Suchergebnisse

The tension between individual and collective interests and the provision of sanctioning mechanisms have been identified as important building blocks of a theory of norm emergence. Correspondingly, most investigations focus on how social norms emerge through explicit bargaining and social exchange to overcome this tension, and how sanctions enforce norm compliance. However, sanctioning presupposes the existence of the behavior at which it is directed, and the question of how behavior worth sanctioning can emerge tacitly if communication is not possible has hitherto received little attention. Here, we argue that game theory offers an ideal framework for theorizing about emergent behavioral regularities and show how latent norms can emerge from actors' recurring encounters in similar social dilemmas. We conduct two experiments in which small groups of subjects interact repeatedly in a volunteer's dilemma. We vary the heterogeneity of group members in terms of their costs of cooperation and the way they encounter each other in subsequent interactions. Our results show that subjects in homogeneous groups take turns at cooperating, whereas in heterogeneous groups mostly the subjects with the lowest costs cooperate. The emergence of solitary cooperation is moderated by the way subjects encounter each other again and their other-regarding preferences.

The main goal of the project was to investigate change and persistence in the ideological structure of Switzerland, to trace back to its social and cultural causes and to interpret them from a contemporary diagnostic perspective. A multidimensional and relational view of social topologies based on Bourdieu was chosen as the theoretical approach to social differentiation. The sociographic approach was combined with theories of modernisation and value change for the dynamic consideration of change and the persistence of political and moral milieus.
As an ideal prerequisite for the reconstruction of worldviews, Switzerland has a unique resource in the form of results from federal referenda in the municipalities. The long time series of these aggregates of expressions of opinion goes back to the 19th century and offers a powerful "monitoring" of Switzerland's regional ideological differentiation and was therefore developed and used as an empirical basis.
The combination of social structure analysis, modernisation theory, coordination research and regional analysis required a transdisciplinary approach in which theoretical and methodological knowledge from sociology, political science and geography was incorporated and applied fruitfully. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used for the longitudinal analysis of the referendum results.
In the first phase, the required voting results were digitised, qualified in terms of content and subject matter, classified and integrated into a database. In the second phase, cross- section and longitudinal analyses were combined to extract ideological dimensions of conflict, named and interpreted with the help of content classification and finally modeled into a ideological topology. A reinterpretation of methods of Geographical Information Science (GIS) served both to visualize the ideological grid and to link it with conventional maps. By integrating indicator variables for social and cultural differentiation, a relationship to Bourdieu's social topology was created. In the third phase, four complex hypotheses were worked on, which make change and persistence in ideological topology explainable over the entire 130-year period. The SOTOMO project aimed to combine different theoretical traditions and methodological approaches and to develop new research strategies.