing the Seeds: Radicalization as a Political Tool
Do radicalized individuals with no logistical assistance from opposition groups generate liabilities or advantages for opposition leaders? To address this question, we develop a theory that articulates a novel strategic channel connecting radicalization, defined as self‐motivation to dissent, to repression targeting an opposition group's operational capacity or its leadership. Our main result shows that targeted repression is strictly decreasing …
The Strategic Foundations of Political Sovereignty
Maintaining order is perhaps the most important problem confronting society, and establishing a sovereign ruler with monopoly control over the execution of violence creates two distinct security problems: one between private citizens (the horizontal dimension) and the other between the ruler and private citizens (the vertical dimension). I develop a framework to study these dual security problems and the incentives created in solving them togethe…
The Commensurability Problem: Conceptual Difficulties in Estimating the Effect of Behavior on Behavior
We pose thecommensurability problem: When do the estimates generated by actual research designs correspond to quantities of theoretical interest? We study this question in settings where both treatment and outcome are behavior and the treatment effect of interest is decomposable into direct and informational channels. We establish two results. First, the quantity estimated by an actual research design is only commensurate with the total effect in…
Autocratic Stability in the Shadow of Foreign Threats
Autocrats confront a number of threats to their power, some from within the regime and others from foreign actors. To understand how these threats interact and affect autocratic survival, we build a model where an autocratic leader can be ousted by a domestic opposition and a foreign actor. We concentrate on the impact that foreign threats have on the stability of autocratic leadership and show that the presence of foreign threats increases the p…
The Agency Problem Underlying Repression
State repression is a common tool used by autocrats, and to understand how the implementation of repression unfolds, I develop a theory with two key features. First, uncertainty resulting from political instability creates an important agency problem between a leader and members of the repressive apparatus. As a consequence of this agency problem, leaders must compensate the repressive apparatus for conducting repression, thus affecting leaders' …
Dual-Layered Coordination and Political Instability: Repression, Co-optation, and the Role of Information
We study coordination dynamics in the context of two groups under the shadow of political instability. One group (regime opponents) prefers a change in regime and can participate in an attack, which if sufficiently large, causes regime change. The other group (regime adherents) prefers the status quo and can support the regime, making it more resistant to attack. We derive and analyze the endogenously determined strength of the regime and isolate…
Coercive Leadership
We develop a model of leadership in which an informed leader has some degree of coercive influence over her followers (agents). Agents benefit from coordination but face two distinct challenges: dispersed information and heterogeneous preferences. The leader's coercive power facilitates coordination by weakening the effect presented by both of these challenges through “binding” agents to a strategically chosen policy. The leader's policy choice b…
Information Acquisition, Strategic Voting, and Improving the Quality of Democratic Choice
I develop a theory of strategic voting that captures an endogenous link between the costly decision to vote and the costly decision to become politically informed. I then use the theoretical model to study the effects of different public policy instruments on the incentives of voters to cast informed votes. I show that policies that directly target the cost of political engagement, by influencing either the cost of information acquisition or the …
Popular Protest and Elite Coordination in a Coup d’état
Elites face a daunting coordination problem when contemplating a coup. Citizens, who desire political reform, face a similar coordination problem when contemplating protest. Since elites and citizens interact with the same leadership, these coordination problems are invariably linked. We develop a model which exploits this link to isolate an informational mechanism connecting popular protests and coups. Protests aggregate citizen information and …
Popular Protest and Elite Coordination in a Coup d’état
Elites face a daunting coordination problem when contemplating a coup. Citizens, who desire political reform, face a similar coordination problem when contemplating protest. Since elites and citizens interact with the same leadership, these coordination problems are invariably linked. We develop a model which exploits this link to isolate an informational mechanism connecting popular protests and coups. Protests aggregate citizen information and …
The Agency Problem Underlying Repression
State repression is a common tool used by autocrats, and to understand how the implementation of repression unfolds, I develop a theory with two key features. First, uncertainty resulting from political instability creates an important agency problem between a leader and members of the repressive apparatus. As a consequence of this agency problem, leaders must compensate the repressive apparatus for conducting repression, thus affecting leaders' …
Dual-Layered Coordination and Political Instability: Repression, Co-optation, and the Role of Information
We study coordination dynamics in the context of two groups under the shadow of political instability. One group (regime opponents) prefers a change in regime and can participate in an attack, which if sufficiently large, causes regime change. The other group (regime adherents) prefers the status quo and can support the regime, making it more resistant to attack. We derive and analyze the endogenously determined strength of the regime and isolate…
External Validity and Meta‐Analysis
Meta‐analysis is a method that combines estimates from studies conducted on different samples, in different contexts, or at different times. Social scientists increasingly use meta‐analyses to aggregate evidence and learn about general substantive phenomena. We develop a framework to examine the theoretical foundations of meta‐analysis, with emphasis on clarifying the role of external validity. We identify the conditions under which multiple stud…
The Commensurability Problem: Conceptual Difficulties in Estimating the Effect of Behavior on Behavior
We pose thecommensurability problem: When do the estimates generated by actual research designs correspond to quantities of theoretical interest? We study this question in settings where both treatment and outcome are behavior and the treatment effect of interest is decomposable into direct and informational channels. We establish two results. First, the quantity estimated by an actual research design is only commensurate with the total effect in…
Autocratic Stability in the Shadow of Foreign Threats
Autocrats confront a number of threats to their power, some from within the regime and others from foreign actors. To understand how these threats interact and affect autocratic survival, we build a model where an autocratic leader can be ousted by a domestic opposition and a foreign actor. We concentrate on the impact that foreign threats have on the stability of autocratic leadership and show that the presence of foreign threats increases the p…
Coercive Leadership
We develop a model of leadership in which an informed leader has some degree of coercive influence over her followers (agents). Agents benefit from coordination but face two distinct challenges: dispersed information and heterogeneous preferences. The leader's coercive power facilitates coordination by weakening the effect presented by both of these challenges through “binding” agents to a strategically chosen policy. The leader's policy choice b…
Political Instability and the Failure of Deterrence
To study the conceptual foundations of deterrence, we develop a model of an international crisis between a country seeking to maintain a peaceful status quo (Defender), and a potential aggressor (Attacker). Attacker's leader is politically insecure and may be unseated by domestic elites. Leaders and elites can each be hawkish, benefiting from conflict, or dovish and prefer peace. We show that the ability to maintain peace through deterrence cruci…
Information Acquisition, Strategic Voting, and Improving the Quality of Democratic Choice
I develop a theory of strategic voting that captures an endogenous link between the costly decision to vote and the costly decision to become politically informed. I then use the theoretical model to study the effects of different public policy instruments on the incentives of voters to cast informed votes. I show that policies that directly target the cost of political engagement, by influencing either the cost of information acquisition or the …
The Punisher’s Dilemma
Sowing the Seeds: Radicalization as a Political Tool
Do radicalized individuals with no logistical assistance from opposition groups generate liabilities or advantages for opposition leaders? To address this question, we develop a theory that articulates a novel strategic channel connecting radicalization, defined as self‐motivation to dissent, to repression targeting an opposition group's operational capacity or its leadership. Our main result shows that targeted repression is strictly decreasing …
Sign-Congruence, External Validity, and Replication
We develop a formal framework for accumulating evidence across studies and apply it to develop theoretical foundations for replication. Our primary contribution is to characterize the relationship between replication and distinct formulations of external validity. Whereas conventional wisdom holds that replication facilitates learning about external validity, we show that this is not, in general, the case. Our results show how comparisons of the …
The concreteness of social knowledge and the quality of democratic choice
Democracy relies on citizens who are politically knowledgeable and engaged. However, when a voter gains political knowledge regarding important issues, through television, town halls, or social media, she also learns that there are many other politically knowledgeable voters, highlighting the importance of social knowledge in political participation. Will a voter with concrete—as opposed to hypothetical—knowledge about other voters’ political kno…
Demanding more than what you want
It is widely agreed that politicians are prone to hyperbole, proposing platforms that no one expects them to fully accomplish. We develop a theory of electoral competition focusing on politicians who differ in terms of both ideological preferences and in their capability to “get things done.” An imperfect ability to implement platforms introduces a novel role for status quo policies. We first show that the traditional left-right orientation of po…
Partisan Leaning
A decisive voter's exact ideological preferences can be hard to predict, even for seasoned candidates. We develop a novel theory of electoral competition where candidates are evaluated on ideological and nonideological dimensions. The key feature of our theory is that an electorate's partisan leaning serves as a signal of the median voter's ideological position where extreme leanings are more informative about voters than centrist leanings. We sh…
Constraining to deter
Governments use a variety of tools to discourage, impede, or limit the ability of foreign adversaries to purse their ambitions. Some of these measures seek to constrain an opponent's capacity, while others seek to deter an opponent to take (or not) a particular action. We develop a theory to study how constraining and coercive threats interact strategically. Building on canonical models of deterrence, we first identify how coercive measures, in i…
The Peaceful Transfer of Power and the Social Contract
The potential breakdown of political order stresses the importance of strategic challenges that surface during transitions of power. To understand these challenges, I take a social contract perspective, developing a theoretical framework that highlights the strategic incentives underlying political sovereignty. I show that the stability of political order essentially requires a ruler to consent to her own removal, giving rise to a key incentive c…
The Strategic Foundations of Political Sovereignty
Maintaining order is perhaps the most important problem confronting society, and establishing a sovereign ruler with monopoly control over the execution of violence creates two distinct security problems: one between private citizens (the horizontal dimension) and the other between the ruler and private citizens (the vertical dimension). I develop a framework to study these dual security problems and the incentives created in solving them togethe…
Popular Protest and Elite Coordination in a Coup d’état
Elites face a daunting coordination problem when contemplating a coup. Citizens, who desire political reform, face a similar coordination problem when contemplating protest. Since elites and citizens interact with the same leadership, these coordination problems are invariably linked. We develop a model which exploits this link to isolate an informational mechanism connecting popular protests and coups. Protests aggregate citizen information and …
Information Acquisition, Strategic Voting, and Improving the Quality of Democratic Choice
I develop a theory of strategic voting that captures an endogenous link between the costly decision to vote and the costly decision to become politically informed. I then use the theoretical model to study the effects of different public policy instruments on the incentives of voters to cast informed votes. I show that policies that directly target the cost of political engagement, by influencing either the cost of information acquisition or the …
Coercive Leadership
We develop a model of leadership in which an informed leader has some degree of coercive influence over her followers (agents). Agents benefit from coordination but face two distinct challenges: dispersed information and heterogeneous preferences. The leader's coercive power facilitates coordination by weakening the effect presented by both of these challenges through “binding” agents to a strategically chosen policy. The leader's policy choice b…
The Agency Problem Underlying Repression
State repression is a common tool used by autocrats, and to understand how the implementation of repression unfolds, I develop a theory with two key features. First, uncertainty resulting from political instability creates an important agency problem between a leader and members of the repressive apparatus. As a consequence of this agency problem, leaders must compensate the repressive apparatus for conducting repression, thus affecting leaders' …
Dual-Layered Coordination and Political Instability: Repression, Co-optation, and the Role of Information
We study coordination dynamics in the context of two groups under the shadow of political instability. One group (regime opponents) prefers a change in regime and can participate in an attack, which if sufficiently large, causes regime change. The other group (regime adherents) prefers the status quo and can support the regime, making it more resistant to attack. We derive and analyze the endogenously determined strength of the regime and isolate…
The Strategic Foundations of Political Sovereignty
Maintaining order is perhaps the most important problem confronting society, and establishing a sovereign ruler with monopoly control over the execution of violence creates two distinct security problems: one between private citizens (the horizontal dimension) and the other between the ruler and private citizens (the vertical dimension). I develop a framework to study these dual security problems and the incentives created in solving them togethe…
The Commensurability Problem: Conceptual Difficulties in Estimating the Effect of Behavior on Behavior
We pose thecommensurability problem: When do the estimates generated by actual research designs correspond to quantities of theoretical interest? We study this question in settings where both treatment and outcome are behavior and the treatment effect of interest is decomposable into direct and informational channels. We establish two results. First, the quantity estimated by an actual research design is only commensurate with the total effect in…
Autocratic Stability in the Shadow of Foreign Threats
Autocrats confront a number of threats to their power, some from within the regime and others from foreign actors. To understand how these threats interact and affect autocratic survival, we build a model where an autocratic leader can be ousted by a domestic opposition and a foreign actor. We concentrate on the impact that foreign threats have on the stability of autocratic leadership and show that the presence of foreign threats increases the p…
Cross-Workshop Reflections
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Political Instability and the Failure of Deterrence
To study the conceptual foundations of deterrence, we develop a model of an international crisis between a country seeking to maintain a peaceful status quo (Defender), and a potential aggressor (Attacker). Attacker's leader is politically insecure and may be unseated by domestic elites. Leaders and elites can each be hawkish, benefiting from conflict, or dovish and prefer peace. We show that the ability to maintain peace through deterrence cruci…
Sowing the Seeds: Radicalization as a Political Tool
Do radicalized individuals with no logistical assistance from opposition groups generate liabilities or advantages for opposition leaders? To address this question, we develop a theory that articulates a novel strategic channel connecting radicalization, defined as self‐motivation to dissent, to repression targeting an opposition group's operational capacity or its leadership. Our main result shows that targeted repression is strictly decreasing …
The Peaceful Transfer of Power and the Social Contract
The potential breakdown of political order stresses the importance of strategic challenges that surface during transitions of power. To understand these challenges, I take a social contract perspective, developing a theoretical framework that highlights the strategic incentives underlying political sovereignty. I show that the stability of political order essentially requires a ruler to consent to her own removal, giving rise to a key incentive c…
The concreteness of social knowledge and the quality of democratic choice
Democracy relies on citizens who are politically knowledgeable and engaged. However, when a voter gains political knowledge regarding important issues, through television, town halls, or social media, she also learns that there are many other politically knowledgeable voters, highlighting the importance of social knowledge in political participation. Will a voter with concrete—as opposed to hypothetical—knowledge about other voters’ political kno…
External Validity and Meta‐Analysis
Meta‐analysis is a method that combines estimates from studies conducted on different samples, in different contexts, or at different times. Social scientists increasingly use meta‐analyses to aggregate evidence and learn about general substantive phenomena. We develop a framework to examine the theoretical foundations of meta‐analysis, with emphasis on clarifying the role of external validity. We identify the conditions under which multiple stud…
The Punisher’s Dilemma
Constraining to deter
Governments use a variety of tools to discourage, impede, or limit the ability of foreign adversaries to purse their ambitions. Some of these measures seek to constrain an opponent's capacity, while others seek to deter an opponent to take (or not) a particular action. We develop a theory to study how constraining and coercive threats interact strategically. Building on canonical models of deterrence, we first identify how coercive measures, in i…
Soft Power as Constituency Cultivation
How do foreign agents, representing countries or other political actors, exert influence in another country? While scholars have directed considerable theoretical and empirical attention toward “hard power” (e.g., coercion [explicit or implicit] and corruption/bribery), far less consideration has been devoted to understanding the theoretical mechanisms associated with “soft” channels of political influence. We develop a novel theory of soft power…
Demanding more than what you want
It is widely agreed that politicians are prone to hyperbole, proposing platforms that no one expects them to fully accomplish. We develop a theory of electoral competition focusing on politicians who differ in terms of both ideological preferences and in their capability to “get things done.” An imperfect ability to implement platforms introduces a novel role for status quo policies. We first show that the traditional left-right orientation of po…
Sign-Congruence, External Validity, and Replication
We develop a formal framework for accumulating evidence across studies and apply it to develop theoretical foundations for replication. Our primary contribution is to characterize the relationship between replication and distinct formulations of external validity. Whereas conventional wisdom holds that replication facilitates learning about external validity, we show that this is not, in general, the case. Our results show how comparisons of the …
Partisan Leaning
A decisive voter's exact ideological preferences can be hard to predict, even for seasoned candidates. We develop a novel theory of electoral competition where candidates are evaluated on ideological and nonideological dimensions. The key feature of our theory is that an electorate's partisan leaning serves as a signal of the median voter's ideological position where extreme leanings are more informative about voters than centrist leanings. We sh…
To fight or to govern? Political capital and electoral competition
We examine the endogenous development of specialized political capital and its use, by both governing and opposition parties, within a model of policymaking and electoral competition. The opposition party can use political capital to impede the governing party's policy agenda—to throw sand in the gears—but may make itself less electorally desirable in the process. We characterize conditions that give rise to different equilibrium patterns of poli…
Political science (16 works) · Politics (14 works) · Law (12 works) · Law (12 works) · Economics (9 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (8 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (7 works) · Political economy (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Social Psychology (6 works)