Within the framework of social resource theory (Foa 1971 ; Foa and Foa 1974 ; Foa et al. 1993 ) , status is a symbolic, particularistic resource. That is, compared to currency or concrete goods, status is relatively intangible, as its possession is typically re fl ected symbolically (e.g., personal possessions, conversational norms, skin color) by the values a society assigns. Status is also pa...

We develop a bargaining model in which a legislature divides a budget among particularistic and collective goods. By incorporating both private and public goods in a unified model, we uncover nonmonotonic relationships between legislative preferences for collective spending and the amount of the budget actually allocated to collective goods. Put simply, policy proposers can exploit coalition pa...

In The Particularistic President we challenge the dominant paradigm asserting presidential universalism. Instead, we argue that presidents possess strong electoral and partisan incentives to pursue policies that prioritize the needs of some Americans over those of others. In this article, we review our larger argument and expand upon our analyses of two policy areas where presidents have unilat...

Studies of religious and other cultural groups tend to be particularistic or focus on one or more axes of variation. In this article we develop a more comprehensive approach to studying cultural diversity that emulates the study of biological diversity. We compare our cultural ecosystem approach with the axis approach, using the distinction between “tight” and “loose” cultures as an example. We...

We have argued in numerous venues that a significant step in archaeological research involves the construction of evolutionary histories of cultural phenomena (Lyman and O'Brien 1998; O'Brien and Lyman 2000a, 2000b, 2002a, 2003a). These histories can concern artifacts of any scale, from design motifs on ceramic vessels, to projectile-point shapes, to architectural forms, to tool kits. A critica...

We experimentally investigate a legislative bargaining model with both public and particularistic goods. Consistent with the qualitative implications of the model: There is near exclusive public good provision in the pure public good region, in the pure private good region minimum winning coalitions sharing private goods predominate, and in the “mixed” region proposers generally take some parti...

Particularistic spending, a large literature argues, builds support for incumbents. This literature equates money spent in the district with the credit constituents allocate. Yet, constituents lack the necessary information andmotivation to allocate credit in this way.We use extensive observational and experimental evidence to showhow legislators’ credit claimingmessages—and not justmoney spent...