I recently finished Diego Gambetta's Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate. For those looking for a more academic take on signaling (particularly from a sociological point of view) it's a great find. As I previously mentioned, Gambetta uses the extreme...
Here are a few quick signaling items for your perusal. I will try to do a similar roundup each Friday if I've stumbled on enough items throughout the week. Enjoy!How to Signal That You Are...
There are many reasons why organizations (government, businesses, etc) grow dysfunctional and stagnant. One major reason lies with the promotion and retention of less capable workers. There have...
Every night, about 15 minutes or so after we've put my 3-year old daughter to bed, we inevitably hear a knock at the door. She's typically knocking because she needs to go the bathroom. She's also...
[Cross-posted at Signal/Noise]While there are all sorts of actions people can take to signal that they are trustworthy, sometimes simply making a promise can get the job done. When two parties will be dealing with each other for an indeterminate amount of time it is advantageous to both if they are viewed as trustworthy. Lying would mean being punished in the future by the other party. In this way, talk isn't simply cheap--it's a credible signal.Case in point, the potential reconciliation of the Health Care Reform bill:Now, it's true that the Obama administration achieves its policy goals...
Charli linked to a great round-up of theories circulating that propose to answer the rather interesting question of why countries that sign the Convention Against Torture seem to have a greater likelihood of committing torture.One working paper in particular , by James Hollyer and Peter Rosendorff of NYU, has caused quite a stir. They propose that dictators use the signing of such a treaty as a costly signal to domestic opposition groups that they fully intend to continue torturing those that oppose their regime. How does this work?We argue that authoritarian states ratify human rights...
Over at FP.com, Stephen Walt provides a review of an interesting new book:[M]y colleague Matthew Baum and his co-author, Tim Groeling of UCLA, have recently published an excellent book entitled War Stories: The Causes and Consequences of Public Views on War (Princeton University Press). Drawing on a wide array of empirical evidence (including opinion surveys, media content, and foreign policy decisions), they argue that the interaction between elites, media, and public opinion is a three-way process in which each group’s behavior is essentially strategic. Politicians try to use media to...
Adam Elkus from Rethinking Security tweets about a recent critique of the current US strategy of strategic communication in the Muslim world. The critique was penned by non other than Admiral Mike Mullen, the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Mullen's contention is that efforts by the US to counter propaganda from Islamic militants is doomed to fail unless more attention is paid to the outcomes of US policies on the ground:“To put it simply, we need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate,” Admiral Mullen wrote in...
[Cross posted at bill | petti)Christopher Penn crafts an interesting piece arguing that piracy (i.e. copyright infringement) is, among other things, a market signal:Piracy indicates that something is sufficiently valuable enough that it’s worth stealing. It’s worth making an illegal copy and spreading without compensating the creator.Do you want the most accurate, unbiased, unmanipulated measure of how popular and valuable something is? Go hit up a site like The Pirate Bay or Demonoid or any of the other file sharing services and see if someone is stealing it.Now, I think this is an...
Tobias Harris over at Observing Japan, weighs in on the discussion regarding Japanese balancing (or lack thereof). Harris' post is an excellent addition to the discussion and includes some excellent points that require me to clarify my original post. And away we go...1) Tobias is correct that given the current and likely current state of the DPRK they are not exactly a Gilpin-esque revisionist power. However, I don't think that a state must have asperations and likely capabilities to match to be considered a revisionist state in general. A state that clearly is unhappy with the current...