Gert Tinggaard Svendsen
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 376677 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Gert Tinggaard Svendsen |
| PRENOMES | Gert Tinggaard |
| SOBRENOME | Svendsen |
| ASSINATURA | SVENDSEN G T |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Aarhus University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1463-5421 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 42 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 268 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 42 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1999 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 8 |
Did Ethelred the Unready make optimal choices when paying Danegeld to Svein Forkbeard? Viking Age England and game theory
King Ethelred’s repeated payments to Viking armies are often portrayed as evidence of political weakness and strategic failure. This paper reinterprets these actions within a rational choice framework, asking whether Ethelred the Unready acted optimally when paying King Svein Forkbeard to withdraw from England between 991 and 1012. Drawing on historical evidence from five documented Danegeld payments, we develop a formal model in which tribute an…
Social trust and public digitalization
Modern democratic states are increasingly adopting new information and communication technologies to enhance the efficiency and quality of public administration, public policy and services. However, there is substantial variation in the extent to which countries are successful in pursuing such public digitalization. This paper zooms in on the role of social trust as a possible account for the observed empirical pattern in the range and scope of p…
Toward a third-generation rational choice theory
This paper aims to contribute to the development of a “third-generation” rational choice theory by introducing a Multiple Player Approach for analysing collective action problems. Drawing on the foundational first and second generation works of Olson (The logic of collective action, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1965) and Ostrom (Scand Polit Stud 23(1):3–16), we introduce five player types that we believe capture essential empirical feat…
Social trust and the stringency of public policies against the Covid-19 pandemic
One may wonder why countries have used different public policies to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic. We argue that social trust could be the missing link in explaining why these public policies vary in stringency. Based on the logic of game theory, we draw the hypothesis that more social trust in a society means that less stringent policies are needed to abate the COVID-19 pandemic. Empirical results at both country and individual levels confirm …
Can we provide appropriate tools to measure the effectiveness of climate agreements? The Paris agreement and the role of the European External Action Service
Can we provide appropriate tools to measure the effectiveness of climate agreements? How effective will, for example, the Paris Agreement be? Global emissions levels can be applied as a sole measure of performance. Current emission trends predict 2.7 degrees of temperature increase in the year 2100. The challenge rests in both the unavailability or difficulty of compiling proper data and information and the dynamic aspect which demands estimates …
Free riding in Nato after the Rise of Russia
After a period of relative overperformance due to the focus on output indicators in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) burden-sharing debate, we ask whether the shift back to input indicators prior to the Ukraine War meant that the smaller NATO allies have returned to their fringe position as NATO underperformers. According to the deterrence model, smaller allies are induced to free ride to a higher degree than mid-sized allies. Util…
The survival game
How do people survive under extreme conditions? Will selfish, non-cooperating free-rider types – the solo players – have the best chances of surviving? Or would cooperating, hard-working types – the team players – have higher chances? All morale put aside, it is interesting to know whether non-cooperation or cooperation pays off in a game characterized by scarcity and hard competition for survival. A study of people in such a Hobbesian state of n…
Is the annual UNFCCC COP the only game in town
Is the annual United Nations framework convention on climate change meetings (UNFCCC COP) the only game in town? Are there also other possible solutions to consider? We argue that there is indeed another game, namely unilateral action facilitated by public authorities. Our theoretical model shows the conditions under which unilateral and costly technology development can be spread to other countries; that is, to an extent that makes such action o…
Does higher health literacy lead to higher trust in public hospitals
It is important that health care professionals understand that some patient groups have a higher chance of cooperation (e.g., agreeing on the choice of treatment) or defection (e.g. passing a complaint) than others. In perspective, future research should undertake further qualitative examinations of possible patient types and their demands in relation to different health care sectors, focusing specifically on the opportunities to improve the hand…
Two bandits or more? The case of Viking Age England
The Olsonian distinction between roving and stationary bandits outlines the rationale behind the transition from anarchy to the emergence of the predatory state. This two-bandit model may, however, be expanded to include more bandit types. In the case of Viking Age England, local English kings were unable to monopolize violence and defend their realms against competing Viking raiders. As the Vikings’ time horizon grew, so did the accumulated valu…
The Eeas navigating foreign policy paradigms
Addressing the issue of EU foreign policy, this article analyses one of the European institutions, the EEAS, and examines how the EEAS navigates in a European landscape characterised by a handful of main foreign policy paradigms. In particular, we ask how the EEAS has adjusted its foreign policies in the light of competing paradigms. In the first section, we explicate the key concepts including policy paradigms, worldviews and public philosophy. …
Religion, Crime, and Social Trust in Historic Germany
Are Catholics more inclined to violate social norms than Protestants? A tentative answer is yes due to this confession's attitude towards absolution of sins. Opportunities existed for Christians around Reformation times, for example as sales of indulgences. Catholics and Protestants arguably differed historically in their understanding of whether penitence is feasible or not, resulting in different conditions under which Catholics and Protestants…
Introduction
Introduction to special issue in Journal of Historical Sociology (vol. 4, 2020
How robust is the welfare state when facing open borders? An evolutionary game-theoretic model
How robust is the welfare state when confronting open borders? To answer that question, we develop an evolutionary game-theoretic model combined with an ingroup–outgroup model. The simulations reveal that welfare states in general will transform into low-welfare societies unless the societies in time generate a sufficiently large amount of social recognition of the reciprocators in such a crisis. The recognition implies that the “always cooperato…
How did trade norms evolve in Scandinavia? Long-distance trade and social trust in the Viking age
As the saying goes, “it takes years to build up trust and only seconds to destroy it.” In this paper, we argue that this is indeed the case when explaining trust formation in Scandinavia. Hence, in an attempt to explain why the Scandinavian welfare states hold the highest social trust scores in the world today, we argue that one possible historical root of social trust may be the long-distance trade practices of the Viking age. To manage the risk…
Trust, Social Capital and the Scandinavian Welfare State
Denmark exemplifies the puzzle of socio-economic success in Scandinavia. Populations are thriving despite the world's highest levels of tax and generous social benefits. Denmark would appear to be a land of paradise for free-riders and those who want 'money for nothing'. However, the national personality is characterized both by cooperation in everyday life and the numerous 'hard-riders' who make extraordinary contributions. Applying Bourdieucono…
Do Corruption and Social Trust Affect Economic Growth? A Review
Two separate literatures suggest that corruption and social trust, respectively, are related to economic growth, although the strengths of the relationships, and the direction of causality, are still debated. This paper reviews these literatures and evaluates the evidence for causal effects of corruption and trust on economic growth, and discusses how corruption and trust are interrelated. The reviews show that absence of corruption and high leve…
Corruption, Trust and their Public Sector Consequences
Corruption and trust are two important determinants of the quality of public sectors. Empirical studies in different literatures suggest that corruption and trust have effects on factors such as economic growth, the quality of democratic institutions, life quality, the size and effectiveness of the public sector and much more. The purpose of this special issue – one that goes to the heart of the comparative policy ethos which is central to the jo…
Do Institutions or Culture Determine the Level of Social Trust? The Natural Experiment of Migration from Non-western to Western Countries
Do institutions or culture determine levels of social trust in society? If quality of institutions determines levels of social trust, migrants from countries with lower-quality institutions should enhance their level of social trust in countries with higher-quality institutions. If, on the other hand, the migrants' level of social trust is determined by their culture, it should not be affected by a different institutional setting. Furthermore, cu…
Public choice, political economy and development
Does social trust determine the size of the welfare state? Evidence using historical identification
Why does bureaucratic corruption occur in the EU
Why does bureaucratic corruption occur in the EU system? Several examples suggest that bureaucratic corruption exists and that the Commission’s anti-fraud agency, OLAF, is not a fully independent authority. We thus develop a novel interpretation of the principal-supervisor-agent model to cope with non-independent anti-fraud units. This model shows that corruption is likely to occur when the expected value to the client from bribing the agent is l…
Government intervention in green industries
Does Education Produce Tough Lovers? Trust and Bureaucrats
Trust is an important catalyst for co-operation among bureaucrats. We find it useful to think of the ideal bureaucrat as a “tough lover”. Just as economic man, tough loving bureaucrats are “tough” because they respond to defection with defection. Like political man, the tough lover follows the social norm of meeting others in a “loving” and trusting manner. We discuss how education may increase trust and offer three hypotheses on how education is…
The Troika of Sociology, Political Science and Economics
Bridge Over Troubled Water? Migration and Social Capital
The problem of integrating non-Western immigrants into Western welfare states is the focus of this paper. To address this issue, we suggest a social capital approach in which we apply the conceptual pair of bridging social capital (BR), which connects an individual to the broader social structure, and bonding social capital (BO), which closely binds an individual to his or her narrow social group. By this we hope to grasp both the sunny and the m…
Do Institutions or Culture Determine the Level of Social Trust? The Natural Experiment of Migration from Non-western to Western Countries
Do institutions or culture determine levels of social trust in society? If quality of institutions determines levels of social trust, migrants from countries with lower-quality institutions should enhance their level of social trust in countries with higher-quality institutions. If, on the other hand, the migrants' level of social trust is determined by their culture, it should not be affected by a different institutional setting. Furthermore, cu…
Does social trust determine the size of the welfare state? Evidence using historical identification
Building and destroying social capital
On the wealth of nations
Measuring Social Capital
What are the roots of social capital and how can it be measured and built? Social capital is considered as a new production factor that must be added to the conventional concepts of human and physical capital. Social capital is productive because it increases the level of trust in a society and allows more transactions to take place without third-party enforcement. Theory and lessons from empirical evidence lead to the general recommendation that…
Rational Bandits
Giving money to strangers
Jensen C, Svendsen GT. Giving money to strangers: European welfare states and social trust Int J Soc Welfare 2011: 20: 3–9 © 2009 The Author, Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. Why would you give money to strangers? That is the fundamental question posed by a new body of research into the relationship between social trust and willingness to accept high taxes and extensive welfare s…
Fighting Windmills
Two bandits or more? The case of Viking Age England
The Olsonian distinction between roving and stationary bandits outlines the rationale behind the transition from anarchy to the emergence of the predatory state. This two-bandit model may, however, be expanded to include more bandit types. In the case of Viking Age England, local English kings were unable to monopolize violence and defend their realms against competing Viking raiders. As the Vikings’ time horizon grew, so did the accumulated valu…
How to construct a robust measure of social capital
How to construct a robust measure of social capital? This paper offers two contributions. The first is an attempt to establish a broad social capital measure based on four indicators, the Freedom House Index, an index of perceived corruption from Transparency International, and scores on civic participation and generalized trust. This measure is then applied by comparing the level of social capital in 25 countries from Western and Eastern Europe.…
Social Capital and Endogenous Preferences
The Eeas navigating foreign policy paradigms
Addressing the issue of EU foreign policy, this article analyses one of the European institutions, the EEAS, and examines how the EEAS navigates in a European landscape characterised by a handful of main foreign policy paradigms. In particular, we ask how the EEAS has adjusted its foreign policies in the light of competing paradigms. In the first section, we explicate the key concepts including policy paradigms, worldviews and public philosophy. …
Introduction
Introduction to special issue in Journal of Historical Sociology (vol. 4, 2020
Corruption, Trust and their Public Sector Consequences
Corruption and trust are two important determinants of the quality of public sectors. Empirical studies in different literatures suggest that corruption and trust have effects on factors such as economic growth, the quality of democratic institutions, life quality, the size and effectiveness of the public sector and much more. The purpose of this special issue – one that goes to the heart of the comparative policy ethos which is central to the jo…
Does Education Produce Tough Lovers? Trust and Bureaucrats
Trust is an important catalyst for co-operation among bureaucrats. We find it useful to think of the ideal bureaucrat as a “tough lover”. Just as economic man, tough loving bureaucrats are “tough” because they respond to defection with defection. Like political man, the tough lover follows the social norm of meeting others in a “loving” and trusting manner. We discuss how education may increase trust and offer three hypotheses on how education is…
U.S. interest groups prefer emission trading
Social trust and the stringency of public policies against the Covid-19 pandemic
One may wonder why countries have used different public policies to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic. We argue that social trust could be the missing link in explaining why these public policies vary in stringency. Based on the logic of game theory, we draw the hypothesis that more social trust in a society means that less stringent policies are needed to abate the COVID-19 pandemic. Empirical results at both country and individual levels confirm …
Free riding in Nato after the Rise of Russia
After a period of relative overperformance due to the focus on output indicators in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) burden-sharing debate, we ask whether the shift back to input indicators prior to the Ukraine War meant that the smaller NATO allies have returned to their fringe position as NATO underperformers. According to the deterrence model, smaller allies are induced to free ride to a higher degree than mid-sized allies. Util…
How robust is the welfare state when facing open borders? An evolutionary game-theoretic model
How robust is the welfare state when confronting open borders? To answer that question, we develop an evolutionary game-theoretic model combined with an ingroup–outgroup model. The simulations reveal that welfare states in general will transform into low-welfare societies unless the societies in time generate a sufficiently large amount of social recognition of the reciprocators in such a crisis. The recognition implies that the “always cooperato…
Public choice, political economy and development
Why does bureaucratic corruption occur in the EU
Why does bureaucratic corruption occur in the EU system? Several examples suggest that bureaucratic corruption exists and that the Commission’s anti-fraud agency, OLAF, is not a fully independent authority. We thus develop a novel interpretation of the principal-supervisor-agent model to cope with non-independent anti-fraud units. This model shows that corruption is likely to occur when the expected value to the client from bribing the agent is l…
Trawling for subsidies
In the fishing industry, fishermen traditionally have incentives to signal too many fish in the sea in order to have access to a high short-term catch level and subsidies, whereas marine biologists have incentives to signal too few fish in the sea. Marine biologists have an incentive to maximize their budgets both for altruistic reasons (to restore fish stocks) and for private reasons (by increasing demand for their services). We analyse the outc…
The Global Development Race and the Samaritan's Dilemma
Why has ‘development aid’ been donated by so-called developed to under-developed populations since the Second World War? Using discourse analysis, this article provides partial answers to this riddle. First, we suggest that donor motives may be rooted in an ideology of ‘being good’, which, paradoxically, motivates recipients to be helpless – that is, a Samaritan's dilemma. Second, drawing on journal articles published in 1960–70, we test this the…
Designing green taxes in a political context
In this essay, we argue that to design green taxes which are high enough to have the desired incentive effects, tax revenues must be reimbursed, either by earmarking them for environmental subsidies or by reducing other taxes directed at industry. This would decrease industrial opposition to green taxation. However, in practice, the requirement of reimbursement may be difficult to fulfil because most polluting industries are not homogeneous. This…
U.S. interest groups prefer emission trading
Measuring Social Capital
What are the roots of social capital and how can it be measured and built? Social capital is considered as a new production factor that must be added to the conventional concepts of human and physical capital. Social capital is productive because it increases the level of trust in a society and allows more transactions to take place without third-party enforcement. Theory and lessons from empirical evidence lead to the general recommendation that…
Social kapital og økonomisk sociologi
What is social capital? We try to answer this question by using an interdisciplinary approach that combines economics and sociology in three steps. First, we introduce the general economic starting point from New Institutional Economics (NIE) focusing on asymmetrical information and transaction costs. Next, we incorporate the capital theory of Pierre Bourdieu, demonstrating how cultural values may generally compensate for the presence of asymmetr…
Building and destroying social capital
Rational Bandits
Designing green taxes in a political context
In this essay, we argue that to design green taxes which are high enough to have the desired incentive effects, tax revenues must be reimbursed, either by earmarking them for environmental subsidies or by reducing other taxes directed at industry. This would decrease industrial opposition to green taxation. However, in practice, the requirement of reimbursement may be difficult to fulfil because most polluting industries are not homogeneous. This…
On the wealth of nations
Fighting Windmills
Social Capital and Endogenous Preferences
Bureaucrats at sea
We develop a model of bureaucratic budget catching, where bureaucracies compete for resources just like fishermen. Considering taxpayers' money a free access resource in the absence of tight fiscal control (passive sponsors), bureaucratic self-interest may induce excessive lobbying behaviour even from the perspective of the bureaucrats themselves. Our contribution is to extend the original Niskanen (1971) Niskanen, W. A. 1971. Bureaucracy and Rep…
How to construct a robust measure of social capital
How to construct a robust measure of social capital? This paper offers two contributions. The first is an attempt to establish a broad social capital measure based on four indicators, the Freedom House Index, an index of perceived corruption from Transparency International, and scores on civic participation and generalized trust. This measure is then applied by comparing the level of social capital in 25 countries from Western and Eastern Europe.…
The Global Development Race and the Samaritan's Dilemma
Why has ‘development aid’ been donated by so-called developed to under-developed populations since the Second World War? Using discourse analysis, this article provides partial answers to this riddle. First, we suggest that donor motives may be rooted in an ideology of ‘being good’, which, paradoxically, motivates recipients to be helpless – that is, a Samaritan's dilemma. Second, drawing on journal articles published in 1960–70, we test this the…
Bridge Over Troubled Water? Migration and Social Capital
The problem of integrating non-Western immigrants into Western welfare states is the focus of this paper. To address this issue, we suggest a social capital approach in which we apply the conceptual pair of bridging social capital (BR), which connects an individual to the broader social structure, and bonding social capital (BO), which closely binds an individual to his or her narrow social group. By this we hope to grasp both the sunny and the m…
The Troika of Sociology, Political Science and Economics
Handbook of Social Capital
The Russian word troika (‘threesome’) denotes a sleigh or wagon pulled by three horses abreast. A simultaneous, harmonious and steady pull by all three horses sends the sleigh flying without exhausting the horses. In contrast, if one horse pulls too hard, or if one pulls less than the others, the sleigh will lose momentum and, at worst, overturn. The difficult act of driving a troika implies exact co-ordination, discipline and understanding to en…
Achieving Economic Growth in the EU Through Lobbyism
At Lisbon in 2000, the European Union (EU) set itself a new strategic goal, namely to become the world’s leading economy and to enhance social cohesion across the union, all within a decade. It is argued in this article that one fundamental barrier to the fulfilment of this dream is the fact that power is centralised in the Commission rather than the Parliament. The basic idea upon which our theoretical model is predicated is that a political sys…
Giving money to strangers
Jensen C, Svendsen GT. Giving money to strangers: European welfare states and social trust Int J Soc Welfare 2011: 20: 3–9 © 2009 The Author, Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. Why would you give money to strangers? That is the fundamental question posed by a new body of research into the relationship between social trust and willingness to accept high taxes and extensive welfare s…
Trawling for subsidies
In the fishing industry, fishermen traditionally have incentives to signal too many fish in the sea in order to have access to a high short-term catch level and subsidies, whereas marine biologists have incentives to signal too few fish in the sea. Marine biologists have an incentive to maximize their budgets both for altruistic reasons (to restore fish stocks) and for private reasons (by increasing demand for their services). We analyse the outc…
Government intervention in green industries
Does Education Produce Tough Lovers? Trust and Bureaucrats
Trust is an important catalyst for co-operation among bureaucrats. We find it useful to think of the ideal bureaucrat as a “tough lover”. Just as economic man, tough loving bureaucrats are “tough” because they respond to defection with defection. Like political man, the tough lover follows the social norm of meeting others in a “loving” and trusting manner. We discuss how education may increase trust and offer three hypotheses on how education is…
Public choice, political economy and development
Does social trust determine the size of the welfare state? Evidence using historical identification
Why does bureaucratic corruption occur in the EU
Why does bureaucratic corruption occur in the EU system? Several examples suggest that bureaucratic corruption exists and that the Commission’s anti-fraud agency, OLAF, is not a fully independent authority. We thus develop a novel interpretation of the principal-supervisor-agent model to cope with non-independent anti-fraud units. This model shows that corruption is likely to occur when the expected value to the client from bribing the agent is l…
Do Corruption and Social Trust Affect Economic Growth? A Review
Two separate literatures suggest that corruption and social trust, respectively, are related to economic growth, although the strengths of the relationships, and the direction of causality, are still debated. This paper reviews these literatures and evaluates the evidence for causal effects of corruption and trust on economic growth, and discusses how corruption and trust are interrelated. The reviews show that absence of corruption and high leve…
Corruption, Trust and their Public Sector Consequences
Corruption and trust are two important determinants of the quality of public sectors. Empirical studies in different literatures suggest that corruption and trust have effects on factors such as economic growth, the quality of democratic institutions, life quality, the size and effectiveness of the public sector and much more. The purpose of this special issue – one that goes to the heart of the comparative policy ethos which is central to the jo…
Economics (33 obras) · Political science (33 obras) · Law (21 obras) · Sociology (20 obras) · Law (16 obras) · Politics (14 obras) · Social capital (13 obras) · Public economics (12 obras) · Social Capital and Networks (12 obras) · Social science (11 obras)