Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Two debates have shaped recent IR scholarship. The agent-structure debate is focused on the question: do people act as purposeful agents, making their own history, or do social structures determine history? The second debate involves the question of wh

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of physical embodiment in human-agent interaction. Experiment 1 (N = 32) shows positive effects of physical embodiment on the feeling of an agent’s social presence, the evaluation of the agent, the assessment of public opinion on the agent, and the evaluation of the interaction with the agent. A path analysis reveals that the feeling of the agent’s social presence mediates the participants’ evaluation of the social agent. Experiment 2 (N = 32) shows that physical embodiment with restricted tactile interaction causes null or even negative effects in human-agent interaction. In addition, Experiment 2 indicates that lonely people feel higher social presence of social agents, and provide more positive social responses to social agents than non-lonely people. The importance of physical embodiment and tactile communication in human-agent interaction and diverse role of social robots, especially for the lonely population, are discussed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Principal-Agent theory sees the fact of delegation as defining a relationship between states (collective principals) and international organizations (agents) where the threat of recontracting (changing the delegation contract, firing or sanctioning staff, cutting IO budgets) is the predominate way states mitigate unwanted IO actions (slack). Developing a category of “trustee-agents”, I challenge the notion that delegation per se sets up a relationship where IOs are agents of states, and recontracting is of central concern to IOs. The “trustee-agent” category applies to delegation to actors guided by strong professional norms where the chief reason the “agents” are chosen is to capture the benefits of the professional reputation. The paper explains why principal-trustee relations differ fundamentally from principal-agent relations. More generally I offer an alternative explanation for the powerful influence of states on IOs. It is the inherent dependence of IOs on states to accomplish any of their objectives—not fears that states will change the delegation contract-- which forces IO agents (trustee agents and more classical agents) to take state concerns and preferences into account. I argue that the P-A approach wrongly focuses on the contract feature of delegation as being central to shaping IO behavior. The “perils of the principal-agent approach” is seeing all evidence of state influence on IOs as supporting P-A theory, failing to consider alternative explanations for variation in the influence of states on IOs, and more fundamentally letting ones faith in the parsimony and deductive elegance of the theory keep the analyst from asking other questions about the sources (state and non-state) and consequences of IO behavior.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The research analyzed the registrants of the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), the U.S. law that governs public relations representing international clienteles, to see the changing patterns of the section of public relations industry and how status of nations in the world system correlates to their potential to conduct public relations in the United States. It is found that semi-periphery countries are more likely to hire U.S. public relations firms, followed by the core nations and the periphery nations, and the registrants are engaged in more than cultivating images and building policy agendas. Moreover, the overall numbers of firms and clienteles have decreased in the past years, possibly due to technologic and economic impacts.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Bargaining lies at the heart of politics and has been extensively studied using mathematical models. The use of game theory has been criticized as it assumes that political actors behave as if ruled by complex mutual anticipations of rational behavior. In addition, the concept of rationality on which game theoretical solutions are build has been subject to debate. Furthermore, the unstructured process of bargaining does not lend itself naturally to non-cooperative game theory. We suggest to complement game theoretical models of bargaining with agent-based models, which allow us to model boundedly rational actors and trace the dynamics of the bargaining process.
This is the first paper of an ongoing research project. We present our ideas of agent behaviour and some initial results. Agents are modeled to make proposals targeted at a minimal winning coalition of like-minded actors. They make concession to win support but only as long as they gain support while doing so. The results of the computer simulations show that most outcomes are not in the uncovered set, a prominent solution concept of the social choice literature, and that the duration of negotiations depends on the number of actors. Unlike game theoretical models, actors do not reach instantaneous agreements.