The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) has created a new dynamic for the oversight and implementation of elections, giving greater power to the states than previously. We consider how HAVA has changed the relationship between states and localities, especially through the HAVA planning process. We examine two approaches that states have used in HAVA planning—a rational approach and a pluralistic appro...

Third sector organizations are oftentimes seen as contributing to a robust civil society. Yet the dominant modes of third sector organizational governance often adhere to a unitary orientation. The over-reliance on unitary modes of governance introduces two challenges: first, organizational stakeholders are kept from utilizing participatory mechanisms that would enable them to act as societal i...

Justice is important, but so is peaceful cooperation. In this article, I argue that if one takes seriously the autonomy of individuals and groups and the fact of moral pluralism, a just system of cooperation cannot guarantee peaceful cooperation in a pluralistic world. As a response to this consideration, I develop a contractarian theory that can secure peaceful cooperation in a pluralistic wor...

Pluralistic ignorance, a well-documented socio-psychological conformity phenomenon, involves discrepancies between private attitude and public opinion in certain social contexts. However, continuous opinion dynamics models based on a bounded confidence assumption fail to accurately model pluralistic ignorance because they do not address scenarios in which non-conformists do not need to worry ab...

I develop a theory of group interaction in which individuals who act sequentially are concerned about signaling what they believe is the majority group preference. Equilibrium dynamics may result in a perverse situation where most individuals reluctantly act in a way they mistakenly believe is cooperative, a situation known as ‘pluralistic ignorance’. Strong beliefs over others’ views increases...