Traditional institutions and social cooperation: Experimental evidence from the Buganda Kingdom

Goist, Mitchell; Kern, Florian G.

doi:10.1177/2053168017753925

Cited by 13 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Traditional chiefs may also be uniquely positioned to enforce compliance with rules and to organize collective political action. Indeed, evidence from lab-in-the-field experiments in Liberia and Uganda suggests traditional authorities are more effective than elected leaders in organizing many forms of social cooperation (Blair, 2016; Goist & Kern, 2018). This highlights the need for a reassessment of the role traditional chiefs play in local governance, in Africa and beyond.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elected MPs, Traditional Chiefs, and Local Public Goods: Evidence on the Role of Leaders in Co-Production From Rural Zambia

Baldwin

2018

Comparative Political Studies

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What types of leaders are effective in organizing public goods that require community contributions? In many settings, both citizens and state agencies provide financing, labor, and oversight of local projects. This article analyzes the effects of elected Members of Parliament (MPs) and hereditary chiefs in facilitating co-produced public goods in Zambia. MPs have electoral motivations to provide public goods but may not be well-positioned to organize community contributions. Chiefs lack electoral incentives but typically have long time horizons and local social connections. I analyze the effects of both types of leaders on the provision of co-produced public goods through a natural experiment. I take advantage of lapses in leadership following the deaths of leaders in office to show that chiefs have a significant effect on co-produced public goods but MPs do not. Auxiliary analysis suggests that chiefs’ effect on community contributions depends on the length of their time horizons.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elected MPs, Traditional Chiefs, and Local Public Goods: Evidence on the Role of Leaders in Co-Production From Rural Zambia

Baldwin

2018

Comparative Political Studies

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“…In the social context, cooperation games can be considered as abstract conceptualization of social institutions (Goist and Kern, 2018;Kube et al, 2014). RPS games can be seen as abstract representation of social games with multiple decision options, which are non-transitively comparable, i.e.…”

Section: Cooperation In the Rock-paper-scissors Gamementioning

confidence: 99%

Cooperation in Repeated Rock-Paper-Scissors Games in Uncertain Environments

András

2018

The 2018 Conference on Artificial Life

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Cooperation among selfish individuals provides the fundamentals for social organization among animals and humans. Cooperation games capture this behavior at an abstract level and provide the tools for the analysis of the evolution of cooperation. Here we use the Rock-Paper-Scissors (RPS) game with positive and negative draw outcomes to study the evolution of cooperative behavior in communities of simulated selfish agents. The agents communicate to each other using a probabilistic language and the cooperation game is set in an uncertain resource generation context. The offspring of the agents may clump together or may spread out, simulating the easy and difficult identification of possible cooperation partners. The results show that more uncertainty leads to more cooperation both in positive and negative draw games. Surprisingly we found that in negative draw games the level of cooperation is statistically significantly higher, although close to, the level that would be expected from random choice of RPS decisions. We also analyzed language complexity correlates of cooperation. The agent-based simulations and the results described here are applicable to social institutions or ecological systems with more than two, non-transitively comparable, decision states that can be described abstractly as RPS games.

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“…Cooperation games in general can be seen as an abstract conceptualisation of social institutions, where social institutions are seen as systematic sets of behavioural rules and patterns that channel social decision making processes (Goist and Kern, 2018;Kube et al, 2014). In an abstract sense the social institutions are about generating a decision with social impact and participants in the institutions follow some rules to reach their own contribution to the decision making process.…”

Section: Social Learning In Cooperation Gamesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social learning in repeated cooperation games in uncertain environments

András

2018

Cognitive Systems Research

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Cooperation and social learning are fundamental mechanisms that maintain social organisation among animals and humans. Social institutions can be conceptualised abstractly as cooperation games with social learning. In some cases potential cooperation partners may be easily identifiable, while in other cases this is difficult. Real world institutions always operate in uncertain environments. Here we use agent-based simulation to explore the interaction between social learning, cooperation and environmental uncertainty with and without easy to identify cooperation partners. Our agents use a communication language to indicate their cooperation intentions. We discuss the measurement of communication or language complexity metrics, which may be used as correlates of the level of cooperation. The results show that more uncertainty induces more cooperation and that social learning increases the level of cooperation. We show that the positive impact of social learning is bigger in low uncertainty environments than in high uncertainty environments and also in cases where identification of potential cooperation partners is harder. The results suggest that environmental uncertainty, social learning and easy identification of cooperation partners may play alternating roles in the promotion of cooperation in social institutions and the expansion and development of these institutions.

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Traditional institutions and social cooperation: Experimental evidence from the Buganda Kingdom

Cited by 13 publications

References 18 publications

Elected MPs, Traditional Chiefs, and Local Public Goods: Evidence on the Role of Leaders in Co-Production From Rural Zambia

Elected MPs, Traditional Chiefs, and Local Public Goods: Evidence on the Role of Leaders in Co-Production From Rural Zambia

Cooperation in Repeated Rock-Paper-Scissors Games in Uncertain Environments

Social learning in repeated cooperation games in uncertain environments

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