Joe A Oppenheimer
Biographic Data
| ID | 293461 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joe A Oppenheimer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joe A |
| FAMILY NAME | Oppenheimer |
| SIGNATURE | OPPENHEIMER J A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland, College Park, USA |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 271 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1970 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Principles of Politics: A Rational Choice Theory Guide to Politics and Social Justice
Modern rational choice and social justice theories allow scholars to develop new understandings of the foundations and general patterns of politics and political behavior. In this book, Joe Oppenheimer enumerates and justifies the empirical and moral generalizations commonly derived from these theories. In developing these arguments, Oppenheimer gives students a foundational basis of both formal theory and theories of social justice, and their re…
Principles of Politics: The Logic of Collective Action
"This book presents the rational choice theories of collective action and social choice, applying them to problems of public policy and social justice"-- "Claims of knowledge and of 'principles' regarding political matters, both empirical and moral, have been made over the millennia but never without contention. This book is about some of the empirical and moral generalizations arrived at in what might be called the new political science. The boo…
Justice Preferences and the Arrow Problem
Arrow showed that there is no general way to aggregate non-interpersonally comparable preferences or welfare into either a sensible social choice or a social welfare measure. With majority rule the problem manifests itself as voting cycles. The standard response to this problem has been developing `spatial models' built on restricted preferences (or welfare). We develop an alternative family of solutions. By assuming a culturally accepted concept…
Experiencing impartiality to invoke fairness in the n-PD: Some experimental results
Choosing Justice: An Experimental Approach to Ethical Theory
Choosing Justice in Experimental Democracies with Production
We examine in a laboratory setting how direct participation in choosing a principle of distributive justice and a tax system impinges on subjects' attitudes and subsequent productivity when they participate in a task, produce income, and then experience losses or gains according to the tax system. Experience with a redistributive principle and its associated taxation system in a production environment does not detract from overall acceptance of t…
Choices of Principles of Distributive Justice in Experimental Groups
Experimental methods involving imperfect information are used to generate group choices of principles of distributive justice. Conditions approximating John Rawls's original in A Theory of Justice serve as the starting point, and his conjectures are contrasted with those of John Harsanyi. Three predictions implicit in the Rawlsian argument are tested: (1) individuals choosing a principle of economic distribution would be able to reach unanimous a…
Laboratory Results on Rawls's Distributive Justice
The behavioural underpinnings of Rawls's notion of distributive justice as outlined inA Theory of Justiceare tested in experimental contexts. Under conditions approximating Rawls's ‘original position’ (including the appropriate agenda, a ‘veil of ignorance’ and a choice rule designed to capture his main theoretical constraints), we test his ‘predictions’ that individuals would reach a unanimous consensus on a principle of distributive justice and…
Public choice and three ethical properties of politics
A Method of Estimating the Personal Ideology of Political Representatives
We suggest a method for estimating a political representative's personal ideology and its effect on his or her voting decisions. The current practice of using the ratings of a pressure group such as Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) as a proxy for personal ideology is shown to have a number of theoretical and interpretive flaws. Our technique uses the residuals from two regression equations to provide answers to two questions: Is there a syst…
Universalism in Experimental Committees
Most rational choice theories of committee decision making predict a process of competitive coalition formation leading to a minimum winning coalition. Committee experiments reported to date tend to support these theories. However, both theories and committee experiments are contradicted by the evidence of real-world legislatures making distributive decisions; these decisions are characterized by coalitions of the whole providing virtually all me…
Legislators, bureaucrats and locational decisions and beyond: Some comments
Small Steps Forward for Political Economy
Modern Political Economy
A Test of Downsian Voter Rationality: 1964 Presidential Voting
Systematic testing of Downsian voter rationality is accomplished using a computer simulation technique on the 1964 SRC voting survey. The simulation tests both the hypotheses predicting whether an individual will vote and for whom an individual will vote. To evaluate the results of the tests we develop a statistic analogous to Pearson's r. This statistic measures the percentage improvement over a random guess technique. Utilizing this statistic, …
The carrot and the stick: Optimal program mixes for entrepreneurial political leaders
Entrepreneurial Politics And Foreign Policy
While engineers, economists, and doctors can often prescribe a remedy for an undesirable situation by inference from a general theoretical construct, the architects of foreign policies rarely, if ever, have had such an advantage. Yet, the availability of a general theoretical construct could yield numerous benefits. To the degree that the theory were reliable and general, the foreign-policy maker would be able to deal with a wide range of concern…
Political Leadership and Collective Goods
I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends
Ending the war in Vietnam, preventing similar conflicts elsewhere, solving the problems associated with the pollution of our environment, and securing a just domestic social order are among the most important political issues of our time. These issues have one characteristic in common: the securing (or non-securing) of these objectives will be shared by all citizens of the United States. Consequently, these and similar phenomena can be analyzed i…
I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends
Ending the war in Vietnam, preventing similar conflicts elsewhere, solving the problems associated with the pollution of our environment, and securing a just domestic social order are among the most important political issues of our time. These issues have one characteristic in common: the securing (or non-securing) of these objectives will be shared by all citizens of the United States. Consequently, these and similar phenomena can be analyzed i…
A Method of Estimating the Personal Ideology of Political Representatives
We suggest a method for estimating a political representative's personal ideology and its effect on his or her voting decisions. The current practice of using the ratings of a pressure group such as Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) as a proxy for personal ideology is shown to have a number of theoretical and interpretive flaws. Our technique uses the residuals from two regression equations to provide answers to two questions: Is there a syst…
Choices of Principles of Distributive Justice in Experimental Groups
Experimental methods involving imperfect information are used to generate group choices of principles of distributive justice. Conditions approximating John Rawls's original in A Theory of Justice serve as the starting point, and his conjectures are contrasted with those of John Harsanyi. Three predictions implicit in the Rawlsian argument are tested: (1) individuals choosing a principle of economic distribution would be able to reach unanimous a…
Laboratory Results on Rawls's Distributive Justice
The behavioural underpinnings of Rawls's notion of distributive justice as outlined inA Theory of Justiceare tested in experimental contexts. Under conditions approximating Rawls's ‘original position’ (including the appropriate agenda, a ‘veil of ignorance’ and a choice rule designed to capture his main theoretical constraints), we test his ‘predictions’ that individuals would reach a unanimous consensus on a principle of distributive justice and…
Choosing Justice in Experimental Democracies with Production
We examine in a laboratory setting how direct participation in choosing a principle of distributive justice and a tax system impinges on subjects' attitudes and subsequent productivity when they participate in a task, produce income, and then experience losses or gains according to the tax system. Experience with a redistributive principle and its associated taxation system in a production environment does not detract from overall acceptance of t…
A Test of Downsian Voter Rationality: 1964 Presidential Voting
Systematic testing of Downsian voter rationality is accomplished using a computer simulation technique on the 1964 SRC voting survey. The simulation tests both the hypotheses predicting whether an individual will vote and for whom an individual will vote. To evaluate the results of the tests we develop a statistic analogous to Pearson's r. This statistic measures the percentage improvement over a random guess technique. Utilizing this statistic, …
Experiencing impartiality to invoke fairness in the n-PD: Some experimental results
The carrot and the stick: Optimal program mixes for entrepreneurial political leaders
Entrepreneurial Politics And Foreign Policy
While engineers, economists, and doctors can often prescribe a remedy for an undesirable situation by inference from a general theoretical construct, the architects of foreign policies rarely, if ever, have had such an advantage. Yet, the availability of a general theoretical construct could yield numerous benefits. To the degree that the theory were reliable and general, the foreign-policy maker would be able to deal with a wide range of concern…
Universalism in Experimental Committees
Most rational choice theories of committee decision making predict a process of competitive coalition formation leading to a minimum winning coalition. Committee experiments reported to date tend to support these theories. However, both theories and committee experiments are contradicted by the evidence of real-world legislatures making distributive decisions; these decisions are characterized by coalitions of the whole providing virtually all me…
Justice Preferences and the Arrow Problem
Arrow showed that there is no general way to aggregate non-interpersonally comparable preferences or welfare into either a sensible social choice or a social welfare measure. With majority rule the problem manifests itself as voting cycles. The standard response to this problem has been developing `spatial models' built on restricted preferences (or welfare). We develop an alternative family of solutions. By assuming a culturally accepted concept…
Small Steps Forward for Political Economy
Legislators, bureaucrats and locational decisions and beyond: Some comments
I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends
Ending the war in Vietnam, preventing similar conflicts elsewhere, solving the problems associated with the pollution of our environment, and securing a just domestic social order are among the most important political issues of our time. These issues have one characteristic in common: the securing (or non-securing) of these objectives will be shared by all citizens of the United States. Consequently, these and similar phenomena can be analyzed i…
Political Leadership and Collective Goods
Entrepreneurial Politics And Foreign Policy
While engineers, economists, and doctors can often prescribe a remedy for an undesirable situation by inference from a general theoretical construct, the architects of foreign policies rarely, if ever, have had such an advantage. Yet, the availability of a general theoretical construct could yield numerous benefits. To the degree that the theory were reliable and general, the foreign-policy maker would be able to deal with a wide range of concern…
The carrot and the stick: Optimal program mixes for entrepreneurial political leaders
Modern Political Economy
A Test of Downsian Voter Rationality: 1964 Presidential Voting
Systematic testing of Downsian voter rationality is accomplished using a computer simulation technique on the 1964 SRC voting survey. The simulation tests both the hypotheses predicting whether an individual will vote and for whom an individual will vote. To evaluate the results of the tests we develop a statistic analogous to Pearson's r. This statistic measures the percentage improvement over a random guess technique. Utilizing this statistic, …
Small Steps Forward for Political Economy
Legislators, bureaucrats and locational decisions and beyond: Some comments
Universalism in Experimental Committees
Most rational choice theories of committee decision making predict a process of competitive coalition formation leading to a minimum winning coalition. Committee experiments reported to date tend to support these theories. However, both theories and committee experiments are contradicted by the evidence of real-world legislatures making distributive decisions; these decisions are characterized by coalitions of the whole providing virtually all me…
A Method of Estimating the Personal Ideology of Political Representatives
We suggest a method for estimating a political representative's personal ideology and its effect on his or her voting decisions. The current practice of using the ratings of a pressure group such as Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) as a proxy for personal ideology is shown to have a number of theoretical and interpretive flaws. Our technique uses the residuals from two regression equations to provide answers to two questions: Is there a syst…
Public choice and three ethical properties of politics
Choices of Principles of Distributive Justice in Experimental Groups
Experimental methods involving imperfect information are used to generate group choices of principles of distributive justice. Conditions approximating John Rawls's original in A Theory of Justice serve as the starting point, and his conjectures are contrasted with those of John Harsanyi. Three predictions implicit in the Rawlsian argument are tested: (1) individuals choosing a principle of economic distribution would be able to reach unanimous a…
Laboratory Results on Rawls's Distributive Justice
The behavioural underpinnings of Rawls's notion of distributive justice as outlined inA Theory of Justiceare tested in experimental contexts. Under conditions approximating Rawls's ‘original position’ (including the appropriate agenda, a ‘veil of ignorance’ and a choice rule designed to capture his main theoretical constraints), we test his ‘predictions’ that individuals would reach a unanimous consensus on a principle of distributive justice and…
Choosing Justice in Experimental Democracies with Production
We examine in a laboratory setting how direct participation in choosing a principle of distributive justice and a tax system impinges on subjects' attitudes and subsequent productivity when they participate in a task, produce income, and then experience losses or gains according to the tax system. Experience with a redistributive principle and its associated taxation system in a production environment does not detract from overall acceptance of t…
Choosing Justice: An Experimental Approach to Ethical Theory
Experiencing impartiality to invoke fairness in the n-PD: Some experimental results
Justice Preferences and the Arrow Problem
Arrow showed that there is no general way to aggregate non-interpersonally comparable preferences or welfare into either a sensible social choice or a social welfare measure. With majority rule the problem manifests itself as voting cycles. The standard response to this problem has been developing `spatial models' built on restricted preferences (or welfare). We develop an alternative family of solutions. By assuming a culturally accepted concept…
Principles of Politics: A Rational Choice Theory Guide to Politics and Social Justice
Modern rational choice and social justice theories allow scholars to develop new understandings of the foundations and general patterns of politics and political behavior. In this book, Joe Oppenheimer enumerates and justifies the empirical and moral generalizations commonly derived from these theories. In developing these arguments, Oppenheimer gives students a foundational basis of both formal theory and theories of social justice, and their re…
Principles of Politics: The Logic of Collective Action
"This book presents the rational choice theories of collective action and social choice, applying them to problems of public policy and social justice"-- "Claims of knowledge and of 'principles' regarding political matters, both empirical and moral, have been made over the millennia but never without contention. This book is about some of the empirical and moral generalizations arrived at in what might be called the new political science. The boo…
Economics (15 works) · Political science (15 works) · Law (13 works) · Law (10 works) · Politics (8 works) · Positive economics (8 works) · Law and economics (7 works) · Microeconomics (7 works) · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies (6 works) · Sociology (6 works)